Wednesday 4 February 2026 The question of whether the United Kingdom should join the European Defence Fund has moved from the margins of post-Brexit debate into the centre of strategic discussion in Whitehall, Brussels and European capitals more broadly. It is a question shaped not only by institutional politics, but by the hard realities of war on the European continent, the evolving nature of defence technology, and the United Kingdom’s own uncertain place within the Europe

Wednesday 4 February 2026 The so-called shadow fleets that have sustained the Russian war economy since 2022 were never intended to be elegant instruments of statecraft. They were rather improvised logistical contrivances: ageing tankers purchased through shell companies, re-flagged through permissive registries, insured by opaque intermediaries and operated beyond the ordinary disciplines of maritime law. For a time this improvised system functioned well enough. Russian hydr

Tuesday 3 February 2026 The judgement delivered by a regional court in Hamburg in January 2026 in favour of Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov against the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) marked the latest stage in a long and carefully pursued legal campaign by one of Europe’s most litigious sanctioned businessmen. While the case itself concerned a discrete set of allegedly defamatory statements published in 2023, it cannot sensibly be understood in isolation from the wider

Tuesday 3 February 2026 The modern Police service is no longer defined only by boots on pavements, radios in patrol cars and the slow accumulation of witness statements. It is increasingly defined by data: by the ability to find a single person inside a crowd, or a single face inside millions of images. Facial recognition technology has become one of the most consequential instruments in that shift, because it offers something policing has always craved: speed, scale and an a

Tuesday 3 February 2026 The United States strike on Caracas on 3 January 2026, culminating in the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, was immediately framed by Washington’s supporters as proof that Russian and Chinese air defences can be brushed aside by American military technology and operational art. For Moscow and Beijing, the same episode has been treated as a warning about the vulnerability of export-model systems, the fragility of peacetime r

Tuesday 3 February 2026 Europe has, over the past half century, become a destination for significant migration from societies shaped by Islamic traditions. That migration has been driven by war, poverty, political repression and, in many cases, by Europe’s own labour needs and humanitarian commitments. It has enriched European societies in countless ways, economically, culturally and demographically. Yet it has also exposed unresolved tensions about values, social norms and t