Westminster Abbey is a “Royal Peculiar.” The term applies to churches that fall under the direct jurisdiction of the British monarch rather than a bishop, but seemed especially apt during a Commonwealth Day celebration held there on March 15. The service blended the pomp and tradition associated with Britain’s state occasions with vivid …
U.K.
Uprisings in the Middle East Could Be Bad News for Al-Qaeda: Cautious Optimism in Britain
Muammar Gaddafi blamed a coalition of drugs, alcohol and Osama bin Laden for inciting Libyan youth to reject his dictatorial rule. Somewhat more credible commentators, including my colleague Bobby Ghosh, warn that the collapse of the Yemeni regime could boost the AQ affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, yet such concerns have done …
EU Summit On Libya Produces Tough Talk, But No Walk Against Gaddafi
Reminiscent of Thursday’s meeting of NATO defense ministers, today’s summit of European Union leaders produced a largely symbolic collective statement demanding Muammar Gaddafi give up power and end the violence raging in Libya—but refrained from proposing anything to back that urging up with. But given the important advances of …
Saif House? Not Any More as Gaddafi’s London Pad Is Overrun by Squatters
“I remember once seeing a photo of Muammar Gaddafi’s master bedroom,” wrote the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland in the foreword to Dictators’ Homes, a book by cultural commentator Peter York that conclusively demonstrated the link between megalomania and a penchant for leopard skin and other big cat motifs. “It was in TIME or …
International Women’s Day: A View From A Broad in London
U.S. TV producer Caryn Mandabach first got the idea for the TV series Nurse Jackie when she visited her goddaughter, who was working as a nurse in hospital in a tough New York neighborhood. On the subway, Mandabach found herself riding next to a woman balancing a basket on her head. The basket began to shudder and a serpent appeared at …
Libya’s Collateral Damage: Red-Faced Royalty, Shamed Soldiers
“There is no such thing as bad publicity—except your own obituary,” joked the Irish writer Brendan Behan. Since I blogged on Friday about the controversy surrounding Prince Andrew aka the Duke of York and his role as trade envoy for Britain, initially sparked by his contacts with Saif Gaddafi but quickly shifting to his private …
Global Briefing, Mar. 7, 2011: War Crimes, People Power and Governments Behaving Badly
Forgotten Genocide: In the New York Times, New Delhi correspondent Lydia Polgreen reports from Bangladesh about the country’s belated efforts to investigate the massacres that led up to its independence in 1971, when over a million people (up to three million, by some estimates) may have been killed by the Pakistani army and its Bengali …
Cleggredation: Britain’s Lib Dems Pay Price of Coalition with Heavy Defeat
Yesterday’s ballot for the parliamentary seat of Barnsley Central resulted in abject defeat for Liberal Democrat candidate Dominic Carman, who came in sixth place, polling fewer votes than the far right British National Party (BNP). This wasn’t the first time the doughty anti-BNP campaigner Carman performed worse than the party he …
Prince Harming: Links with Gaddafi Spell Trouble for the Queen’s Son
There are, it seems, three ways to endanger your job if you’re a public figure: you can call into a radio show to denigrate your boss as a clown, you can claim an affection for Hitler, or you can be linked to the Gaddafis. Howard Davies, the head of Britain’s prestigious London School of Economics, has just tendered his resignation over …
Strong Obstacles Remain to Western Military Intervention in Libya
An international community that in 2005 at the United Nations adopted the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) protocol might seem obliged to intervene directly in Libya. R2P, after all, holds that if a state is unable to protect its citizens from genocide or other mass atrocities, the international community has a responsibility to …
Defensive Position: Cameron Tells Karzai Why Troop Cuts Will Make UK Stronger
Sometimes press conferences involve as much diplomacy as, well, diplomacy. Before British Prime Minister David Cameron and Afghan President Hamid Karzai emerged from their London bilateral at lunchtime today, a Downing Street official told assembled journalists that a tight schedule permitted only two questions to the leaders. This did …
With Friends Like the Gaddafis…
It seems only yesterday (actually it was last November) that students from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an institution of such international renown that like the BBC it usually goes by a three-letter acronym, led protests about changes to the funding of higher education in Britain. Once again, LSE students are …
Winds of Libyan Change Envelop British Government in Stench
Tony Blair’s 2004 meeting with Muammar Gaddafi was momentous by any standards. Blair’s arrival in Libya marked the first visit to the country by a British prime minister since 1943, and proceeded against protests by some relatives of the Lockerbie dead. His purpose was to encourage Gaddafi’s perceived desire “to make common cause with us …