Attention to the Unseen

Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK, writes: At this point, it is virtually impossible to legislate the seven complex Acts and hundreds of Statutory Instruments required by the withdrawal agreement in the 32 parliamentary workdays scheduled before March 29. But, most worryingly of all, the UK not only has a government that is unable to lead, but also a public that now seems unwilling to be led. At no point in this grim…

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James Bloodworth writes: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, few on the left have had much real idea as to what a contemporary socialist economic program would—or should—look like in practice. Twenty-first century socialism in Venezuela was supposed to offer hope, but it turned out to represent yet another mirage, this time built on the back of exorbitantly high oil prices. As prices dropped, mismanagement of the state-run oil company, PDVSA, by the Chávez and Nicolás Maduro governments saw…

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‘It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water.’ — This historian wasn’t afraid to confront the billionaires at Davos about their greed pic.twitter.com/TLHZQPMIwI — NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 29, 2019

Nick Cohen writes: The secret history of modern Britain is made in obscure corners between men and women taken seriously by no one but themselves. A good time to begin it would be in the winter of 2013/14 when the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rightist outfit that won’t reveal where its money comes from, offered a €100,000 prize to whoever could devise a means of leaving the European Union. The reason why politicians are now stumbling towards disaster like…

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Ivan Krastev writes: “In the Balkans the transition is over,” Remzi Lani, an Albanian political analyst, told me some time ago. But unlike in many post-Communist countries, Mr. Lani didn’t mean a transformation from dictatorship to democracy. “We transitioned from repressive to depressive regimes.” He is right. The old Communists and radical ethnic nationalists are largely gone; in their places is stagnation — economic, social and political. The question now is how these depressive regimes fit into a growing geopolitical…

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David Frum writes: The early Democratic presidential contest has been an exercise of lefter-than-thou politics, culminating in the earnest consideration of 70 percent tax rates and wealth confiscation for émigrés. You can understand the temptation: Trump seems weak, perhaps already doomed. Why compromise with the faint of heart? Give the American people a choice, not an echo! This is the logic of factional politics. You want the smallest possible majority, most easily dominated by its most mobilized minority. That’s how…

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