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    Philip Stephens

    Contributing editor

    Philip Stephens is a contributing editor. He was also previously associate editor, director of the editorial board and chief political commentator. He writes on global and British affairs.

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    • Monday, 27 February, 2023
      ObituaryBernard Ingham
      Bernard Ingham, No 10 press secretary

      Official spokesman and staunch loyalist of prime minister Margaret Thatcher

    • Saturday, 11 February, 2023
      UK foreign policy
      Sunak’s global search for friends and influence

      The prime minister must refurbish damaged relations with Britain’s allies — including opponents in the Brexit wrangles

    • Wednesday, 25 January, 2023
      ReviewFT Books Essay
      How America picks its battles

      Isolationist superpower or still ‘the world’s policeman’? Two books explore the competing impulses in US politics

    • Thursday, 29 December, 2022
      Brexit
      Keir Starmer’s caution fits Europe’s political reality

      The UK’s record means Labour’s leader is right not to seek a fast track back to the EU

    • Thursday, 8 December, 2022
      Northern Ireland
      Neuralgia clashes with exceptionalism in Northern Ireland

      Unionist intransigence over the Irish Sea border rests on insecurity

    • Friday, 16 September, 2022
      FT Books Essay
      Do ‘great men’ shape the course of world history?

      Ian Kershaw’s essays explore whether 20th-century leaders seized power through sheer force of personality or were mere opportunists

    • Thursday, 8 September, 2022
      Queen Elizabeth II
      A monarch who spoke for her kingdom

      As political leaders came and went, the Queen held the nation together

    • Monday, 1 August, 2022
      Brexit
      After Brexit the Tories still cannot escape EU red tape

      The uncomfortable truth is that Britain is now a rule-taker, not a rule-maker

    • Wednesday, 13 July, 2022
      Conservative Party UK
      Conservatives must rediscover their instinctive pragmatism

      Ideological obsessions with Brexit and low tax are dragging the leadership hopefuls away from successful traditions

    • Friday, 13 May, 2022
      Ireland
      Dublin can no longer treat Irish unity as a distant aspiration

      Sinn Féin’s victory in Northern Ireland changes the political dynamic

    • Wednesday, 30 March, 2022
      Brexit
      Becoming ‘normal’ again is going to be hard for Britain

      The country’s friends hope the dismal state of its politics is a temporary condition that will pass

    • Wednesday, 23 February, 2022
      FT Books Essay
      An Irish future — and the weight of history

      Three new books examine the violently fraught ties between England and its island neighbour and the prospects of unification

    • Thursday, 30 September, 2021
      Geopolitics
      The west is the author of its own weakness

      China presents a threat to the liberal global order but the bigger danger lies in the discrediting of democracy

    • Thursday, 23 September, 2021
      Geopolitics
      The French are right about the Americans

      Washington has always been careless of its allies in the pursuit of the US national interest

    • Thursday, 16 September, 2021
      Boris Johnson
      What Joe Biden should tell Boris Johnson about Northern Ireland

      The US president could be a candid friend to the UK and urge the prime minister to honour his post-Brexit Irish trade deal

    • Thursday, 9 September, 2021
      German politics
      Europe does not need four more years of ‘Merkelism’

      Germany must shoulder more of the burden of defending an open international system

    • Thursday, 2 September, 2021
      US foreign policy
      The US will not find security behind its borders

      Joe Biden has declared the end of America’s efforts at nation building, but the world is no safer for his retreat

    • Thursday, 26 August, 2021
      UK foreign policy
      Kabul retreat leaves the UK on a bridge to nowhere

      US indifference to its ally’s interests in the Afghan pullout underscores London’s dependence on Washington

    • Thursday, 19 August, 2021
      Afghanistan
      Europe had better face facts about the Biden doctrine

      The retreat from Afghanistan has seen the US draw a much tighter definition of its national interest

    • Thursday, 29 July, 2021
      Climate change
      Climate change is a global threat demanding national solutions

      The lofty hopes of the COP26 process will have meaning only if they connect with local politics

    • Thursday, 22 July, 2021
      Brexit
      Boris Johnson has made a Brexit offer the EU can only refuse

      The UK’s latest proposals for the Northern Ireland protocol are an attempt to tear up an international treaty

    • Thursday, 15 July, 2021
      Russian politics
      The brittle facade of Vladimir Putin’s Russia

      Democracies have been bent out of shape by rising populism but autocrats are more likely to crack under pressure

    • Thursday, 8 July, 2021
      Coronavirus pandemic
      The young are pawns in Boris Johnson’s Covid experiment

      The UK government’s plan to lift remaining restrictions will let the virus sweep through the nation’s children

    • Thursday, 1 July, 2021
      Brexit
      The German threat to the UK is indifference

      Boris Johnson’s government is still obsessed with Brexit, but its erstwhile EU partners have other priorities

    • Thursday, 24 June, 2021
      German politics
      After Merkel, Germany must admit the return of history

      Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an assertive China and revanchist Russia have shattered the nation’s dreams

    Previous page You are on page 1 Next page

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