My monologue on what the new world order means for Britain, from @TimesRadio today: For those of you who’ve not yet copped that we’re at a watershed in global politics I suggest you have a read of Mark Carney’s speech in Davos yesterday. It’s not often a Canadian prime minister charts a seminal change in world politics. But Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England, has.  This is the key passage: “Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions—that they must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable. A country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.” Coming from a fully-paid up member of the liberal global elite, this is dynamite. Carney says the era of global integration is over and that what he calls ‘middle powers’, like Canada and the UK, who benefitted from it and got used to working through global institutions — like the WTO, the UN, COP, NATO, the EU — need to realise the game is up.  If you can’t feed, fuel and defend yourself in this new world of rupture you’re finished. So these are his priorities for Canada. He’s junked a lot of his net zero baggage to increase Canada’s energy security. He’s moving from multilateral to bilateral deals he thinks will benefit Canada, most recently with China. And he’s doubling spending on defence.  The British government should take stock. Carney’s world of rupture has been brought about by Donald Trump’s wrecking ball approach to the rules-based world order that has served us so well these past 80 years.  It’s played into the hands of the autocrats of Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere who want to replace that world order with a system far more attuned to their interests. Trump is obliging them.    Food. Fuel. Defence. These are Carney’s watchwords for a scary new world in which middle powers need to seek strategic autonomy when old alliances and multinational institutions no longer work. They should guide British policy too.  We need to be able to feed ourselves better. To be able to count on cheap, secure sources of energy. And to be able to defend ourselves from multiple and growing threats. At the moment the Starmer government is doing none of the above.  Instead it is lumbering business with the most expensive energy costs in the world and households with the second or third most expensive domestic energy in the world.  It is pursuing a multi-billion pound dash to net zero while adding only a few crumbs to the defence budget.  And it’s covering good farming land with solar panels.  It would be hard to think of a set of policies less designed to give us the strategic autonomy Carney thinks middle powers must strive for.  Britain needs a step change in its energy, food and defence policies. The billions earmarked for net zero need to be diverted to rearming the nation.  We need an energy policy that couples secure supplies with lower prices so that we can start to rebuild some of our heavy industry, essential to defence.  And we need a farm policy that champions growing food once more rather than prioritising various fashionable environmental wheezes.  None of this is likely to happen under the Starmer government. The PM has no vision or aptitude for such a strategy. His party is a prisoner to old 20th century ways of thinking, as is much of British politics on the left and right.  But unless the Carney challenge is recognised and policy changed in radical ways to meet it, we risk not only further economic decline in the rest of this decade but growing vulnerability to the evil intent of our enemies. And without America at our back to protect us.

A major news story that will not get the coverage it deserves: Over 300 schoolchildren and 12 teachers have been abducted by gunmen from St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution in north-central Nigeria’s Niger state. This updates an earlier count of 215 schoolchildren. The students are male and female, ranging in age from 10 to 18. Their kidnapping happened four days after 25 schoolchildren were seized in similar circumstances in neighboring Kebbi state. Nobody yet claimed responsibility.