1.

by IGOR DELANOË 2020 FEB.

the recent Paris summit revived hopes that conflict would end in
the Donbass; despite some de-escalation and gestures, the
situation is very far from settled. HE ‘Normandy format’ summit
in Paris in December between France, Germany, Ukraine and
Russia was the first in three years, and was meant to end the
conflict in Ukraine between government forces and the pro-
Russian self-proclaimed republics of the Donbass region. It was
the result of a diplomatic initiative last summer by France’s
president Emmanuel Macron, and facilitated by the election of
Volodymyr Zelensky as Ukraine’s president last April. Zelensky’s
victory (with 73% of the vote) over Petro Poroshenko was
confirmed by an early parliamentary election in July, when his
Servant of the People party won 43% and an absolute majority of
seats in the Rada — the first since the introduction of the multi-
party system in 1991. This strong mandate was a sign that voters
expected great things of Zelensky, including the resolution of the
Donbass conflict.

While Poroshenko created a cordon sanitaire around the

separatist provinces, Zelensky has taken a different approach.
During his presidential campaign, he spoke and wrote in Russian
in the Ukrainian media. Since taking office, he has avoided any
mention of ‘Russian aggression’ in the Donbass. He wants to
bring the provinces back into Kiev’s fold: in September his
government put together a plan for restoring economic and
humanitarian links with them, including pension payments,
which Poroshenko’s administration had blocked.

Russia's wait-and-see approach invites questions about its final objective. The answer remains what it
was in 2014: to prevent Ukraine from joining the Euro-Atlantic community and NATO

France began working for Russia’s full reintegration (which

happened in June) into the Council of Europe’s parliamentary
assembly, from which it had been suspended for five years. In
September Russia and Ukraine exchanged 70 prisoners; a few
days later the trilateral contact group on Ukraine (the ‘Minsk
Group’), made up of representatives from Ukraine, Russia and
the (...)

(1) See Nikita Taranko Acosta, ‘Ukraine imposes its own voice’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, May
2019.
(2) Arkady Moshes, ‘The Normandy Summit on Ukraine: no winners, no losers, to be continued’, FIIA
Comment, no 14, Finnish Institute for International Affairs, Helsinki, December 2019.
(3) ‘Ukraine plans to resume pension payments to Donbass residents’ (in Russian), Nezavisimaya
Gazeta, Moscow, 25 September 2019.
(4) ‘Disengagement: OSCE is monitoring how sides in eastern Ukraine deliver on agreement’, OSCE, 19
October 2016.
(5) ‘Paris “Normandie” summit’, Élysée, Paris, 9 December 2019.
(6) Based on a representative sample of the Ukrainian population, excluding Crimea and the Donbass. Fabrice
Deprez, ‘Ukraine remains split over how to achieve peace in contested Donbas region’, Public Radio
International, 6 November 2019, www.pri.org/.
(7) ‘Zelensky demands control of the border before elections in the Donbass’ (in Russian),  Rossiya
Segodnya, Moscow, 10 December 2019.
(8) See Aaron Maté, ‘Will Donald Trump really be impeached?’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition,
November 2019.
(9) ‘Number of Russian citizens in Luhansk People’s Republic is known’ (in Russian), Lenta, 13 November
2019.

2. by JEAN-MARIE CHAUVIER 2005 JAN.

Orange revolution, origins and outcome

Ukraine: a new cold war

The victory of Viktor Yushchenko in the third round of presidential elections in Ukraine does not
necessarily mean that the country will completely join the Euro-Atlantic camp, bringing a dowry of oil and
gas pipelines and overland access to Central Asian markets.
BIGNIEW Brzezinski, who was once President Jimmy Carter’s national
security adviser, spent much of his career predicting and preparing for
the current rollback of Russian power, in which Ukraine is playing a
decisive role. In his latest book (1) Brzezinski argues that as the Euro-
Atlantic sphere of influence spreads east, it is vital to include the new
independent states, especially Ukraine, that were previously part of the
Soviet Union.

His forecasts are fast coming true, and the impending political upheaval
maybe the largest since the break-up of the USSR and of Yugoslavia. It
would bring into the Euro-Atlantic camp a country larger than France,
with a population of 48 million, a powerful network of oil pipelines and
another pipeline that carries 90% of the Siberian gas supplied to
Europe. The orange revolution in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, and in the
west of the country, both of which rejected massive fraud during the
two rounds of the presidential election on 31 October and 21
November, and voted again on December 26, suggests that the process
is already happening.

