There is a clear legal and moral case for destroying the Houthi missile and drone bases which are disrupting international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It is far less clear why it should be the Americans and British leading these attacks.
The House of Lords’ role is back in focus with the Rwanda Bill. Reforming the House has been permanently on the agenda since the last major change in [1999], abolishing most hereditary seats.
Boris Johnson makes the case for our constitutional monarchy. Donald Trump makes one for a written constitution. How?
THE welcome news that Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) highlights a central dilemma in peace-making: the clash between justice and peace. These two words are too often bundled together like a single term.
RUGBY and family connections have long been familiar links between Scotland and New Zealand. But this month the deep historic relationship is strengthened practically by a new Scholarship highlighting two important stories: a dramatic battle between two converted merchant ships in 1917; and a young pilot’s self-sacrifice in 1941 which saved the lives in the mining village of Cowie in Stirlingshire.
ST Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean seems far from Scotland’s current political debate. But if Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t get approval from the Supreme Court in the case which started this week for the independence referendum she wants, the islands’ path to independence – by electoral mandate rather than referendum – may become an unlikely precedent for her fall-back position. Electoral mandates were how most British territories became independent during decolonisation.
MORE than a dozen years ago, I was present at a meeting of Ministers dealing with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The agenda included the problem of our German allies’ unwillingness to use lethal force in Afghanistan (though at the time they had more troops there than Britain did).
BORIS Johnson’s plan for a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland may have been cancelled to little surprise or regret. But a more important, realistic bridging role for Britain has taken two potentially fatal hits in the past month as well.
