Politics

Reading the Sunday newspapers, you could be forgiven for thinking an earth-shattering agreement was reached in Paris – one which outdid even the Kyoto Protocol in the way of binding agreement across the world on climate action. The deal was heavy on political will and ambition (or at least expressions thereof) but as many experts are now queuing up to say, offered little in the form of hard targets and binding commitments around reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is of course a pragmatic approach to doing policy at the global level, particularly given the extreme variation in capacity and priorities between countries operating at vastly different levels of development. If the

Few really expected Jeremy Corbyn to pull out of the Stop the War fundraising dinner, which he attended last night. He used to chair the coalition, and hasn’t made any comment since becoming leader to suggest that he now disagrees with its aims and objectives. This, as Freddy wrote recently, simply shows that the new leader is sticking to what he believes, however wrong, rather than wobbling all over the place at the first sniff of power. Fewer people, perhaps, predicted that the Labour leader would release a defiant statement praising the organisation: ‘The Stop the War Coalition has been one of the most important democratic campaigns of modern times. It

When the EU is in crisis, the Commission’s answer is, inevitably, more Europe. So, its response to the migrant crisis is to propose an EU border force that could, in extremis, take over the management of Schengen countries’ borders without permission. Now, Britain is not in Schengen so this proposal would not apply here. But it is worth considering just how federalising it is. Under this proposal, the Italians, say, could suddenly find the EU manning its borders. It would be a major erosion of national sovereignty. The Guardian’s Ian Traynor reports that the French and the Germans are backing this idea, which gives it a reasonable chance of success.

This morning a pair of judges in Edinburgh dismissed a petition seeking to overturn the result of the general election in Orkney and Shetland. Alistair Carmichael is not guilty of breaking the Representation of the People Act (1983) and may remain a Member of Parliament. There will be no by-election in the northern isles. Obviously this was an outrage and not just because everything in Scotland these days is an outrage. It was a disgrace. A whitewash and an establishment stitch-up. A stitch-up slathered with whitewash. All across Scotland you could hear the screeching as nationalist fury chimps rattled the bars of their cages. A dirty protest of the mind will doubtless