Viktor Yushchenko, at the head of a nationalist free-market coalition,

has won the third round of the election, backed by a massive popular
uprising, the United States, the European Union and international
media. By mid-December the orange wave had even spread into eastern
and southern areas, traditionally the power base of Victor Yanukovich,
the former prime minister and the candidate backed by the regime in
power. Electors in the chiefly industrial, Russian-speaking and
eastward-looking part of Ukraine failed to mobilise in favour of their
candidate, discouraged by the climate of distrust surrounding a
notoriously corrupt regime. The Communist party, led by Piotr
Simonenko, still exerts a certain influence, but refused to side with
either faction. Many working people are convinced that both sides are
led by oligarchs who lined their pockets privatising state industry.

The solidarity of southern and eastern Ukraine reflects the interests of

working people, who are worried that radical free-market reform will
close mines and factories, rather than their actual support for the
regime. They also fear the nationalism of western Ukraine. Those who
intended to stay on the right side of the people in power prepared for a
Yushchenko victory.

But there are solid obstacles in the way of the Euro-Atlantic dynamic.
Russia still has plenty of leverage, through its gas exports and the oil
debts that Ukraine has run up. The eastern regions account for a large
share of Ukraine’s overall income. There is also the question of
Crimea, an autonomous region, and the Russian naval base at
Sebastopol. Yushchenko has realised that complete victory for him is
impossible.

To avert disaster

As a US study notes: “The Russian defeat in Ukraine is nearly

complete” (2). But the EU, subcontracted as a troubleshooter, does not
want political upheaval to jeopardise its supply of natural gas. It has to
find a compromise or run the risk of a disaster. The colourful
international television presentation of the election standoff, with its
pro-western good guy and pro-Russian baddie, so completely
disregarded the worst-case scenario - that Ukraine would split in two -
that the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, Jacques Attali, felt obliged to warn Europe of another
disaster on its doorstep, resembling that in Yugoslavia (3).

For some, the orange revolution came at just the right time. The
Ukrainian state is disintegrating, the economy is in tatters and
emigration rampant. The cultural and social divide is steadily widening
and people are disgusted at the criminal behaviour so common, as it is
in Russia, over the distribution of property and power. The current
events are an ideal opportunity to destabilise Ukraine and open the way
for the US and Nato to the heart of Eurasia. There is no time to be lost.
The economy in Russia and Ukraine is beginning to pick up and
Moscow is again promoting a Eurasian common market.

The Bush administration in the US is thought to have spent $65m

supporting Yushchenko (4), but preparations for the orange revolution
started long ago; it was launched in Kiev on 17 February 2002. Under
the aegis of financier George Soros’s celebrated foundation (5), the
former US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, called on
representatives of 280 Ukrainian NGOs to contest the regime and
supervise the parliamentary elections in March 2003. A similar
technique proved most effective in Georgia’s rose revolution (see
opposite page). At the Davos Forum on 30 January last year, Albright,
speaking as the chair of the National Democratic Institute, singled out
Ukraine, Colombia, Nigeria and Indonesia as four key democracies ripe
for immediate change.

Saving democracy

Back in Kiev on 21 February, she spoke of the prospect of Ukraine

soon joining the EU and Nato, and recalled a letter from President
George Bush in August 2003, pressing President Leonid Kuchma not to
run for the presidency or any other public office (6). In March she
wrote in the New York Times: “Already on the agenda is the Bush
administration’s plan for promoting democracy in the Middle East.
Saving democracy in Ukraine belongs on that agenda, too” (7). She
added: “If, however, the elections are fraudulent, Ukraine’s leaders
should know that . . . their own bank accounts and visa privileges will
be jeopardised.” Western media kept quiet about the supervisory role of
a huge network of US institutes and foundations, only too happy to be
“spreading democracy”.

Although the campaigners had picked their targets well - corrupt

regimes and their electoral abuses - their indignation was initially
selective. They did not trouble presidents Yeltsin, Putin, Shevardnadze
or Kuchma as long as they could be useful, as is still the case with the
authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan (which turns the taps on the Caspian
oil wells and pipelines of strategic interest to the West) and in
Turkmenistan, with its gas fields.

