Michael Mosbacher
Publisher and Co-Editor at The Critic Magazine (UK)
Writer at theeditors.com
Associate Comment Editor @Telegraph Co-founded Standpoint & The Critic magazines All views exclusively my own Contact: [email protected]
Articles
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5 days ago |
telegraph.co.uk | Michael Mosbacher
One of the crises continental Europe faces is rural depopulation. Look at central Spain, eastern Germany, areas of France - all have witnessed a significant decline in their number of residents. Near abandoned villages have become a feature of parts of southern Italy; in Spain a political movement has formed around this very issue. Perhaps a less familiar story for British readers is how starkly the population of the former East Germany has fallen.
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1 week ago |
open.substack.com | Michael Mosbacher
Britain’s Parliament rushed back from Easter recess on Saturday to pass emergency legislation for the state to take control of the UK’s last remaining steel-making blast furnace. It was only the sixth occasion since World War II that the House of Commons has met on a weekend. That is a measure of how urgent Keir Starmer’s Labour government feels action is. Starmer was fearful that the Chinese owners of the facility in Scunthorpe, about 150 miles north of London, were about to close it.
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1 week ago |
telegraph.co.uk | Michael Mosbacher
The third alternative is perhaps the most realistic. In a 2009 Ted Talk, Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Romer, proposed the creation of charter cities. These are not fully independent countries, but rather to a greater or lesser extent self-governing entities on virgin land within existing states with their own pro-market rules and tax regimes. Honduras in Central America gave the go-ahead for three such schemes in the 2010s.
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2 weeks ago |
yahoo.com | Michael Mosbacher
Our political parties, or at least the traditional ones, are in a mess. Labour and Conservative membership is in freefall. This has led them to become ever more reliant on an ever-decreasing number of donors, and in turn, this dependency on big money means that the need to galvanise mass support to their respective causes becomes less urgent. They can become less responsive to public concerns, further putting off potential recruits.
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2 weeks ago |
telegraph.co.uk | Michael Mosbacher
The picture with the Tories is not much better. In the run-up to the last election, the Conservatives became hugely dependent on one donor. Frank Hester - the man who notoriously made obnoxious remarks about Labour MP Diane Abbott - donated £20m, in part as an individual and in part via his company, the Phoenix Partnership, during 2023 and 2024. This amounted to roughly 40pc of all Tory support. Whatever Mr Hester's merits or otherwise, this is clearly not a healthy situation.
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Before people get too excited, any possible by-election is probably still at least a year off. Noone has yet been charged. A trial would probably be at least nine months after that. And if convicted, then any possible appeals would have to be exhausted first
The House of Commons has been poorer, duller and meaner without @Jacob_Rees_Mogg. If there is now a by-election in North East Somerset, I hope the people of that loveliest corner of England will take the opportunity to return the great patriot to Parliament. https://t.co/JKzbpWTQho
Labour & the Tories are in hoc to a tiny coterie of donors - 3 unions for Starmer & a handful of the über rich for Badenoch's party. Giving tax breaks along lines of Gift Aid for donations up to £50k could galvanise parties to rebuild their base https://t.co/e2m5iGxHBR
The first poll to show the CDU and AfD level pegging - so AfD soon likely to be polling as Germany's largest party. Grand coalition will further boost AfD, but no it won't mean that AfD will soon be in government. Other parties will ally to exclude them from power
BUNDESTAGSWAHL | Sonntagsfrage INSA/BILD am Sonntag Union: 24% (-2) AfD: 24% (+1) SPD: 16% GRÜNE: 11% (-1) LINKE: 11% (+1) BSW: 4% (-1) FDP: 4% (+1) Sonstige: 6% (+1) Änderungen zur letzten Umfrage vom 29. März 2025 Verlauf: https://t.co/f9MV7iZ8iJ #btw29 https://t.co/oDoK5qAk5r
