Invisible Hands: 4. The Big Bang

James Goldsmith was a billionaire tycoon who thrived in the free-market revolution. He was a corporate raider who conquered both the City of London and Wall Street. He was a playboy – four wives, a host of mistresses and a reputation as outsized as a Bond villain. Then in 1987 ...

In 2006 an Australian investment bank bought Thames Water – Britain’s biggest water company. Everything went well for a bit. And then people started noticing something strange. Sewage in the water. Leaking pipes. Hosepipe bans. Now in 2025 Thames Water is on the brink of finan ...

For decades after the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the United States of America were locked in a conflict of ideology that took the planet to the brink of catastrophe. Known as the Cold War, it was an era of paranoia, fear and mutual suspicion, where the contest for sup ...  Show more

One great power (China) has a relentless thirst to build that comes with a terrible human cost, while its main rival (America) is a more lawyerly and free society that’s prone to stifling ideas both good and bad. On the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic ...

It’s been a week where the politics of the Middle East and Britain’s relations with China have loomed large over Westminster. For all the backslapping and goodwill of Sharm el-Sheikh, will the ceasefire and exchange of hostages and prisoners in Gaza pave the way for a political s ...  Show more

Last week’s meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping may have brought a respite in the trade war. But it hardly touched the more fundamental drivers of U.S.-Chinese rivalry, a rivalry that has come to shape more and more dimensions of geopolitics, the global economy, and be ...