Brexit means that Britain is back. The country that gave the world the English language, common law and the Mother of Parliaments is once more to seize its destiny as a global leader. This is an exciting time for Britain and an exhilarating one for the countless millions elsewhere who appreciate Britain’s unique contribution to…
Published in The Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2016 Most countries regard themselves as better than others, not just different. But there are few, if any, with a greater sense of manifest destiny than the United States and China. Ronald Reagan, echoing the Founding Fathers, used to express this by describing America as a “shining…
Published in The Australian, 30 December 2016 Labor will be the biggest winner of any attempt to divide right-of-centre voters Not a single Liberal MP would be in the parliament without the party. We don’t owe the party slavish obedience but we certainly owe it respect and loyalty. That’s what John Howard used to say, and it’s certainly…
First published in The Spectator Australia, 29 December 2016 ‘To know how the world goes without America, look at Aleppo’. That’s the kind of insight (from the head of one of Israel’s security agencies) you get at the Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Dialogue. The brain-child of Melbourne businessman and jazz musician Albert Dadon, the Dialogue has been…
E&OE……………………….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Even as Australia’s Prime Minister, I spent many hours in schools and classrooms because education is the key to our future. While a frontbencher in the Australian Parliament, I actually spent three weeks as a teacher’s aide in a small school in a remote settlement. This is how it came about. Late…
E&OE……………………….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… For years knowledgeable friends had been urging me to visit Dubai. When I arrived here for the first time, in 2010, it was night – and I left before dawn – but even in the dark, the scale of what was happening was obvious. What had been, just 40 years earlier, a sleepy, dusty…
Anglicare started here in PNG in order to help people with HIV/AIDS in the days when it wasn’t just a deadly illness but a devastating stigma too. Thanks to Anglicare, people who could easily have become “untouchable” – suffering not just from disease, but from ostracism – are both better treated and better understood. I…
E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………………………… First a confession; I was one of the many luminaries to warn Britons against Brexit. Unlike most of them, though, my argument was not that Britain needed Europe but that Europe needed Britain. And unlike most, I’m not sulking because Britons failed to take my advice. Now that it’s happened, I’m quietly thrilled that…
E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The fear haunting the world right now is that history might repeat itself. People see a globally- dominant liberal democracy challenged by an authoritarian rising power; and they ponder the parallel between Britain and Germany a century ago and America and China now. Economic self-interest, political convergence and the obvious downside of conflict eventually…
17 September 2016 E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………………………. These are fraught times for Europe. Our job is to make them better. As we meet, Britain gears up to exit the formal structures of the EU, on Europe’s borders, hundreds of thousands of people demand admission. In Europe’s cities, Islamist fanatics plot carnage. And in Europe’s east, Russia actively subverts…