In September 2004 Albright and the former Czech president, Vaclav

Havel, called for a tougher line on Moscow, backed by personalities
across the political spectrum (8). But, strangely, they said nothing
about the war in Chechnya, although it was much in the news after the
Beslan hostage tragedy earlier that month. Instead they opted to raise a
new issue, highlighting the threatening attitude of Putin’s foreign
policy towards “Russia’s neighbours and Europe’s energy security”.
Reading between the lines, the true issues are clear. The crisis in
Ukraine coincides with other events that are weakening Russia and
impacting directly or indirectly on oil and gas pipelines. Western firms
are building energy corridors, notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline (9), to deprive Russian networks of control over energy
exports. At the same time the West is increasing its military influence
in Azerbaijan and Georgia and stirring up trouble in the Caucasus.
Further north, in Chechnya, the Russian army is embroiled in a
worsening, barbaric conflict with radical terrorists. The Beslan tragedy,
in predominantly Christian Ossetia, adds a religious dimension to
existing problems. Neighbouring multi-ethnic Dagestan may slide into
chaos. To the south separatist conflicts are brewing in Georgia
(Abkhazia, South Ossetia) and in Azerbaijan, locked in dispute with
Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

‘The stage is set for a new cold war’

Putin’s geopolitical defeats, coupled with Russia’s demographic and

social problems, have prompted some CIA analysts to predict that
Russia will disintegrate within 10 years (10). Brzezinski imagined a
similar outcome in a 1997 book (11), positing a tri-partite Russian
confederation - a European Russia, a republic in Siberia and another in
East Asia. Recently he suggested that this process might start with the
Caucasus, claiming that Nato might have to intervene to rescue the
northern republics of the Caucasus from Russian domination (12). In
the strategy aimagined by the joint founder of the Trilateral
Commission (13), Europe would act as a bridgehead, the long-term
aims being to prevent Russia from becoming a world power again, to
colonise Siberia and gain control of its energy resources. The stage is
set for a new cold war, of which the Kosovo conflict was just a
foretaste.
When the communist bloc collapsed in 1989-91, its former members
rejoined the capitalist system. But the whole world had changed:
markets were becoming global, with transnational companies in a
pivotal position, under the overall hegemony of the US and a dominant
neoliberal ideology. The role ordained for former eastern bloc countries
was all too clear: supplying low-cost labour, brainpower, know-how
and the remains of their aerospace industry. They would open their
markets to competitive foreign products, and, above all, extract and
transport energy to the US, Europe, Japan and China (14).

The countries that once made up the USSR were far from equal. Under
the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, Russia could draw on generous reserves
of exportable oil and gas, while commanding a degree of respect as a
nuclear power. It also displayed the greatest determination to carry out
free-market shock treatment and qualified as a priority for western
investors. Ukraine, under Leonid Kravchuk, had none of these assets -
having agreed to give up its nuclear weapons - and was consequently
neglected. In 1991 President George Bush senior went so far as to
caution it against “suicidal nationalism”.

Only later did the West wake up to the potential benefits of a truly
independent Ukraine opposed to Russia. In strategic terms it offered
several major advantages. It could act as a corridor for energy exports
and, in the opposite direction, a highway to the markets of southern
Russia as far as the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian basin.

The dislocation of the USSR benefited Russia, but it stripped Ukraine

bare. It could no longer purchase energy at Soviet prices, but had to pay
the going international rate for oil and gas. To pay off its mounting
debts, Ukraine soon had to give Russian investors a share in its
industry. But the two countries realised they needed to work together to
rebuild the industrial processes destroyed in 1990-91. After a decade of
decay, during which Ukraine’s gross domestic product dropped more
than 50% and absolute poverty gripped much of the population, growth
and investment finally returned to Ukraine, as they had to Russia.

So Moscow has both assets and allies in the present game, and its
Ukrainian friends are not mere vassals. In 2004 the government in Kiev
opted for joint Russian and Ukrainian management of the gas pipeline,
rather than allowing the Russians to appropriate it. During the latest
round of privatisations, Yanukovich turned down Russian and US
offers, giving priority to a group from Eastern Ukraine. Clans left over
from the Soviet period govern industrial relations. One controls the
Donbass (Donets Basin), another the Dnepropetrovsk (right bank of the
Dnieper), and the third Kiev. Nepotism and organised crime are just as
common as in the west but take different forms. Yushchenko, a former
banker, takes good care of western investors. His aide, Yuliya
Timoshenko, is suspected of personally benefiting from dealings in
Siberian gas. The new nuclear power stations in western Ukraine use
Russian technology. All the while a common economic space,
encompassing Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, has been
taking shape as an alternative to the EU. Russia has been more active
since 1999, launching initiatives in industry, oil, arms and trade in an
effort to restore its power and counter US penetration of its former
domain.

