The Missing Link in Leadership: Who are you preparing to replace you?

Over the last few days, I’ve been reflecting on something that almost nobody talks about, yet it quietly shapes the political and economic stability of entire nations: the absence of intentional discipleship—or whatever secular term we prefer—among significant leaders.

Call it mentoring, call it succession planning, call it “forming the next generation.” But the idea itself is ancient: I do it and you watch me; you do it and I watch you; now you do it on your own. Most successful cultures in history depended on it. Yet today, it is almost entirely absent in politics, business, and public life.

And we are paying the price.

1. Politics Without Apprenticeship: Why Every Transition Is a Crisis

Look at almost any Western democracy and you’ll notice the same pattern: when a leader falls, nobody has the faintest idea who will replace them.

    • When Boris Johnson collapsed, nobody was preparing themselves—or being prepared—to step in.
    • Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and even Theresa May were not household names with long apprenticeships behind them. They were simply the next names in a Rolodex that nobody had ever looked at.
    • In the corporate world, nobody outside Cupertino had ever heard of Tim Cook until Steve Jobs died. Cook was extremely competent—but invisible.

Leadership emerges by accident, not formation.

Even in Germany—historically better at structured, team-based governance—the same problem now shows. Under Angela Merkel, we at least knew her ministers. If health, education, or foreign affairs made the news, it was the responsible minister speaking, not Merkel herself. There was a sense of team, of distributed competence, of the German belief that no one person can or should dominate every conversation.

But even then, there was no visible apprentice. No one standing next to her, learning, questioning, absorbing, preparing. When she stepped down, the vacuum opened.

Fast-forward to today, and the contrast is severe. Germany has ended up with Friedrich Merz—almost the polar opposite of Merkel in style, values, and public ethos. The shift is not just political; it’s generational and philosophical. It is what happens when leadership is not passed on but simply replaced.

2. The Danger of Blind Replacements

A country cannot thrive if every transition resembles a blind date.

Democracies need continuity, not clones—but at least a thread connecting one chapter to the next:

    • Shared institutional memory
    • A carried-forward vision
    • Stability in economic and social policy
    • Someone who has made mistakes privately before making them publicly

Instead, we jump from one unfamiliar figure to another. We “discover” a new potential leader the same way we discover a new toothpaste at the supermarket: whatever is placed at eye level becomes the default option.

And voters are expected to trust people they have never had the chance to watch, listen to, or grow accustomed to.

3. Corporate Life: Exactly the Same Problem

The same dysfunction exists in industry.

Most FTSE100 or Fortune500 companies have:

    • “leadership pipelines”
    • “talent funnels”
    • “succession plans” in binders

But very few have real relational apprenticeship:

    • Nobody spends two years shadowing a CEO.
    • Nobody grows up inside a leader’s thinking.
    • Nobody is intentionally shown how to hold the weight of power.

So transitions become fragile. Massive instability follows. Cultures collapse when their figureheads move on.

You saw it with Jobs → Cook.
You saw it with Gates → Ballmer.
You saw it with nearly every major bank pre-2008.

This is not an HR problem. It’s a civilisational one.

4. Why Discipleship (Not Just Mentoring) Actually Matters

Mentoring can be a coffee once a month. Coaching can be transactional. Consulting can be outsourced.

Discipleship is different: it means forming someone through proximity, vulnerability, imitation, failure, and shared responsibility.

It means:

    1. I do it; you watch.
      The next generation witnesses how problems are carried, how crises are handled, how decisions are made.
    2. You do it; I watch.
      Mistakes happen in a safeguarded environment where correction is possible without public humiliation.
    3. Now you do it on your own.
      By the time leadership is handed over, the nation already knows who this person is—and why they should be trusted.

This is not religious; it is simply human. Every craft, every guild, every durable culture has always worked this way.

Except modern politics and modern corporations.

5. Preparing One Generation Down

If we want stability, we must think at least one generation down:

    • Who is learning the skills?
    • Who is absorbing the vision?
    • Who is gaining credibility in public life before holding office?
    • Who is confident enough to lead, not because they are ambitious, but because they are prepared?

Nations fall apart when nobody knows who is next.
Nations thrive when leadership is a relay race, not a wrestling match.

We cannot talk about the future without preparing the people who will carry it.

“There is no success without a successor.”  –  Peter Drucker

Cathedrals of Quiet Light: An Homage to Libraries

I did not expect a pilgrimage. All I wanted, on a cold Berlin morning, was a simple desk in my local library. A familiar refuge where I could coax myself into writing. Instead, I arrived to find the doors barred and the building shrouded in scaffolding. Closed for refurbishment. And yet even that felt oddly hopeful: a library being tended to, repaired, protected. A chrysalis in plywood. Still, it left me homeless for the day, so I pointed myself into the centre of Berlin and followed a vague instinct in search of a different reading room.

