Cicero's Songs

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distingui...

James Sherr, the former head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, is a very distinguished analyst who understands the condition of Russia better than almost all the commentators on that subject. Over the years I have learned that his views of Russia ring more and more true. One idea that I find particularly compelling is the idea that Russia is in many ways an unreformed absolutist state, more similar to the time of the early Stuarts in Britain than to any modern political system.  Furthermore, far from modernizing Russia, the Soviet period set back Russian political reform to an even more primitive political era. The impact of this insight is to change the way that we analyse decision taking in Moscow.  Rational expectations must be put aside in favour of a psychological or even slightly mystical analysis. Thus we examine Russia's unfolding disaster in Ukraine. There have been several Western analysts who have argued that the attempted seizure of Ukraine is a...

Despite the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and his wife, together with killing or wounding several senior members of the Iranian government on February 28th, Trump's war of choice against Iran appears to be facing significant problems. Firstly, the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have not dissolved into chaos. They have moved quickly to install Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Hosseini, as the new Supreme Leader. Mojtaba Kahmenei is said to be very close the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and especially its paramilitary wing, the Basij. These are the two institutions that have been the primary organs of repression and are certainly responsible for thousands, probably tens of thousands, of deaths since the recent unrest began. The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei, who is rumoured to have been wounded in the attack that killed his parents, is therefore not a sign that the Islamic Republic is seeking to moderate its positions. Sure enou...

  The speech of the Canadian Prime Minister in Davos yesterday was electrifying. Instead of trying to ignore the disaster of the Trump Presidency, He confronted it head on. The truth is that there really is no going back, even though we would wish that the United States would maintain its commitment to freedom and justice, Trump is proof positive that this will not happen, and that therefore the rest of the world will need to adjust and rebuild mechanisms that, where necessary, will exclude America. The call to action that Mr. Carney sets out is one that all those committed to law and justice should sign up for.   

In October 1956 Britain and France,with Israeli support, launched military strikes against Egypt.  The military operation was entirely successful, and within a matter of days it appeared that all the operational objectives would be achieved.  However, almost immediately, the United States put so much pressure on their allies that the operation became unsustainable. Nine days after the attack was launched the Eden government declared a ceasefire and within two months all of the British and French attacking forces were withdrawn, leaving Egypt the clear victor, Eden himself was forced from office in January 1957.  The point was that even the formerly equal wartime allies were compelled to recognize the power reality- the hostility of the United States to the operation could not be overcome. From then onward the United Kingdom generally aligned its policies with the United States. It is tempting to consider that any American attempt to seize Greenland might be met with simil...

 In 1989, the international norms that had held for decades. In the tumultuous autumn of 1989 the various governments of the Warsaw Pact fell in turn. "In Hungary it took six years, in Poland it took six months, In East Germany it took six weeks, in Czechoslovakia six days and in Romania it took six hours". Communism had collapsed under its own contradictions. As we read the headlines in January 2026, it is hard not to feel certain 1989 vibes. The end of Maduro in Venezuela, and now the explosion of unrest in the "Islamic Republic" of Iran. It is not easy to understand what is going on across the cities of Iran at this point, but one thing is very clear: the regime of the Mullahs is being shaken to its very foundations.  Tired of the casual brutality, corruption and incompetence of the clerical regime, the Iranian people are expressing a clear desire to end the broken system that has governed them for nearly fifty years. Meanwhile other authoritarian governments, in...

 Today's problem is not Maduro. The illegitimate Venezuelan dictator is now out of the game. However, the legitimate government is not in the game either- at least not yet. An optimistic student of realpolitik might take the view that the Americans have learned from Iraq and are not making the mistake of destroying all the Chavista state, which they did with the Iraqi Baathist state after the fall of Saddam Hussein, before Venezuelan democracy can be restored. Since we regard the opposition as the legitimate authorities, and they have not complained about the arrest of Maduro, The US can legitimately say that their attack is not a breach of international law. Whether it is wise, and whether the US can take Venezuelan resources under their control are different questions, and are more bound up in the personality of Donald Trump. Smaller, weaker countries reach for the dubious comfort blanket of "international law" when they see their interests under threat, but in this c...

In the first decade of the twentieth century the relationship between the British and German Empires fell apart. Britain had tacitly supported the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership, to the point of sacrificing the Kingdom of Hanover in 1866. This friendly relationship reached its apogee with the short reign of Kaiser Friedrich III in 1888. Liberal, open minded and generally pro British, by virtue of his marriage to Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Vicky, it seemed that Germany under the new Kaiser was poised to become a progressive ally of the British Empire that would spread democratic rule and liberal prosperity across Europe and the World. As we know, throat cancer put an end to Friedrich III after only a few months, and in the year of Three Emperors, Germany went from the military conservative rule of Wilhelm I to liberal Friedrich III to the unstable and expansionist Wilhelm II.  Within a matter of little more of a year the second new Kaiser turned German polit...