Russia is regaining its strength

Putin’s Eurasian projects, the start of nuclear weapons programmes, the

taming of oil oligarchs, and the reappraisal of the “illegal”
privatisations of the 1990s are all signs that Russia is regaining strength
and is still a force to be reckoned with. The crisis in Ukraine seemed a
good opportunity to show Putin that he was going too far. But he is not
easily impressed. On a recent visit to New Delhi he broke with the
cautious attitude that he has adopted since Russia became a strategic
ally of the US after 9/11, to accuse it, in veiled terms, of “dictatorship”
in the international arena (15).

Anti-western ideologists such as Alexander Dugin, recommend the

Eurasian route for Russia. The cold war that some see as imminent
would not confront two opposing systems, as before. Rather it would
attempt to use Ukraine, which has so far made little progress along the
road to free market reform, to undermine Russia, before it settles its
differences with its neighbours and realises its full economic potential.

As the orange revolution unfolded in Kiev, a Russian arts weekly

appeared with a photomontage on its front page showing a row of tiny
members of the European parliament attacking gigantic Red Army
soldiers, who were wearing uniforms of the Great Patriotic War (1941-
45). Page two featured a picture of demonstrators in eastern Ukraine
carrying a banner marked “No to Banderovchtchina” (16). The
underlying message was that the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany,
which Russia is preparing to celebrate on 9 May 2005, was being
denigrated in Europe, especially at the European parliament (17), and
in western Ukraine. Here was further evidence that the cause once
defended by Stepan Bandera (18) was still alive.
Russian and Ukrainian history books differ on several points. Soviet
historians maintain that Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalist (OUN)
combatants collaborated with Nazi forces and were a party to genocide.
In Ukraine they have been partly rehabilitated. Stepan Bandera and the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army count as patriots who fought both Hitler and
Stalin (19). In Galicia and Ivano-Frankivsk, revisionism has gone so far
that some people now pay tribute to the Galicia Waffen SS division.
Extremists have daubed swastikas and anti-semitic slogans on the
Russian cultural centre in Lviv, and denouncing moskali-Kike (Jewish
Moscow supporters) is back in fashion. Despite being backed by
several far-right parties, Yushchenko has distanced himself from the
most radical groups.
Under the Kuchma regime, Ukraine celebrated the victories of the Red
Army and reinstated its adversaries in the national liberation
movement, its opposition to the Stalinist regime fuelled by resentment
born of the famine-genocide of 1932-33. According to the Ukrainian
historian Taras Kuzio, the diaspora in the US and Canada has played an
essential role in the battle to restore national identity. Many of the
exiles come from Galicia and are much influenced by branches of the
OUN, which is heavily committed to the democratic cause
(disregarding extreme minority factions). After 1991 the work of the
diaspora in Ukraine focused mainly on education, the arts and media. It
has proved remarkably effective, particularly when compared with the
ideological vacuum of the former nomenklatura (20).

Attraction of the West

The rebirth of a Ukrainian ideal competes with the huge attraction that
the West has for Ukraine’s youth, which has turned its back on both the
USSR and Russia. Alexander Tsipko, a conservative Russian
nationalist writer (21), complains that people in eastern and southern
Ukraine have lost their sense of Russian history, but agrees that in the
centre and west a new political identity is emerging. Unlike eastern
Ukraine, a generation has grown up that knows nothing of the Soviet
community and does not interact with contemporary Russia. These are
the people who demonstrated in Kiev.

To win them back, Russia and eastern Ukraine would have to move
closer to the free market model. Neoliberals in Russia hope the orange
revolution will prove contagious. The Union of the Right party suffered
defeat at home in the general elections of December 2003, but its leader
Boris Nemstov visited Kiev soon after the elections to hail the victory
of its allies in Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party. He accused Russia of
being a leading rogue state.

The battle is now on for the general elections in 2006. On 8 December

the Rada (upper assembly) finally passed the constitutional reform
advocated by Kuchma, but refused by orange activists and their US
sponsors. Yushchenko agreed to the law in exchange for guarantees on
the 26 December vote and his rival Yanukovich’s resignation as prime
minister. Decisive political realignment now seems inevitable, as the
reform is designed to replace the existing presidential regime with
parliamentary democracy. At the same time the debate on a federal
division of Ukraine has new impetus. Does this mean that the Ukraine
is breaking up, or will it continue on a new footing, plural but
undivided?

