World

Pangong Lake is the most unlikely of places for a naval conflict between two of the world’s nuclear-powers, India and China, with a third, Pakistan, looking on with not a little interest. Lying some 280 miles east of Islamabad, 360 miles north of New Delhi and 2,170 miles west of Beijing, Pangong Lake is in the remote northern Himalayas. In 1905, the explorer Ellsworth Huntington said that its beauty could ‘rival, or even excel, the most famous lakes of Italy or Switzerland’. It is a harsh world, frozen in winter, inhabited by a sparse indigenous population of hardy goat herders. And it’s situated in the southernmost spur of the Aksai

Dear Prime Minister, You already have quite enough on your plate. So forgive me if I hoist a storm cone over another potential problem. I refer to the US presidential election on 3 November and the possibility of its ending in deadlock and confusion. I was the British ambassador to Washington during the Bush/Gore election of 2000. The outcome hung in suspense for a month. Everything turned on which contestant had won more votes in Florida. In the end, the matter had to go to the US Supreme Court for a decision. I was present at the hearing. After 9/11, it was the most dramatic moment of my time in

An article in the Dutch, left-leaning newspaper Het Parool led with the headline ‘Despite Brexit, multinationals prefer London over Amsterdam or Paris’ this week. The piece reports that ‘the feared exit [of companies] from Great Britain is not happening’ as expected, and highlights the fact that Unilever decided to: Become fully British, scrapping its dual [Anglo-Dutch] structure [which has been in place for 90 years]. Its headquarters will be London and not Rotterdam, despite the avid attempts of Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Reportedly, the opportunity offered by London’s capital markets trumps any risks resulting from Brexit, an element that could also play a role in Shell possibly moving its headquarters

Public discourse has become the linguistic equivalent of walking on egg-shells. Fear of causing offence is truncating open and free-ranging thought.  I took a call from a listener – Frankie from Huntingdon – on my Talk Radio show yesterday. He objected to something I’d said. I’d been discussing rural crime with the National Farmers Union (NFU) who had reported a surge due to Covid 19 and continuing greed. Quad bikes disappearing for cash; sheep & lambs, for food. Another caller – Mike from the New Forest – had observed: ‘When the fair happens, we know to lock everything up’. Political interviews and speeches · Alastair Stewart on rural crime I’d

There are lots of different ways of measuring the terrible state of the global economy. The collapse in overall output. The fall in trade as ports and airports empty. The trillions printed by central banks, and the soaring price of gold as investors lose faith in a recovery. But one is surely this: keeping the drop in GDP in single digits actually looks pretty good. Sweden this morning reported its flash estimate of second quarter GDP. Output was down by 8.6 per cent compared with the first quarter, and 8.2 per cent compared with the same quarter last year. It was, as the release helpfully pointed out, the worst result it

Just before Twitter started firing out messages about a ‘bomb’ in Beirut, our cleaner rang us in tears, shaking, telling us our house had been damaged by an explosion. Video from her phone showed our windows blown out and splintered furniture. There was debris in the street and wrecked cars at odd angles. A man grabbed the phone from her to say there were injured everywhere, too many to count. Our house is in the Christian neighbourhood of Gemmayze, near the EU ambassador’s residence, and also close to a building belonging to the political party of a Christian militia leader. Automatically, I wondered if either of those could have been