 In some ways, but far from all, I was a mildly precocious kid. For example I began to be a regular reader of The Economist from my early teens, long enough to see long term pictures and trends, but equally long enough to develop a brand loyalty.  From the beginning, I appreciated the conceit of the The Economist : that it was a newspaper, not a magazine, like the lesser titles based in America, such as Time or Newsweek , but more, that its editorial judgement was based on a set of principles that emerged from an almost high table approach to the issues of the day. Structured and academically rigorous, sure, but most of all intelligent.  The Economist was committed to political ideas, a liberal-conservative point of view that was not subject to the whims of fashion. More to the point, both editors and contributors were not merely ivory tower thinkers, they were often financial practitioners and extraordinarily well connected and well informed. Thus the opinions express...

 No one is quite sure which Frenchman in the 1920s suggested that "the United States is the only country that has gone from barbarism to decadence, with out the usual interval of civilization". It may have been a right wing French newspaper, it may have been Georges Clemenceau, though in any event it was treated as more a witty riposte to some US policy than a serious description of the then burgeoning power of the USA. The point was that the election of Warren Harding in 1920 had upended American foreign policy. Instead of joining the League of Nations- a body actually proposed by the Americans under Woodrow Wilson- the United States lapsed into a distant neutrality. The US "return to normalcy", left European, indeed global security without the worlds largest economy, without the pre-eminent power of the US armed forces, so recently the source of the allied victory in the First World War.  With the hindsight of a century, the early 1920s have some significant paral...

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...

  After a week of slush and damp, tonight there is a hard frost in Tallinn. The general election campaign has started with the parties submitting their lists of candidates and announcing their programs. The polls seem to show a polarization of views. Although the Liberal Reform party of PM Kaja Kallas is set to remain as the largest party in the 101 seat Riigikogu, the steady rise of the far right EKRE seems to place them firmly in second place, replacing the Social Liberal Centre Party, who seem set to lose several seats. In addition to the Conservative Isamaaliit and the Social Democrat SDE, there is a fair likelihood that a new party will join these in Parliament, namely the Business/Green minded Eesti 200. The Greens and the Libertarian "Right wingers" look like they will struggle to gain seats. A Moderate Reform/SDE/E200 coalition would be a good outcome, but the numbers will have to fall just so, otherwise there remains the chance of another Centre/Isamaa/EKRE coalition...

After a long time, Politics seems to be getting interesting again, so I thought it might be time to restart my blog. With regard to this weeks mini budget, as with all budgets, there are two aspects: the economic and the political. The economic rationale for this package is questionable at best. The problems of the UK economy are structural. Productivity and investment are weak, infrastructure is under-invested and decaying. Small businesses are going to the wall and despite entrepreneurship being relatively strong in Britain, self-employment is increasingly unattractive. Red tape since Brexit has led to a significant fall in exports and the damage has been disproportionately on small businesses. Literally none of these problems are being addressed by this package. Even if the package were to stimulate some kind of short term consumption-led growth boom, this is unlikely to be sustainable, not least because what is being added on the fiscal side will be need to be offset, to a great de...

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have ...

The Daily Heil and the Daily Excreta and rest of the off-shore and foreign owned British media are greeting the supposed Brexit day with made up drivel about new dawns and nonsense about splits in President Macron´s family , while -with no irony at all- Boris Johnson´s father applies for French citizenship . So Brexit Britain. As bitterly divided as ever and with the incompetent clique of Conservative journalists, PR bullshitters and other ne´er-do-wells who by a nasty fluke have ended up in power are costing the country millions every time they take another ill-judged or unfair decision. The latest nonsense is the series of U-turns on the second jab for elderly patients and the hokey-cokey on whether schools reopen next week.  The far right have got their victory.  They have Britain out of Europe and a clique of like minded inadequates in charge. They won. But they won ugly. They won by bare faced lies. They won with the support of dodgy foreign money.  They won with a...

  The growing problem for the Conservatives now is that, while a no deal is likely to cause a pretty sharp economic contraction, even a "deal" cannot now avoid most of the same problems. The core of the cabinet has no business experience and their critical failure to understand that UK PLC needs time to plan and respond in order to avoid disruption is now leading the country to a major crisis. The infrastructure of customs and immigration simply does not exist and the utter incompetence of the Home Office starts with the useless and unpleasant Ms. Patel herself. I could go down the cabinet, but everyone, even Tory loyalists know: Johnson is NBG and most of the cabinet are worse. "Even the best of political leaders would struggle in the current crisis" is the get out clause the Tories are giving themselves, but in the country at large public opinion seems increasingly to believe that the Tories have caused the Brexit part of the crisis themselves and their handling o...

In December 1905 Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman (C.B.) became Prime Minister and a month later he led the Liberal Party to a landslide victory. It was by some margin the most radical government to date.  115 years ago C-B still chose the old Liberal campaign slogan of “Peace, Retrenchment, Reform”.  Over a century later James Oates thinks the future success and prosperity of our country now depends on rediscovering our Radical traditions and has written three articles on translating them into a coherent programme for the future.  This is the first essay: “Peace”. Peace: The Place of Britain in the World The challenges we face Liberalism, from the Midlothian campaign of 1880 onwards, has always been an outward looking ideology.   We understand that there are core democratic principles that do not change, no matter what the country or the culture. These principles are enshrined in the United Nations Charter and include an unbreakable commitment to the dignity of ...