The crisis in Ukraine raises other questions. How would Europe and
Ukraine benefit from closer relations? Should either oppose Russia,
rather than working with it? What do they stand to gain from a cold war
concocted in Washington, with help from Prague, Riga and Warsaw? Is
 the EU in a position to honour Albright’s promises of speedy
integration?

The Kremlin can expect further attempts at destabilisation. How much

longer will it allow the West to encroach on its preserves, as it begs for
a seat at the high table? And for the investments it needs to sustain oil
revenue? Ukraine runs the risk of division but this crisis may also lead
to serious upheaval in Moscow.

JEAN-MARIE CHAUVIER
Jean-Marie Chauvier is a journalist and the author of ‘URSS, une société en mouvement’ (Editions de
l’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues, 1988)

Translated by Harry Forster

Ukraine, what comes next?

2022 sep. by SERGE HALIMI

SIX months after invading Ukraine, Russia is considering annexing part

of the territory it occupies. Western countries, meanwhile, are
supplying Ukraine with ever more sophisticated weapons and sending
in armies of ‘military advisors’. Russia no longer wants to simply
subjugate Ukraine, but to dismember it; the United States no longer
wants to contain Russia, but to defeat it. There seems to be nothing to
stop this spiral in which each side, increasingly dominated by
supporters of war, thinks it has freedom of action because it is betting
that its adversary, even with its back to the wall, will never use an
option of last resort to extricate itself. But cemeteries are full of the
victims of mistaken prognoses like that.
The European Union and the US promised military aid to Ukraine’s
president Volodymyr Zelensky so that he could recover the terrain
conquered by the enemy. They have delegated to him the definition of
missions and media coverage of operations intended to mobilise public
opinion (see News we don’t want to hear, in this issue). If, as feared,
Russia annexes all or part of the Donbass this autumn, or Kherson and
Zaporizhzhia oblasts to the south, will the West help Ukraine reconquer
them, thereby running the risk of an even more direct and dangerous
confrontation with Russia, which is likely to extend the same nuclear
protection to these territories as it does to its existing borders (1)?
The question of sanctions needs to be approached with similar realism,
because here too it cannot simply be a question of adopting a stance.
The states that wanted to ‘punish’ Russia have undoubtedly succeeded
in doing so (to the extent that it can no longer obtain spare parts and
critical technologies), but have not come anywhere close to the
 objectives set out six months ago. On 1 March France’s economy
minister Bruno Le Maire boasted, ‘We’re going to cause the Russian
economy to collapse ... The European Union is discovering its power.’
Unfortunately for him, the International Monetary Fund, hardly a
hotbed of anti-Western thought, recently concluded that ‘Russia’s
economy is estimated to have contracted during the second quarter by
less than previously projected,’ while ‘the war’s effects on major
European economies have been more negative than expected’ (2).

Russia’s energy exports, though down by volume, are earning more for
Moscow because of surging prices. As a result, the financing of the
Russian war machine has not suffered, unlike Europeans’ purchasing
power, which has been hit by their leaders’ ill-considered decisions.
The common energy policy, which these sanctions were to get off to a
roaring start, has thus led to unmitigated disaster. Especially for the
working classes, whose disposable income was already barely above
the waterline.

There is rightly an outcry over the fact that decisions that have led to
war and misery could have been taken largely by one man in Moscow.
But is the situation so different elsewhere? And if so, for how much
longer?
SERGE HALIMI
Serge Halimi is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique.
Translated by George Miller

(1) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Basic Books, New York,
2004.
(2) Peter Zeihan, “Russia: After Ukraine”, Stratfor, 10 December 2004.
(3) Le Figaro, Paris, 7 December 2004.
(4) Mat Kelley, Associated Press, 11 December 2004.
(5) The International Renaissance Foundation reports $50m spending between 1990-9.
(6)  Zerkalo Nedeli, Kiev, 28 February- 2 March 2004.
(7) New York Times, 8 March 2004.
(8) An open letter to heads of state and government of the EU and Nato signed by 100 leading figures, 30
September 2004.
(9) BTC: Baku (Azerbaijan), Tbilisi (Georgia) Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline.
(10) The Independent, London, 30 April 2004.
(11) Brzezinski, Grand Chessboard : American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Books, New
York, 1997.
(12) Brzezinski, The Choice, op cit.
(13) The Trilateral Commission was established in 1973. Its founder and primary financial angel was
financier David Rockefeller, inspired by a proposal by Brzezinski to form an alliance between North
America, western Europe and Japan.
(14) “Quelle place pour la Russie dans le monde?”, in “Les guerres antiterroristes”, Contradictions, Brussels,
2004.
(15) Itar-Tass news agency, 4 December 2004.
(16) Literaturnaïa Gazeta, 1-7 December 2004.
(17) Regnum news agency claimed some 90 MEPs signed a letter calling for a boycott of the ceremonies in
Moscow in response to an appeal by Estonian MEP Tunne Kelam.
(18) Leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists who inspired the Ukrainian Insurgent Army from
1942.
(19) See Bruno Drweski: “L’Ukraine, une nation en chantier” in La Nouvelle Alternative, n° 36, December
1994.
(20) See Taras Kuzio, Courrier des Pays de l’Est, n° 1002, Paris, February 2000.
(21) A former communist party ideologist, Tsipko became a leading critic at the end of the 1980s.

