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Rafael Behr

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Category: Uncategorized

The oldest delusion in politics

That declaring the intention to do something is pretty much the same as getting it done.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized May 12, 2021 1 Minute

Book review …

Doom – The Politics of Catastrophe, by Niall Ferguson

Rafael Behr Uncategorized May 9, 2021May 9, 2021 1 Minute

Fight the opponent you have …

… and not the imaginary one you like to beat. That’s the lesson in this week’s column on what Labour tends to get wrong when it campaigns against the ‘same old Tories’.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized May 5, 2021 1 Minute

In which I have a guest spot on the Irish Times politics podcast …

I very much enjoyed this conversation with Hugh Linehan of the Irish Times, for their Politics Weekly podcast. We covered a psychology, politics, technology, nationalism, history, a bit of economics and the inevitable splash of Brexit … Listen here.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized April 29, 2021 1 Minute

The Court of King Boris

This week’s Guardian column charts the evolution of British politics from cabinet government to potentate’s court – and considers how it might end. (Spoiler: badly.)

Read it here.

Also, while I spoke to the Guardian’s Today In Focus podcast. That one is here.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized April 29, 2021 1 Minute

Divided Tories can be government and opposition at the same time

This week’s Guardian column is all about the way Boris Johnson’s party is monopolising debate at Westminster and hogging the bandwidth of English* politics.

*Scotland, as ever, tells a different story.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized March 4, 2021 1 Minute

Podcast: on optimism, the pandemic, climate, sourdough

The latest episode of Politics On the Couch, in which I discuss the brain’s innate tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good things, with honoured guest Tali Sharot, professor at the department for experimental psychology, University College London.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized February 25, 2021 1 Minute

Brexit as a machine for generating perpetual national grievance

This week’s column: on the one thing Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal is good for, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of euroscepticism that isolates the UK from its neighbours.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized February 25, 2021 1 Minute

Alexei Navalny’s not so secret weapon against Vladimir Putin

A column on the way Russia’s now incarcerated anti-corruption campaigner gets under the skin of the president in a way that no previous opposition figure has managed.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized February 3, 2021 1 Minute

On Tories, inequality, social democracy (and an elephant)

A Guardian column on what the pandemic should be teaching the Conservative party, but isn’t.

Rafael Behr Uncategorized January 28, 2021 1 Minute

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