By early afternoon I was standing inside the Humboldt University Library, in the central Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum — a building completed in 2009 at a cost of roughly €150 million, a temple to light and linearity, a modern cathedral carved out of honey-coloured wood. I had never been inside before. I found my way up several flights of stairs, past quiet students and moving columns of books, until I arrived in the library’s great central atrium.

There are moments when atmosphere becomes an event, as if the air thickens with meaning, as though the space itself has a pulse. That is what happened. The first glance into the atrium felt like encountering a new idea before you have the words for it.

The room opened before me in tiers, receding downwards in vast wooden frames, each level lined with narrow study desks illuminated by soft rectangular lamps. Above, the ceiling dissolved into a grid of skylights, a geometry of glass and daylight. Below, hundreds of young people bent over books and laptops, headphones cocooning them, highlighters poised like tiny torches hunting for truth in margins. It was an amphitheatre of thought, tier upon tier of silent striving, human concentration arranged like an inverted ziggurat.

The sight moved me more than I had anticipated. I had often studied in the ancient libraries of Oxford, with their stone floors worn by centuries of scholars and portraits of stern-faced alumni glaring down with a mixture of judgement and encouragement. But this — this modern Berlin chamber with its clean lines and its open light — held its own kind of splendour. If Oxford’s libraries feel like the weight of the past pressing lovingly upon you, the Grimm-Zentrum feels like the future stretching out somewhere beyond the roof.

And suddenly I felt small and young again, in the most wonderful way.

A Place Where the World Learns How to Think

What struck me first was the sound — or rather, the absence of it. The quiet in a library is not mere silence. It is a collective agreement, a social pact, a voluntary reverence. The students around me were not quiet because they were told to be. They were quiet because they were invested. Because something mattered.

Then came the smell — that unmistakable perfume of libraries everywhere:
waxed linoleum; varnished wood; warm dust that rises from the turning of pages; and above all that distinctive scent of old books, a mixture of paper, glue, ink, and time itself. It carries, always, a faint edge of mystery – a reminder that knowledge ages like a living thing.

As I sat down on the highest tier, overlooking this incredible geometry of minds at work, it occurred to me that libraries are among the few places left in modern life where human concentration is visible. We watch it manifest physically: in posture, in scribbles, in slow-page turns, in the absorbed stillness of someone who is trying to understand.

The atmosphere was electric but hushed, charged but respectful. There were students mapping out theses with coloured pens, others scrolling through academic articles, some chewing their pens absentmindedly while staring into middle distance — that universal gesture of a mind wrestling with a concept. There were those who looked exhausted but determined, and others who looked exhilarated by a sentence they had just discovered. Every face was a small story of effort.

This collective striving was profoundly moving. It made visible something we often forget: knowledge is crafted, not downloaded. Even with all the technology around them, these students were still doing the slow, patient work that makes civilisation possible. Research is not glamorous. It is hours of searching, scanning, discarding, re-reading. Yet they persisted.

Watching them, I felt privileged — almost intrusive — as though I were witnessing a kind of secular liturgy.

This Is Not an Anti-AI Eulogy. Quite the Opposite.

Let me say this clearly, and early, because sentiments like mine are often misinterpreted: this is not a rear-guard lament against AI.
No pious calls to return to pre-digital methods. No false nostalgia. No technophobia.

I embrace AI wholeheartedly. I use it every day, and I consider it one of the most extraordinary tools ever created. It accelerates learning, supports human creativity, and holds vast potential for everything from agriculture to medicine to interplanetary exploration. It will help build the colonies on Mars long before we finish debating whether rocket fuel is environmentally friendly.

So this reflection is not a plea for a world without technology. It is instead an attempt to articulate something different: that libraries and AI are not adversaries.
They are partners.
One is where the human mind trains its depth; the other is where it extends its reach.

Libraries teach us how to think.
AI helps us learn faster once we know how.

The library is the gymnasium of cognition.
AI is the exoskeleton.

We need both.

A Secular Temple — or Something More

As I sat in the top tier of that atrium, I realised that all my senses were activated at once: sight, sound, smell, touch, and the quiet murmur of pages turning like a heartbeat for the whole building. It was almost too much. It bordered on the religious.

If you believe in God, you could easily imagine gratitude rising like incense: look what humanity — the species fashioned out of dust and breath — has managed to build. Look how our curiosity has unfolded into architecture, scholarship, craft, and a hunger for understanding that seems inexhaustible.

If you do not believe in God, the miracle remains.
After all, what could be more astonishing than this? That the random electrical impulses arising from an indifferent universe have generated organisms who sit together in vast wooden halls reading about Mesopotamia, quantum mechanics, marine ecosystems, political philosophy, medieval manuscripts, and machine learning algorithms. That atoms born in supernovae now write essays on ethics and the shape of a meaningful life.

Even the most hardened atheist cannot deny the improbability, the majesty of that.

To sit in a library is to witness a miracle in motion — a civilisation rehearsing its own continuation.

