Author, Reporter, Editor
The city successfully used random selection to solve a mediaeval crisis – and could do so again Sortition – the random selection of groups of people to study, deliberate and decide on a disputed topic – struggles to be seen as a credible option for making policy. Quite often, people haven’t even heard of the [ ]
It took twenty minutes for the helpful shop assistant at Waterstones in Brussels to find Hélène Landemore’s fine new book Politics without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule. “It’s our only copy,” she said apologetically. The cover was slightly scuffed. Not for the first time, I puzzled about this lack of public visibility for books [ ]
I know when I started walking beyond Brussels. I’m not sure when it was that I fixed on my destination. Certainly, it was after I began the journey. But soon the paths just seemed to draw me on and on. If a day now dawns with blue sky and sunshine, or if I hear the clank [ ]
When the news searchlight lit upon Canada s Prime Minister Mark Carney last month as the saviour of democracies from US President Donald Trump and right-wing authoritarianism around the world, did it really show us a new path forward? Or did the Canadian ex-central banker s well-turned speech at Davos just offer a sleeker retread of the [ ]
First sparks can be hard to fan into bright lights. Especially when they re needed to banish dark demons lurking in the violent history of Iraqi Kurdistan s six million people. Five years ago, a few Iraqi Kurdish health professionals and friends of Iraqi Kurdistan, mostly in Britain, had an idea. They wanted to introduce the first [ ]
Reflections of a deliberative democrat on debating the Ottoman Empire in the Oxford Union, 20 November 2025
People feel hopeless at the state of our elected governments. But here's news from the frontline of deliberative democracy activists who are finding another way to run our countries better.
It makes a welcome change to step aside and look back. Such a chance arose last week when I joined a few ex-colleagues for dinner with our old boss Gareth Evans, the long-serving former Australian foreign minister. Evans took over a small outfit called The International Crisis Group in 2000 and over the next decade [ ]
How making the ascent of Mount Olympos on the southern Turkish coast redoubled my appreciation of the raw beauty of a region where my wife and I built a house twenty years ago.
A farewell bow to my 43 years of reporting notebooks.