3. NEW MONARCH, NEW GOVERNMENT, SAME PRESSURE FOR UNION BREAK-UP

UK goes from bad to worse 2020 oct

Scandal finally forced Boris Johnson from office. His legacy is a country divorced from Europe
and facing economic crisis, and an ever more divided union. Enter Liz Truss.
BY JAMIE MAXWELL

oN 4 August the Bank of England warned that Britain was

drifting into a recession so deep it would last until the end of
2023, inflation would soon hit a 42-year high of 13%, and living
standards would sag further under the weight of rising wholesale
energy costs and stagnant wages. On 6 September Liz Truss
replaced Boris Johnson as prime minister of the United
Kingdom. Two days later, Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-
reigning sovereign, died at the age of 96.

In response to the monarch’s demise, Britain’s political leaders,

past and present, all reached for some variation of the same
theme. Elizabeth II was ‘the rock on which modern Britain was
built’, said Truss; ‘the matriarch of our nation’, claimed Tony
Blair; ‘wise and selfless’ in the exercise of her duties, according to
Blair’s Conservative predecessor John Major. Yet the more
Westminster politicians synchronised their rhetoric of national
unity, the less convincing it began to sound.

Hours before the Queen died, Truss had appeared in the House
of Commons to set out a massive programme of state
intervention aimed at avoiding an economic cliff edge. She
announced up to £150bn of additional spending funded by
further borrowing, supplemented by a series of tax cuts and
deregulatory reforms. In the teeth of a potentially historic
economic downturn, this was ‘a moment to be bold’, she said.

The scale of her spending package exposed the depths of

Britain’s social crisis. The average annual energy bill in the UK
has nearly doubled over the past 12 months, from £1,400 in
October of last year to more than £2,500 today. More
households are getting into debt, and monthly mortgage
payments are going up. At least eight million British families will
be unable to fuel their homes adequately this winter as they
struggle to cover basic household expenses.The UK faces a
 national emergency on the same scale as Covid-19, Torsten Bell,
chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, wrote in May.
Without (...)

(1) Graeme Wearden, ‘Bank of England hikes interest rates and warns UK to enter recession with inflation to pass 13% — as
it happened’ The Guardian, London, 4 August 2022.
(2) Torsten Bell, ‘The cost of living crisis is going to hurt’, Resolution Foundation, 3 May 2022.
(3) Daniel Finn, ‘Sinn Féin extends its reach to Ireland’s South’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, June 2022.
(4) David Edgerton, ‘Brexit is a necessary crisis — it reveals Britain’s true place in the world’, The Guardian, 9 October
2019.
(5) Michael Keating, ‘The UK’s union has been fractured by Brexit’, LSE blogs, 23 April 2021, blogs.lse.ac.uk/.
(6) Philip Aldrick, ‘Britain suffered worst recession of all G7 leading economies, says IMF’, The Times, London, 27 January
2021.
(7) See Owen Hatherley, ‘Keir Starmer’s retreat’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2021.
(8) Cristina Gallardo and Clea Caulcutt, ‘Macron skewers Truss over “friend or foe” comments’, Politico, 26 August 2022.
(9) Ross Hunter, ‘UK Government considering legislation that would require 50 per cent of entire electorate to vote Yes in
indyref2’, The National, Glasgow, 3 September 2022.
(10) James Sillars, ‘Energy price guarantee: How bill freeze announced by Liz Truss will affect you’, Sky News, 8 September
2022.
(11) Hugo Gye, ‘Keir Starmer is keeping Jeremy Corbyn’s policies — but sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey shows he’s ditching
the rest of his legacy’, iNews, 26 June 2020.