The Invisible People Who Make It Possible

It is easy, in moments of beauty, to forget the infrastructure that supports them. But libraries are not spontaneous miracles. They are daily, deliberate acts of civic generosity.

Someone designed this building with its lightwells, its tiers, its acoustics, its quiet. Someone else built it, brick by brick, panel by panel. Others maintain it, polish the floors, fix the lamps, organise the recycling, restock the bathrooms, oil the doors so they close softly.

Then there are the librarians, the custodians of order in our age of chaos. The ones who curate, classify, preserve, and patiently help bewildered visitors locate that one book whose title they have partially forgotten. They are the guardians of continuity, the keepers of fragments, the quiet historians of our intellectual life.

Yesterday, I watched a librarian register new readers at the desk. One of them was me. The young man helping me was in his early twenties, wearing a university hoodie, and fascinated by my British passport. He asked why the text was printed both in English and French. He was curious about British attitudes to Europe, about why I had come to Berlin, about what I was planning to write.

There was no transactional coldness in him. Only a genuine hunger to learn, to connect, to understand. It was a small moment, and yet it added a human warmth to the architecture around us. It reminded me that libraries are not only spatial achievements; they are social ones. They bring together people who believe — perhaps stubbornly, courageously — that knowledge should remain accessible to all.

And yes, I felt grateful. Deeply grateful. In an age dominated by cynicism about governments, it is worth remembering that states still choose to spend millions on libraries, archaeology departments, social sciences faculties, digitisation projects, and the preservation of knowledge. This is not trivial. It is evidence of a civilisation still investing in its own mind.

A Place Where My Own Creativity Woke Up

I did not plan to begin outlining a new novel yesterday. But the effect of sitting in that atrium was galvanising. The sight of hundreds of young minds in motion, the geometry of the architecture, the warm glow of the wood, the filtered daylight, the portraitless vastness that made every student their own protagonist — it all stirred something in me.

Creativity, I am convinced, is contagious. We borrow the electricity of others. When you place yourself in an environment charged with intellectual purpose, something inside you aligns. Ideas begin to organise themselves. Sentences appear without being summoned. Pages begin to form.

That is exactly what happened.

Within an hour of sitting down, my mind was in overdrive, casting threads between ideas I had been carrying for months, imagining scenes, characters, dilemmas. The space did not merely host my creativity; it provoked it. I left with the outline of my next book beating quietly inside my bag.

Why This Matters for the World Our Children Inherit

As I gazed into the atrium, I kept thinking about the thousands of young people around the world who will never experience something like this — who study in overcrowded classrooms, or at kitchen tables, or not at all. And then I thought of the students who do have this privilege and perhaps take it for granted, because we all take blessings for granted when they become part of the wallpaper of our days.

A library like this is not a neutral space.
It is a statement.
A declaration of values.
A place where a society says to its young:

Take this. Explore. Learn. Write. Think. Question. Become. We believe you are worth the investment.

My hope is that such spaces will not become relics. That they will not be drowned by the easy seductions of instant information, nor by political short-sightedness, nor by economic austerity. May libraries continue to stand as cathedrals of collective education, where young people can enter free of charge and leave richer in spirit, sharper in thought, and braver in imagination.

A Final Word of Gratitude

So this is my homage — not to nostalgia, but to possibility. To the people who keep these spaces alive. To the students who fill them. To the architects who imagine them. To the librarians who protect them. And yes, to the governments and taxpayers whose resources make them real.

Most of all, it is an expression of gratitude for the simple miracle that humans still gather in large wooden rooms to read books, annotate pages, debate arguments, and shape knowledge. In a world that often feels fragmented, libraries remind us that our species is still capable of collective enlightenment.

As long as there are libraries, there is hope.
As long as there are young people hunched over books, there is a future worth fighting for.
And as long as we preserve places like this — vast, warm, light-filled, reverent — our civilisation will continue to write itself into being.

Yesterday I entered a library looking for a desk.
I left having recovered my faith in human curiosity.

And perhaps that is the true gift of a library:
it does not simply store knowledge —
it awakens the desire to create more of it.

“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.”  – Hannah Arendt

If you love the world enough, go back to a library. Sit down. Read something difficult. Support these spaces. They are still where civilisation renews itself.

 

 

Unseen Innovation: Europe’s Arcadian Missions in Agriculture and Beyond

Innovation rarely arrives with fanfare. It doesn’t always make the headlines. Instead, it often unfolds silently in the fields, the orchards and the hinterlands — where precision matters, human know-how meets technology, and tomorrow’s systems are shaped today. One such endeavour is the AgRimate project: a multi-national European initiative that demonstrates how real-world research quietly drives systemic change.

