| | | | Johnson Loses Vote, Wins Chance to Remake Party | | Now that defectors from his own party have delivered a defeat in Parliament to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson—setting the table for yet another Brexit delay and fresh elections this fall—Stephen Bush of the New Statesman writes that the collapse of Johnson's Brexit agenda in Parliament could mean big changes for the Conservatives.
After promising new elections if he lost today's vote (which he did), Johnson "has been handed the opportunity to remake his party. Conservative members are highly likely to select candidates closer in spirit to him than the 21 rebels," Bush writes. Johnson had promised to cast defectors out of the party if they abandoned him; since they did, the Tory party will soon look quite different, Katy Balls concurs at The Spectator—a sign of how things have shifted under Johnson, after Theresa May's tenure was marked by efforts at compromise.
One of the "Tory rebels" who sided against Johnson, MP Sam Gyimah, had voiced frustration in a Guardian op-ed: "For MPs like myself, Downing Street has framed the choice as: speak your mind or keep your job." | | Fareed: While the World Turns Protectionist, Africa Opens Up | | As the US, UK, and China are all putting up trade barriers, protectionism abounds. "Everywhere the trend seems the same," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. "Except in Africa."
Governments on that continent are working to create an African free trade area "that will potentially bring together 1.3 billion people in a $3.4 trillion economic zone," Fareed writes. Africa's economies are growing, and so is its population, making the continent a potential source of uncommon dynamism. Africans "understand that the only real and sustainable path out of poverty is expanding free markets that are, of course, well-managed and regulated by effective governments. Much of the world today could be reminded of that simple lesson," Fareed writes. | | Hong Kong's Ticking Clock | | As protests continue in Hong Kong, the question remains the same: Will Beijing decide to violently suppress them? That's becoming more likely, Larry Diamond writes at The American Interest, as the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China looms on Oct. 1; President Xi Jinping may see protests as a slight on that occasion, which means increased odds that Beijing will intervene forcefully before then.
The recent arrests of pro-democracy activists may foreshadow escalation, Diamond suggests, while Chit Wai John Mok argues at the Nikkei Asian Review that they show Beijing misunderstands Hong Kong's leaderless protest movement. "In their eyes, once the ringleaders are captured, the rest of the bandits will disperse," he writes. "This is a fundamental miscalculation."
Writing for The Atlantic, British MP Tom Tugendhat proposes a novel response to the crisis: for the UK to grant full British citizenship to people who were living in Hong Kong at the time of the 1997 handover, un upgrade of their partial status as "British nationals (overseas)." That would relieve some pressure by allowing them to leave and send a message about China's shortcomings on the rule of law, he suggests. | | Hurricane Dorian, Inequality, and the Storms to Come | | | Scientists know that global warming can produce more catastrophic storms; others have noted that global warming disproportionately affects the world's poor. Adam Tooze writes in the Financial Times that Hurricane Dorian has seen these trends collide—and that its devastation is a preview.
While rich communities in the Bahamas have fared better—and while affluent homeowners from the US and Europe were thousands of miles away—poorer areas have been hit hard, Tooze writes. "The compression of affluence and poverty in the archipelago of the Bahamas is no doubt extreme. So too is its vulnerability to climate change," Tooze argues. "But in miniature these are images of the world at large. On present trends of global warming, interconnectedness and mounting inequality, they are a foreboding of our future." | | A Messy Peace Process in Afghanistan | | As Fareed has pointed out, a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan could risk decades of instability. Now that the US has announced a tentative agreement, "in principle," with the Taliban, The Economist underlines that point, noting mixed signals in US-Taliban talks so far: a "steady watering-down of American demands," but also a significant Taliban compromise, in its agreement to negotiate while US troops are still present in Afghanistan.
Writing at the Atlantic Council, a host of former senior US officials—including James Dobbins, the former US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan; Ryan Crocker, the former US ambassador to Afghanistan; and John Negroponte, the former US director of national intelligence—caution that the US must not abandon Afghans or the promises it has made. Monitoring and continued engagement, even after an eventual withdrawal, they write, will be key to keeping peace and finding out if the Taliban and the Afghan government can reach a lasting settlement. | | | | | | |
