Utopia, you are standing in it!

(Future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem as leader of the Irgun.  According to the British during and after World War II, Begin led this terrorist organization)

This past week’s news cycle has been dominated by the Iran nuclear talks and the reelection of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli Prime Minister, two stories that are interrelated due to the politics of the Middle East.  Both situations have been parlayed by politicians to reinforce their own ideological agendas.  The results have been extremely negative with Republicans in Congress grand standing about a deal that has not been concluded, and PM Netanyahu’s somewhat racist comments about Arab voting, and his diplomatic dance surrounding his support or non-support of a two state solution in negotiations with the Palestinians.  The relationship between President Obama and Netanyahu have never been strong, and now have become even more dysfunctional.  The consequences of these events for the region are extremely…

(Chamberlain and Hitler at Munich, September, 1938)

For those who are familiar with the works of Robert Harris they are aware of how the author develops fictional characters that are integrated into important historical events.  He has the knack of developing individuals like Xavier March in FATHERLAND, George Piquart in AN OFFICER AND A SPY, Tom Jericho in ENIGMA, and Fluke Kelso in ARCHANGEL in presenting accurate scenarios that make one feel that these characters are real.  Harris is a master of historical fiction, but his new characters Hugh Legat and Paul von Hartmann in his latest novel, MUNICH are somewhat lacking in reaching the standard for fictional historical characters when compared to previous novels.

Whether one is familiar with J.W. Wheeler-Bennett’s MUNICH: PRELUDE TO TRAGEDY, David Faber’s MUNICH: 1938, APPEASEMENT AND WORLD WAR II, Giles MacDonogh’s 1938: HITLER’S GAMBLE, and Telford Taylor’s MUNICH: THE PRICE…

Following the December 2019 election result, which resulted in the Conservative party winning an overall majority, but losing several of their seats in Scotland to the SNP, there has been renewed calls for a second referendum on Scottish independence.

There is an ongoing debate regarding whether the Scottish Government and Parliament can hold a referendum without the consent of the UK Government and Parliament. The reason this is uncertain is because the Scottish Parliament cannot pass whatever legislation it wishes to pass in the same way the UK Parliament at Westminster can. It can only pass legislation if it does not relate to a “reserved matter”. The Scotland Act 1998 lists the various matters which are reserved.  One such matter is “the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England”.

So the question is, would an Act of the Scottish Parliament providing for a second independence referendum “relate to” the…

(The Fall of the Berlin Wall, November, 1989)

Growing up in the 1950s and 60s I enjoyed a sense of security knowing where to focus my fears and angst.  The Soviet Union was the enemy and policymakers developed the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that carried us through threats like the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Fast forward to 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and my security blanket was gone – the Cold War was over.  In what President George H.W. Bush referred to as the unipower world, Americans now have to decide who the enemy was, since it was hard to imagine a world without one.

Andrew Bacevitch in his latest book, THE AGE OF ILLUSIONS: HOW AMERICA SQUANDERED ITS COLD WAR VICTORY examines the post-Cold War period as American policymakers struggled with which direction US foreign policy should go.  Bacevitch a…

(Charles Lindbergh)

At a time when many Americans fear the impact of foreign interference in our elections, be it what the Russians did in 2016, or what may be in store for 2020 there is an excellent historical example of such a campaign on foreign soil that tried to sway Americans and help make entrance into World War II against Nazi Germany palatable.  The example I am alluding to is the subject of Henry Hemming’s new book, AGENTS OF INFLUENCE: A BRITISH CAMPAIGN, A CANADIAN SPY, AND THE SECRET PLOT TO BRING AMERICA INTO WORLD WAR II.

By June 11, 1940 a week after the British evacuation from Dunkirk allied shipping losses in the Atlantic had reached over 1,135,263 tons.  At the same time the German army outnumbered the British army 4.3 to 1.6 million.  In another month the Germans would launch the Luftwaffe against London in a “blitz” that…

In this latest blog for the Georgian Lords, Dr Charles Littleton offers some insights into the political background of the world presented in the award-winning movie The Favourite.

The critical reception that has greeted Yorgos Lanthimos’s film provides an excellent opportunity to re-examine the role of politics and the court in the reign of Queen Anne, a critical time in the development of the British state and Parliament. Indeed, it saw the formation of the British state itself, as it was under Anne’s rule that the political union of England and Scotland was effected. The film has provoked much discussion and the often sterile arguments about the accuracy required of a historical drama have risen again, particularly as Anne’s reign is widely acknowledged to be one of the lesser known periods of British history.

The film is accurate in that the figures depicted existed and the general narrative trajectory did…

This month marks the 141^st anniversary of the first use of the secret ballot to elect an MP, at a by-election in the Yorkshire borough of Pontefract. Before the 1872 Ballot Act, and throughout the period covered by our Victorian Commons project, MPs who faced a contest were elected in public by viva voce voting at a designated polling booth.

At its most basic the booth was little more than a table with chairs for the poll clerks, who would ask electors to confirm their identity and qualification (sometimes with an oath) before inquiring how they wished to vote, often surrounded by cheering onlookers and the agents of the candidates. The voter would state his preferences – “I vote for William Biggs and Thomas Harding” or “I give a plumper for James Gordon” –  and the clerk would then mark the choices in an official poll book, based…

As voters across the country head to the polls this month, we thought it was an ideal opportunity to look back at some of the research on 19th century elections we have featured in our blogs over the past few years. These draw on our work for the History of Parliament’s House of Commons, 1832-68 project, which is producing biographical profiles of the 2,591 MPs who sat between the first and second Reform Acts and accounts of the 401 constituencies in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales across the nine general elections which took place during this period. You can find more details about our project here.

The system under which electors cast their votes between 1832 and 1868 was very different in many ways from the modern British electoral system. As our editor, Philip Salmon, explains in this post, before the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872…

In light of recent proceedings in the United States, in our latest blog Dr Charles Moreton, senior research fellow with our medieval project, House of Commons 1461-1504, discusses the historic origins of impeachment in English parliaments…

Thanks to the actions of Donald Trump’s political opponents in the United States, impeachment is very much in the news at the moment. It is therefore an opportune moment to consider the English parliamentary origins of the process.

The first recorded example of parliamentary impeachment dates back to the ‘Good Parliament’ of 1376. This, the penultimate Parliament of Edward III’s reign, was an assembly of great consequence which also saw the first record of the election of a Speaker by the Commons. Highly critical of the government, the Lower House submitted the longest list of petitions ever sent to a King in a medieval Parliament, conducted its own investigations into maladministration and…

Germany’s obsession with intermittent wind and solar was never going to end well. Power prices are now the highest in Europe, if not the world. But paying for power is only a problem for those Germans who are lucky enough to be supplied with it.

Wherever there’s an attempt to run on sunshine and breezes, power consumers find themselves in a perpetual game of musical chairs.

Delivering electricity at chaotic random intervals, thanks to sunset and calm weather, wind and solar are bound to leave power punters short. And the more reliance that’s placed on that heavily subsidised pair, the more disappointed consumers there will inevitably be.

And nowhere is that truism more evident than Germany, as Paul Homewood details below.

The looming German capacity crunch
Not a Lot of People Know That
Paul Homewood
27 January 2020

A pertinent update from Timera:

The looming German capacity crunch
The…

by Judith Curry

The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C  is now published [link].