A good example: AgRimate

Launched under the Horizon Europe programme (grant agreement 101182739), AgRimate brings together 11 partners from Spain, Finland, Italy, Greece, Germany and Ireland.  Its target: to transform pruning practices in olive groves and vineyards through AI-driven decision support, augmented reality (AR) assistants and robotic systems. By 2030, the project aims for a technology-readiness level of 7 or more, to validate in real-world field trials across Spain and Greece.

Among its goals:

    • Integrate sensor networks and drone data to feed AI models that learn from expert pruners — combining tradition and technology.
    • Deploy AR-based training and guidance tools to enhance worker competence and safety.
    • Design robotic platforms and exoskeletons to reduce physical strain and improve productivity in high-value cropping.
    • Ensure human-centred design: evaluating how AI and robotics impact worker well-being, autonomy and skill development.

This is farming at the intersection of cognition, competence, machine intelligence and everyday labour: exactly where digital transformation meets human factors.

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all.”
— Wendell Berry

Why such projects matter

While big science programmes grab attention, applied-field projects like AgRimate deliver the operational breakthroughs — the nuts-and-bolts tools that farmers will use. In the EU, research shows that every €1 invested in agricultural innovation can yield up to €10-11 in return over 25 years.

And financially: Horizon Europe carries a budget of about €93.5 billion (2021-2027). Within that, agriculture, bioeconomy and natural-resources projects account for roughly €9 billion of dedicated support. ([European Commission])

Such funding enables:

    • innovation in digital farming, robotics and AR
    • capacity-building and competence-development in rural areas
    • sustainability, productivity and social inclusion
    • spill-over benefits beyond Europe: from knowledge export to global partners

Beyond agriculture: the hidden ecosystem

Though agriculture provides a compelling lens, research-funding stretches across domains. For example:

    • The Erasmus+ programme fosters mobility and competence across borders, equipping educators and learners for global challenges.
    • Health-related initiatives like EU4Health support medical research and pandemic resilience.
    • Digital-technology programmes (digital Europe) underpin innovation in every sector.

Together, they create a background mosaic of everyday research infrastructure — quiet, distributed, and deeply impactful.

Global value, local roots

Projects like AgRimate don’t just upgrade a Spanish olive grove. Their tools, methods and models travel. Exoskeletons, AR training tools, AI-driven decision-engines: all are transferable to Latin America, Africa or Asia where smallholder farmers face similar labour constraints, skill gaps and sustainability demands. Research-driven competence models and embedded human-tech interaction frameworks are the heart of global agricultural progress.

Why we should pay attention

Often, we know about the big telescopes, the megaprojects, the splashy tech launches. But real change also happens quietly — in pruning trellises, orchards, farm-hands learning AR interfaces, complex sensor systems taking field-data at dawn. These are the systems that translate innovation into impact.

For professionals, researchers and rural practitioners alike, the message is clear: technology alone isn’t enough. It’s human competence, interaction design, usability, learning architecture and worker autonomy that bring tech alive. Projects like AgRimate embody that blend.

And for you — or for any practitioner, researcher or farmer — this is the invitation: monitor the unseen, celebrate the unsung, and recognise the spider-web of research beneath your everyday tools. Because behind those quiet fields, Europe is building the futures we’ll harvest tomorrow.

“Europe will not be made all at once, nor according to a single plan, but through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.”
— Robert Schuman, 1950

America First, America Finished? How Trump Is Shrinking a Superpower

Trump, Asia and the New World Order

When I was flying back and forth to Indonesia last year, something on the ground kept nagging at me more than the jet lag.

It wasn’t the traffic jams or the humidity. It was the cars.

Jakarta’s new car market is now a sea of logos many Europeans and Americans still barely recognise: BYD, Chery, Geely, Great Wall, Wuling. These aren’t curiosities anymore; they’re the default options on showroom floors and in middle-class driveways. China exported about 5.9 million vehicles in 2024, with Chinese brands now taking around 65% of their own domestic market and leading global export growth.

If you want to understand why Donald Trump’s isolationist “America First” project is actually accelerating America’s relative decline, start in a Jakarta car park, not in Washington.

Because while Trump shouts about greatness into a microphone, the centre of gravity of the real economy is sliding, quietly and empirically, towards Asia.

Asia’s Rise Is No Longer a Prediction — It’s a Measurement

Asia now accounts for around 49% of global GDP (PPP). North America and Europe combined have dropped to about 39%, down from 58% in 1980. The shift isn’t subtle; it’s structural.

China alone produces about 35% of global manufactured goods, more than the next nine countries combined. Its share of global exports has risen from 3.9% in 2000 to over 14% today, while the U.S. has fallen from 12% to under 9%.

This isn’t “cheating”. It’s performance.
And Asia is performing — relentlessly.

“America First” is being matched by “Asia Busy Working”.

Planes, Cars, Chips: The Quiet Transfer of Influence

In Southeast Asia, the consumer economy has already pivoted eastward. Chinese and Korean car brands have become aspirational. Japanese brands remain strong. American brands barely appear.

