Timothy Garton Ash's Blog, page 31

Britain has spent 50 years hunting in vain for its role. Change the question | Timothy Garton Ash

As global power shifts and public spending is slashed, we do need to debate our foreign policy – but on the right terms

Foxhunting may have been curbed, but some Brits are back at another of their traditional pastimes: role-hunting. It's nearly 50 years since the American secretary of state Dean Acheson whipped up a storm by saying that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role. Role-hunting has been a British sport ever since. Tally-ho! goes up the cry, every time we have a new...

Our universities face a funding crisis. To survive, they must learn from the US | Timothy Garton Ash

To cope with the cuts we need a new model of funding, but one which ensures that poorer students are not excluded

Next week I make my annual migration from Oxford to Stanford. These are two of the world's greatest universities, but Oxford faces a challenge that Stanford does not. How it meets that challenge – how it is allowed by government to meet it – will be a token not just of Britain's but of Europe's seriousness of purpose in the 21st century. If even Oxford cannot stay up in the...

Why we need the Liberals in British politics – and by their proper name | Timothy Garton Ash

The Lib Dems are being smothered in Cameron's skillful embrace. They must explain exactly who and what they are

The Liberal Democrats should change their name to the Liberals. Here's why. First of all, Liberal Democrats is a pretty meaningless name. That's liberal democrats as opposed to illiberal democrats, is it? Or as opposed to liberal anti-democrats?

Lib Dems, to which they are usually abridged, is even emptier. The name sounds like the product of an awkward compromise, which is exactly...

Listen to these financial Wizards of Oz and prepare for another disaster | Timothy Garton Ash

Our mighty bond markets, feared but also fearful, are in danger of triggering the very crisis they wish to avert

I thought it was time I got to know the almighty. I mean, of course, the bond markets: for, at their call, the governments of this world tremble. Before them, every knee shall bow. To fend off their wrath, George Osborne has just presented the most draconian budget in living memory – a burnt offering on the altar of this god we call simply "the markets".

So over the past few weeks I ...

De Gaulle and Churchill have a message for Sarkozy and Cameron | Timothy Garton Ash

Two great leaders, and mythmakers, set France and Britain on divergent trajectories. This 18 June, it's time to reconnect

In London tomorrow, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron will join French and British veterans to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's historic radio appeal to the French to go on fighting against Hitler. On the same day that De Gaulle broadcast his message from London on the BBC, 18 June 1940, Winston Churchill delivered his "finest hour" speech to the House ...

Iran's tortured Green movement is down but not out. We can still help | Timothy Garton Ash

One harrowing year since the stolen election, the people of Iran need the world's attention to go beyond the nuclear issue

Do not forget Iran. Remember Neda. If there are green-clad protests in Tehran this weekend, to mark the first anniversary of the election that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole, they will doubtless again be crushed with casual brutality by the thugs of the basij militia, secret police and Revolutionary Guard. Imprisonment, torture, male rape and execution are the...

In a Viking paradise, Eurosceptic and egalitarian dreams alike seem true | Timothy Garton Ash

Who wouldn't want to be in a successful, well-run country like Norway? But beware false analogies and fantasy projections

'Equal pay now! Equal pay now!", the chant echoed up to my hotel window in Oslo, as strikers and their supporters marched past the Norwegian parliament. How could this be? Are there strikes even in paradise?

By most comparative measures, Norway is something close to a paradise on Earth. Per head of population, it is one of the world's richest countries. It is also one of...

Europe is sleepwalking to decline. We need a Churchill to wake it up | Timothy Garton Ash

Our leaders are peddling delusions. The eurozone has not been saved, the EU has no foreign policy, and others are making history

Can anyone save me from Europessimism? I feel more depressed about the state of the European project than I have for decades. The eurozone is in mortal danger. European foreign policy is advancing at the pace of a drunken snail. Power shifts to Asia. The historical motors of European integration are either lost or spluttering. European leaders rearrange the...

Britain and Europe are living separate crises. Underneath, it's the same one | Timothy Garton Ash

Like Greece, Spain, even Germany, Britain has to take on the challenge of remaking its social model in a politics of austerity

What a week. While Britain lives one of the greatest political dramas in its postwar history, the continent is convulsed by a historic crisis of the eurozone. Here in Brussels, I keep flicking to and fro between the two, like someone trying to watch two cliffhanger Wimbledon finals simultaneously.

They are different matches, but they have much in common. At stake now...

From awkward coalition to a new politics | Timothy Garton Ash

If all goes well with this strange partnership, Britain's step into the unknown may lead to vital political and constitutional change

At breakfast this morning in my Brussels hotel, I heard two Americans gushing with admiration at the speed and style of the British political transition. "You know, it takes us weeks. And then, you know, Obama always uses a teleprompter, but this guy Cameron, who looks kinda young, stands there speaking without notes ..."

I'm sure that from inside, behind those c...