12th of March 2026 The vexed question of the place of politics in sport has surfaced yet again at the Winter Olympics in Milan. The Ukrainian skeleton skier Vladyslav Heraskevych wanted to wear a “helmet of remembrance” displaying the names of 24 fellow athletes killed during the Russian invasion of his country. The International Olympic … Continue reading More Sport, Less War by Robert Skidelsky. Published in The American Conservative.
Journalism
Jan 10, 2026 Wittgenstein wrote: “One thinks one is tracking the outline of a thing’s nature and one is merely tracing round the frame through which one looks at it.” In this spirit, I try to conjure up a debate between two frames for looking at the Ukraine war. The post below reproduces the main … Continue reading Follow-up to: ‘Ukraine – the delusions of the warmongers’
Jan 13, 2026 The following passages from the British Parliamentary debates on Ukraine on 7th and 11 January can be read as a kind of appendix to the debate between Critic and myself posted on 10th January. They reveal very clearly the lens through which official Britain sees the world. In his statement of 7th … Continue reading Follow-up to the follow-up
Jan 23, 2026 I The economics of John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was built on his philosophy. Economics was the means to the good life, not the good life itself. Keynes’s own genius was practical, and so both his temperament and the events of his time conspired to keep him anchored in the realm of means. … Continue reading Keynes and Money, or Where Has All the Money Gone?
Jan 27, 2026 Note: Dear followers and subscribers, as promised, a feature which I hope will be fairly regular, called Paranoid Corner. The motivation behind it is alarm at the use of vastly exaggerated threats to spread panic and alarm, and to justify increasing restrictions on freedom of speech, opinion, and assembly in the name … Continue reading Paranoid Corner (1)
Note: May I draw your attention to my recent video appearances with Ian Proud, the Peacemonger and Glenn Diesen. Ian Proud Link (15 Jan 2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-6QICm01kw Glenn Diesen Link (26 Feb 2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TGMXZtFUF8
6 Feb, 2026 People love spy stories. Here are another couple of them: The Daily Mail reported on 2 February that drone lessons were being given to pupils at the Russian School of London, which is run by the Russian embassy for the children of diplomats. According to the report, pupils receive instruction in the … Continue reading Paranoid Corner (2)
Feb 23, 2026 In his sophisticated 20 January address to the Davos World Economic Forum, Canada’s prime minister and former Bank of England governor Mark Carney offered an insight into the disintegration of the global economy which went well beyond the usual strictures on Trump for mental instability or megalomania. While Canada, like other middle-sized … Continue reading On Mark Carney and the Fate of Liberal Economies
Feb 26, 2026 Four years after the so-called full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is very hard to disentangle oneself from all clichés, lies, and reflexes in which the war is entangled. I have never lived through a ‘full-scale war’, nor served as a soldier in any war, big or small, so perhaps it was always … Continue reading Four Years Later
Mar 03, 2026 Given the premise, it becomes easy to treat disparate events as mutually reinforcing confirmation of it, often yielding elaborate conspiracy theories. The standard Russophobe narrative runs roughly as follows: Historically, Russophobia has succeeded an earlier Germanophobia. One recalls the Daily Mail’s 1909 series alleging that Germany was “deliberately preparing to destroy the British … Continue reading Paranoid Corner (3)