And in aviation, China’s COMAC is now producing the C919, a credible competitor to Boeing’s 737 — at exactly the moment Boeing faces delays, quality concerns and real reputational damage.

Asia is no longer assembling Western dreams.
It is building its own.

America First = America Alone = America Weaker

Trump’s worldview is dangerously simple:

    • America has been “ripped off”.
    • Trade is zero-sum.
    • Tariffs can restore greatness.
    • Cooperation is weakness.

But the real effects are the opposite:

    • Allies lose trust.
    • Asia builds alternatives.
    • Global supply chains simply route around the U.S.
    • Markets become unstable.
    • The very partners America needs are pushed away.

You do not protect leadership by insulting your allies.
You simply teach them how to live without you.

The Numbers: A Superpower Living Beyond Its Means

A snapshot of America today:

Debt: ~120% of GDP, on track to hit 134% by 2035.

Exports: falling relative to global share.

Education: PISA scores below OECD average in maths.

Health: life expectancy 2 years below other rich countries.

Credit ratings: downgraded due to political dysfunction.

None of this is solely Trump’s fault — but his policies accelerate every downward curve.

The Leadership Problem

The deeper question is moral and cultural:
How does a wealthy democracy choose a leader who is twice impeached, convicted on 34 felony counts, found liable for sexual abuse, repeatedly racist, proudly uninformed — and still treated as a serious statesman?

Even a young  YouTuber like Parkergetajob often articulates policy with more coherence than the President of the United States. That alone tells a story.

The decline of leadership is a decline of standards.
And a decline of standards is the beginning of national decay.

History’s Warning Labels

The fall of great powers follows familiar patterns:

    • Rome: internal corruption, political chaos
    • Ottomans: denial, nostalgia, refusal to modernise
    • Britain: moral exhaustion + economic overstretch

The common thread?
A preference for comforting myths over uncomfortable facts.

Trumpism is exactly that:
a mythology of greatness masking a reality of shrinking influence.

America’s Choice

America is still extraordinary — innovative, creative, wealthy. But greatness today requires cooperation, competence and credibility.

Trump offers none of these.
He offers slogans, ange, division and isolation.

And in a century defined by interconnected systems, a country that isolates itself does not become stronger.
It becomes smaller.

America won’t be destroyed by China or Europe or migrants.
It will be destroyed by the comforting lie that it doesn’t need the rest of the world.

Spain takes more refugees than Britain. So why isn’t Madrid screaming about it?

 

There is a strange and revealing truth at the heart of Europe’s migration politics, and it is this:

Spain receives more irregular boat arrivals than the United Kingdom — yet it treats migrants with more dignity, less hysteria, and far greater political maturity.

In 2024, Spain registered around 61,000 irregular sea arrivals.
The UK recorded roughly 37,000.

And yet, if you walked into a British newsroom or scrolled through British political Twitter, you would think that civilisation was on the brink of collapse.

Why is that?

Why does a country with fewer arrivals behave as though it’s under siege, while a Mediterranean frontline state quietly manages the reality without setting its national hair on fire?

The answer tells us something uncomfortable — not about migration, but about the moral core of modern British politics.

Spain: A Social Democracy That Still Remembers Its Soul

Spain has no illusions about its geographic position. If you sit at the hinge between Africa and Europe, people will come. Some are fleeing violence. Some are escaping poverty. Some are simply seeking a future.

Spain’s response is almost boring in its sanity:

  • Rescues at sea are organised, not weaponised.

  • Asylum processes function without turning every application into a national morality play.

  • NGOs and municipalities handle frontline integration without being smeared as traitors or “pull factors”.

  • And critically, Spain offers a legal pathway — arraigo social — that allows migrants to be regularised after two years, recognising the simple fact that if people are already living in your society, the most rational thing you can do is integrate them.

This is not naïveté.
It is pragmatic humanism.

A country that is actually under pressure has learned that panic makes everything worse — and that moral clarity and administrative realism are, in the long run, the only sustainable approach.

Britain: A Superpower of Performative Fear

Then there is Britain — a country with fewer boat arrivals, fewer border pressures, and incomparably more political theatre.

The new Labour government, elected on a promise of competence, has appointed a Home Secretary — an Oxford-educated politician who should know better — who has plunged headlong into the same punitive reflex that defined her predecessors:

  • Proposing visa bans on entire nationalities.

  • Reducing asylum processing time limits to the point of absurdity.

  • Recycling the rhetoric of American culture wars and Trumpian nationalism.

  • Treating refugees as a statistical nuisance to be minimised rather than as human beings with stories, trauma, and dignity.

This is not the behaviour of a confident nation.

It is the behaviour of a country addicted to manufactured panic, because panic is the last remaining tool in its political toolkit.

Britain no longer has a coherent economic model.
It no longer has a unified social vision.
And its political class no longer has a narrative of who the country is, or what it stands for.

So it turns to the only story it has left: fear of the outsider.

