Twitteretter

Statesmanship. A word invented to summarise the range of qualities XIX and XX century democracies expected from their leaders. It means many things, depending on who you ask (I’ve been conducting just this experiment the last few days). Seriousness. Respectability. Concern for the nation and its peoples. Integrity. Steadfastness. Grit. Virtue. Capacity to sacrifice. Responsibility. All those answers, and many more, are correct, they all contribute in different measure to the statesmanship pot. In the past, statesmanship was directly proportional to political success, meaning the higher a politician scored in perceived statesmanship, the better his or her acceptance by the electorate. However, this may be changing and, judging by some electoral results of late, some alternative adjectives, not included in the statesmanship concept, may be correlating to political success, at least in some countries. Brashness. Sleaziness. Goofiness. Dishonesty. We need a collective noun to summarise the...

This week we have greeted with dismay, at least in my case, UK government indications that they plan to break the EU Withdrawal Agreement. The trouble with international agreements between nations is that they can’t be enforced. Offenders can be challenged at international tribunals, but the tribunal’s authority depends on the offending country recognising its jurisdiction. Thus, international politics are an international treaty scrapyard. However, countries such as UK and US were the ones, to this point, instrumental in the creation of the current international order by upholding its institutions and honouring their agreements. This seems to be changing, and they appear as rogue players that can no longer be trusted, joining Russia and a number of others. If this is the case, the troubling question is whether what is left is sufficient to uphold an international order. If not, it will be back to the law of the strongest, and we would have lost the progress we made in the XX century...