Politics

At the end of last year, Australia was lauded for its success in containing Covid-19. The country’s borders had been quickly closed; interstate travel restricted and resources diverted to tracking down cases. In the deluge of praise that followed, outlets like the Washington Post ran gushing features on the country’s ‘pandemic success story’ ‘putting faith in science’; America’s top doctor Anthony Fauci hailed it as the ‘epitome of success.’ But eight months on and a different picture emerges. Covid has had an unfortunate habit of finding the weaknesses in a country or health system and in Australia the precious time gained last year was largely squandered on a widely-criticised vaccine roll

China greeted America’s chaotic retreat from Afghanistan and the Taliban seizure of power with a mixture of glee and trepidation. Its well-oiled propaganda machine has revelled in the fall of Kabul, but Beijing is fretting over the threat of instability on its doorstep – and there is a very real possibility that China will become next power sucked into the ‘graveyard of empires’. The humbling of the United States in Afghanistan fits nicely into the Chinese narrative of American decline, but Beijing has also used the withdrawal to pile pressure on Taiwan, warning the self-governing democratic island that Washington is an unreliable ally. ‘Afghanistan today, Taiwan tomorrow,’ ran a headline

It’s a hard tasking trying to sell China these days. What with the crackdown on Hong Kong, the subjugation of Uighur Muslims, sabre-rattling on Taiwan and the coronavirus cover-up, even the most adept propagandists would struggle to present Beijing’s rulers in a good light. And sadly for the Chinese Communist Party their current spin-doctors are far from adept, judging by the laughably poor wolf-warrior social media tactics deployed by embassies around the world. Now though, one weapon has been returned to the regime’s armoury here in the UK. Back in February, China’s state TV station CGTN was taken off the air in Britain after Ofcom established that it was controlled by the country’s Communist

The deal struck between Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Greens takes Scotland’s devolved government into new territory. For one, it is the first time a Green party has been part of a ruling administration anywhere in the UK. For another, it is a different kind of governing alliance from that which we’re used to in Britain (though less so in Northern Ireland). It is not quite a full-blown coalition like the Cameron-Clegg government — the pact, published this afternoon, outlines areas where the two parties will continue to express separate positions — but nor is it a mere confidence and supply arrangement like the one Theresa May secured with Arlene

This week Labour has been making much hay out of the Afghanistan debacle. Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy is all over the news berating Boris Johnson for not taking enough refugees, not being prepared for the collapse of the Afghan army and for not sacking Dominic Raab over his holiday shenanigans. There have, admittedly, been few actual policy suggestions for what could have been done differently but the collective tone of Nandy and her colleagues has been one of shock, angst and despair at the way Western forces have left the conflict-ravaged country. So Mr S was intrigued to discover that Nandy’s fellow frontbencher John Healey has been paying for the services of one comrade who