The Moral Collapse of British Labour

The tragedy here is not simply that Labour has adopted conservative immigration framing.

The tragedy is that Labour has forgotten its own genealogy.

Social democracy — the European kind, the post-war kind, the moral kind — was built on a simple conviction:

The health of a society is measured by how it treats the stranger.

This was not an abstract ideal.
It was a lesson drawn from genocide, fascism, war, and displacement — a recognition that if Europe was to rebuild itself, it needed a political ethic grounded in solidarity, not exclusion.

Spain, with all its imperfections, still remembers this.

Britain does not.

The Labour Party of today triangulates itself into oblivion, chasing right-wing voters who will never love it, and sacrificing the values that once made it a moral force in world politics.

A Labour Party that governs by fear is not Labour.
It is simply a softer mask on the same punitive instincts that have now defined British immigration policy for twenty years.

Migration as a Mirror

Migration does not destabilise nations.
It exposes them.

Spain’s handling of higher arrival numbers reveals a society that, despite its flaws, still has a functioning moral compass and a political class capable of distinguishing reality from theatre.

Britain’s handling of fewer arrivals reveals something far more troubling:

A nation with no confidence in itself, no stable identity, and no political imagination.
A country performing toughness because it no longer knows how to perform leadership.
A Labour Party performing cruelty because it has forgotten how to perform justice.

A Simple Truth Worth Saying Out Loud

A country does not drown because desperate people cross its waters.
It drowns when it forgets who it is.

Spain, for all its pressures, has not forgotten.
Britain, tragically, has.

And until the Labour Party recovers its moral centre — the centre that once made Britain a pioneer of compassion, dignity, and internationalism — its immigration policy will remain nothing more than an anxious shadow of its own lost ideals.

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the twilight of life, and the shadows of life.”
— Hubert Humphrey

Why Populists Thrive in a Connected World

Why Has Globalisation Increased Division Instead of Unity?

Globalisation should have been our great humanising force. For the first time in history, large numbers of people can travel freely, study abroad, work internationally, and encounter cultures that would once have remained distant and unknown. We have access to films, music, literature, foods, and languages from every continent. On paper, this should have produced an age of empathy. A century in which the old barriers of race, nationality, and religion dissolved into shared humanity.

Yet the opposite has happened. As the world has opened up, political identity has hardened. Populist nationalism has surged: Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and similar strongman figures elsewhere. Racism, religious extremism, conspiracy thinking, and tribal rhetoric are resurgent. The more connected the world becomes, the more threatened people seem to feel.

This contradiction is not new. It is the old story of the Tower of Babel. Human beings build upward toward unity, creativity, and common purpose—yet something in us fractures, resists, and disperses. Even if we don’t read that story religiously, it is psychologically precise. The closer we come to real integration, the more fear arises: fear of loss of identity, loss of control, loss of status.

Globalisation has consistently been experienced not as shared enrichment but as competition. The immigrant is framed not as a neighbour, but as a rival. Cultural diversity is discussed not as dialogue, but as dilution. Political rhetoric encourages the idea that “our” way of life is being erased. The result is defensive nationalism and, increasingly, violence.

This is not inevitable. The problem is not globalisation itself, but the absence of global solidarity to accompany global interdependence. We have integrated our economies, but not our ethics. We have connected our markets, but not our imaginations.

So the question is: How do we reverse the tide? How do we turn globalisation into a force for peace, dignity, and cooperation rather than division and resentment?

Here are three foundations:

1. Global Education that Teaches Perspective, Not Propaganda
International exchange programs cannot simply be tourism or language practice; they must cultivate the ability to see oneself from the outside. To understand how one’s culture appears to others, how history shapes identity, and how dignity must be mutual. Education that only reinforces national narratives will always produce suspicion, not solidarity.

2. Freedom of the Press, Protected by Law, Not Politics
Real democracy depends on the ability to critique power. When the press becomes the instrument of governments, oligarchs, or corporations, societies fracture along invented fears. The crisis at the BBC this week is not a local scandal—it is a warning. If journalism cannot report freely, citizens cannot think freely. And if citizens cannot think freely, they cannot live together freely.

3. Cross-Border Economic Cooperation That Shares, Not Extracts
The problem is not diversity—it is inequality. When globalisation enriches a few and impoverishes many, resentment is inevitable. But when globalisation supports fair wages, sustainable industry, ecological responsibility, and shared growth, it strengthens stability rather than fear.

In short: global interconnectedness must be matched with global empathy.

We already live in one shared world. The question is whether we will learn to behave as if that is true.

Unity is not naïve. It is the only realistic future we have.

“We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.”

–Kofi Annan

The Blueberry Paradox: Why We Keep Destroying the Systems That Could Save Us

On my last day in Spain, I sat at a small café, watching three men take down decorations from the town’s recent festival. The bunting had hung across the square for days, colouring the white-washed walls with celebration. Now the tourists had gone home, and these men — quiet, anonymous, methodical — were returning the square to its ordinary face.

