Ukraine has made its European choice and we have made our Ukrainian choice.

The decisions we will take in the next months will decide who wins the future of Europe.

So together, let us stay united. Let us stay strong with 🇺🇦. And let us stay ambitious on enlargement and reform.

Latest Indian election predictions: Modi to increase BJP seats from 303 to 323.

Thinking through recent democratic leaders who have won 3 consecutive terms, from Kohl & Merkel to Blair * Trudeau. Can't think of any who has won more seats with each election. Anyone?

Did not know this. 🤯

I have received a booklet with the candidates for Mayor of London. I shall here rate the design of the 2-page manifestos they have provided:

This viral post gets a lot wrong.

1) This post is false — MFA DG Yang Tao saw Blinken off.

2) The treatment was reciprocal — when FM Wang Yi visited in October 2023, DAS Mark Lambert saw him off.

3) The debate is silly — Blinken had a bilateral meeting with President Xi.

10% of the Tory vote has *died* since the last election!

'growth targeting has forced more incremental growth into the new industries where China’s vast scale, modern technologies, & cost competitiveness provide enormous comparative advantage. ...the US will never be able to outcompete its rivals in many of the new modern industries.'

Good for Scott Morrison. I'm often not clear how people do these uber-stressful political jobs without medication.

Talking openly about these things must be helpful in showing how many people struggle with anxiety, & how they learn to to cope with it.

bbc.com/news/world-aus…

Viewed from the capitals of other Indo-Pacific partners, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s trip to China will simply be taken as evidence of Europe’s unreliability and strategic unseriousness, columnist james crabtree writes. foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/22/ola…

Post a picture with your dog that doesn’t involve shooting them and throwing them in a gravel pit.

Post a picture with your dog that doesn’t involve shooting them and throwing them in a gravel pit. I’ll start.

Astonishing chart from John Burn-Murdoch- on.ft.com/49OMvdz The UK is brilliant at handling immigration, relatively.

Could be a huge strength in the decades ahead

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s soft approach to China does little to prepare Germany’s population and companies for the massive challenges to their own economic model that come with Chinese competition, columnist james crabtree writes. foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/22/ola…

Sober and devastating analysis by ⁦james crabtree⁩ of the „strategic unseriousness“ of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: „Germany’s economic and foreign policies are set in corporate boardrooms, rather than the chancellery and ministries in Berlin“ foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/22/ola…

.... and i'm doubtful that European political leaders have grappled at all properly with the scale of what some are calling China Shock 2.0 — namely the consequence of China's huge industrial investment, in EVs, green transition tech, semiconductors etc.

wsj.com/world/china/ch…

These are horribly difficult calls. Germany is trying to strike the right balance, and Scholz's team will have thought deeply about these issues in advance of his trip. Ultimately I hope Scholz's approach delivers results. I'm doubtful it will....

foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/22/ola…

And as Thorsten Benner and others have noted, it isn't so much that industry is writing policy, it is that Scholz believes this softly-softly approach will pay dividends, both in securing a level-playing field in China and convincing China to reduce its over-capacity abroad.

As Paul Triolo notes it may well be that German industry and policymakers knows much better what is good for German industry and national success than outsiders, and they might be right.

This might in retrospect seem quite harsh. I don't really think German diplomatic policies are dictated by industry. Rather, it is that the priorities and hopes of the industrial sector have been absorbed by policymakers.

... ITs policymakers bristle at the notion that Germany’s economic & foreign policies are set in boardrooms, rather than the chancellery and ministries in Berlin. But it is hard to explain Scholz’s trip—and, dispiritingly, much of Germany’s China policy—in any other way.