Instant Opinion: UK ‘quietly retreating from the world stage’
Your guide to the best columns and commentary on Monday 17 February
The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.
1. Edward Lucas in The Times
on Britain’s absence at the Munich Security Conference
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
We’re quietly retreating from the world stage“Britain used to be centre stage. Boris Johnson memorably incensed the conference by calling Brexit Britain’s ‘liberation’. People from countries where real liberation from foreign occupation is recent memory found that in bad taste, and harrumphed mightily. This year, even a whipping boy from Britain would have been welcome. Represented undetectably by a sole, new, junior minister, our government had effectively vanished from the world’s most important security shindig.”
2. Laura Spinney in The Guardian
on giving away DNA data
Your DNA is a valuable asset, so why give it to ancestry websites for free?“Companies such as 23andMe have proliferated over the past decade, feeding people’s hunger to know who and where they come from, and what diseases their genes might predispose them to. Over that time, it has gradually become clear that the main source of revenue for at least some of these companies comes from selling the data on to third parties... The trouble is, a health tech company is not a doctor. It doesn’t take the Hippocratic oath, and the patient – or customer – is not the person whose wellbeing it is most concerned about.”
3. Robert Peston in The Spectator
on the new chancellor
No wonder Rishi Sunak is thriving under Boris Johnson“I misspent much of the past 20 years trying to understand and report on the excesses of the City of London that led to the banking crisis and everything that followed. There were two hedge fund managers who made a bundle out of the rise and fall: Chris Hohn and Patrick Degorce. I mention them because the new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, worked with and for both of them. The reason this matters is that Hohn and Degorce were so focused, relentless and masters of detail that they make Dominic Cummings seem like a soft dilettante. It is little wonder therefore that Sunak is thriving in what feels to me like the hedge-fund culture that has taken hold at the centre of government since Boris Johnson and Cummings took over.”
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
4. Stephen Bush in the New Statesman
on the future of the Beeb
Is Downing Street preparing for all-out war with the BBC?“As far as the BBC is concerned, the government is at its most dangerous when the political argument around the BBC is about what the BBC does – rather than how it is funded. And that’s Johnson’s biggest problem as far as the BBC goes: he wants to use the argument over the licence fee to change the BBC. But not everyone who agrees with him on the licence fee, even on the Conservative benches, will sign up to a broad programme of reform to its output. Changing the BBC might yet prove more difficult than changing the country.”
5. Nick Timothy in The Telegraph
on Huawei
How can the governing classes be so naive about the threats we face?“It can sometimes feel baffling that Britain can be so wide-eyed when it deals with companies like Huawei. We are, after all, talking about a company under the control of a hostile state that routinely attacks British interests, conducts industrial espionage, and uses big data and artificial intelligence to spy on foreign nationals as well as its own citizens. Why is it that we are so quick to treat firms like Huawei as though they were benign companies from conventional market economies? Why do we treat China like it is a normal country, with a normal government that respects the rules of international trade and diplomacy?”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
How did Trump shift voters to the right and win?
Today's Big Question Latino voters led a national shift to the right
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
How do presidential transitions work?
The Explainer Donald Trump will take office on Jan. 20 after a two-month process
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Abortion rights measures go 7 for 10
Speed Read Constitutional amendments to protect abortion passed in seven states but failed in three others: Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
BBC pauses probe into presenter ‘sex scandal’ as police take over
Speed Read Met Police weighing up whether to launch criminal investigation as Rishi Sunak calls claims ‘shocking and concerning’
By Jamie Timson Published
-
How fruitful was Zelenskyy’s European tour?
Today's Big Question Ukraine’s president visits Rome, Berlin, UK and Paris in bid to increase the supply of weapons from allies
By The Week Staff Published
-
‘Farting barrister’ wins £135,000 at tribunal
feature And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden Published
-
Muzzling the BBC: what does Indian PM Narendra Modi have to hide?
Under the Radar The Delhi government has blocked the airing of a documentary on Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots
By The Week Staff Published
-
‘March of the Mummies’: can people afford to have children?
Talking Point Thousands of UK parents are calling on the government to cut childcare costs
By Julia O'Driscoll Published
-
‘The UK’s malaise will not end with the Prime Minister’s exit’
Instant Opinion Your digest of analysis from the British and international press
By The best columns Published
-
‘Police tactics are not getting worse, they are simply being filmed’
Instant Opinion Your digest of analysis from the British and international press
By The best columns Published
-
‘G7 leaders missed a golden opportunity’
Instant Opinion Your digest of analysis from the British and international press
By The best columns Published