Their work is unremarkable. No one applauds. Yet without people like them, the whole “beautiful tourist city” collapses.
Without them, the photos don’t look charming.
Without them, the streets feel neglected.
Without them, the illusion breaks.

I found myself thinking about fishermen at dawn, hotel cleaners before breakfast, bin collectors at 4am. The quiet labour that keeps the world turning — labour that rarely receives dignity, respect, or fair pay.

Then I looked at my arm.
At the blueberries.

Yes — I have blueberries tattooed on my forearm. And no, it’s not whimsical. Or perhaps it is, but in the way truth sometimes hides inside whimsy.

The blueberries remind me that I cannot enjoy anything alone.
Not even my breakfast.

To eat a blueberry, I depend on soil, weather, farmers, packers, transport workers, supermarket staff, the climate not collapsing this particular year. My pleasure is communal, whether I acknowledge it or not.

Upside down, from a distance, the blueberries form a heart-shape. I didn’t plan that. But perhaps the body speaks before the mind is ready to believe.

The tattoo is a reminder:
You are held. Your life is made by many lives. You are not independent.

And so here’s the question that came to me in that Spanish square:

If we know we are interdependent, why do we build societies that pretend we aren’t?

Why do we reward the illusion of the “self-made individual” while the world is built by the unseen hands of others?

Why does the fisherman earn less than the financier?
The cleaner less than the consultant?
The bin collector less than the politician?

It is not rational.
It is not moral.
It is not even economically coherent.

It is, however, familiar.

And this — whether people like to admit it or not — is where Marx enters the conversation.

Marx’s Point Was Never “Everyone Should Be the Same”

Marx’s central claim was beautifully simple:
Human labour creates value.
So the people who create value should benefit from it.

That’s it.
That’s the hinge.

Marx wasn’t calling for laziness, or enforced sameness, or the death of creativity. He was pointing out that societies become obscene when those who create the conditions for life (food, sanitation, infrastructure, care) are treated as disposable.

He believed in dignity through shared labour.
In contribution as meaning.
In justice as the redistribution of the wealth that labour creates.

Which is why, though he rejected religion, Marx comes surprisingly close to Jesus.

Jesus also preached the reversal of hierarchy:

“The last shall be first, and the first last.”

Not metaphorically — economically, socially, relationally.

Both men looked at society and said:

This is upside down.
We can live differently.

Both pointed to community over competition, relationship over possession, need over greed, dignity over dominance.

And yet —
we have not built the world either of them imagined.

Not once.
Not anywhere.
Not for long.

So the question is no longer Was Marx right?
Or Was Jesus right?

The question is:

What stops us from building the just society both of them saw so clearly?

The Answer Is Not Economic. It’s Psychological.

We call it capitalism vs. communism
but the real struggle is fear vs. trust.

We hoard because we are afraid there won’t be enough.
We compete because we are afraid of being overlooked, replaced, forgotten.
We dominate because we are afraid of being powerless.
We cling to hierarchy because we are afraid of being ordinary.

Fear is the water we swim in.
Fear is the undecorated square after the festival is taken down.
Fear is the silence in the early morning before the day begins.

Marx underestimated fear.
Jesus named it, but was killed for it.

And every system we have built has collapsed for the same reason:

We would prefer to be safe than to be equal.

The Failure Was Never Marx’s. It Was Ours.

We say “communism failed” as if ideology collapsed of its own weight.
But ideas don’t fail.
Systems don’t fail.

People fail.

We fail because we want justice until justice requires something of us.
We want equality until equality asks for our privilege.
We want community until community interrupts our autonomy.

We want the kingdom of God
without the cross.

We want Marx’s dignity of labour
without surrendering status.

So we keep building worlds in which:

  • the blueberry appears magically on the table

  • the labourer remains invisible

  • and we pretend we did this alone.

The Blueberries Again

I look at my arm.
The tattoo.
The accidental heart.

A reminder that interdependence isn’t an ideal —
it’s already true.

We just live as if it isn’t.

The question is not whether a just society is possible.
We already rely on one.
Every day.
Every meal.
Every building.
Every service.
Every breath of shared infrastructure.

The question is simply:

When will we live as though we know it?

And perhaps the first step toward a better society
is simply learning to say:

Thank you.
To the fisherman.
To the street worker.
To the invisible hands.
To the ones who keep the world turning
so that the rest of us can pretend we did it ourselves.

The Scapegoat and the Crown: Why Britain Needs to Abolish the Monarchy

Part One – The Scapegoat and the System

Prince Andrew has become a convenient scapegoat. The public outrage directed at him—his titles, his wealth, his disgrace—has become a form of moral theatre, allowing Britain to avoid a far more uncomfortable truth:
the monarchy itself is the problem.

It is an institution built on inherited privilege, not merit; on spectacle, not service. It sanctifies class division and performs humility from behind palace gates. The British people are told to revere the family as living symbols of unity, while they in fact embody the very inequality that fractures society.

The monarchy’s defenders call it “tradition.” But much of its wealth came from colonial exploitation, violence, and theft. To much of the world, Britain’s clinging to this institution looks less like pride and more like denial.

Part Two – Hypocrisy and Selective Outrage

The moral outrage directed at Prince Andrew contrasts sharply with the silence surrounding others in power. King Charles publicly humiliated Diana, maintained a mistress while married, and ultimately inherited the throne without a whisper of accountability.

Andrew’s association with Epstein is rightly revolting—but when was he tried and convicted by a court of law? In this story, trial by media has replaced due process.

This is not to excuse Andrew, but to question the hierarchy of outrage. Why is one man publicly destroyed while others—perhaps more powerful, perhaps equally flawed—are quietly sanctified by ceremony? Is moral judgment now a function of public relations?

Part Three – The Mirror of Hypocrisy

The British press has always loved a fall from grace. But who are the journalists behind the condemnations? Who among us is not conflicted, hypocritical, double-hearted?

Behind every polished column or camera-ready smile lies a private world of temptation, jealousy, and moral struggle. To deny this is to deny our shared humanity.

What Britain needs is not another scapegoat, but a mirror.
A nation obsessed with punishment cannot heal.
A monarchy built on myth cannot lead.
And a press addicted to scandal cannot claim virtue.

Let’s be honest: the time for the British monarchy has passed.
Its gilded walls and archaic rituals no longer represent democracy, merit, or truth.
If we want a mature, honest society, we must dismantle the systems—royal, media, political—that reward hypocrisy and spectacle over accountability and grace.

“Titles of nobility are like the decorations of savages—ornaments for ignorance.”
— Voltaire

Re-Thinking Schooling for the Real World

When I walk into a classroom these days — as a teacher in the UK — I’m struck by how little our structure resembles the real world young people are entering. We still teach in 45- to 90-minute blocks, subject by subject: English, Maths, Science, History, Languages. We have bells. We have chairs. We have worksheets. We assess. We move on. Rinse. Repeat. Yet outside the school gate, the challenges our young people will face—from AI and globalisation to climate collapse and widening inequality—are not neatly partitioned into subjects. They are messy, interconnected, urgent.

Here are three international cases that suggest more radical alternatives—and then I’ll suggest how we might use them to reimagine schooling in the UK, starting now.

Case 1: Singapore – from mid-year exams to flexible pathways

In Singapore the national system has abolished mid-year exams in primary and secondary years, freeing time for deeper learning and teacher-led feedback instead of grinding revision loops.
At secondary level, the streaming model (Express, Normal, etc) is being replaced by Full Subject-Based Banding (“Full SBB”): instead of placing a young person in a fixed track, students choose subject levels (G1–G3) per subject, allowing them to mix strengths and interests rather than being boxed in.
What this means: fewer rigid exams, more flexible progression, and structural freedom to personalise learning.
For the UK: ask ourselves—why do we still do rigid tiers that assume a child is ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ across everything, instead of allowing them to pursue variable strengths (say strong in languages, average in science, needs support in maths)? And why do we still place so much weight on one set of exams at the end of a key stage, rather than more iterative assessment?

Case 2: India – NEP 2020, boards twice a year + life/vocational skills

India’s new National Education Policy (NEP 2020) mandates board exams twice a year for major classes, where students may keep their best score. This reduces the terrifying “all‐or‐nothing” moment and gives a chance for resubmission.
Additionally, it explicitly demands from Grade 6 onwards a ten-day “bagless” period of hands-on work (internships/local trades) and integrates vocational and life-skills education throughout.
Implication: schooling begins to resemble life and work, not just subject delivery and external testing.
For the UK: imagine a programme where Year 9 or Year 10 has a two-week “real-world problem” block: students pick a genuine local or global challenge (poverty, homelessness, climate change) and use maths, languages, geography, science, PSHE, enterprise skills to design a solution. That’s project-based, cross-curricular, tied to real life.

Case 3: Japan – active learning + financial literacy

In Japan the national curriculum has been revised to emphasise active learning: students present, debate, collaborate and solve problems rather than passively receive lectures. Also built into high school programmes are financial-literacy and consumer-skills modules (asset building, cashless payments, personal finance).
So: pedagogy changes (not just content), and the curriculum recognises the need for life literacy, not just exam preparation.
For the UK: we may ask — why is financial education so marginal in many schools? Why are pedagogical models still lecture-&-sit-in-rows when the world demands adaptability, collaboration & critical thinking?

The deeper problem: our modernist curriculum model

Putting all these cases side-by-side, what stands out is how far we in the UK remain locked into a modernist schema:

  • Distinct subjects taught in isolation, as though reality were tidily separable.

  • Fixed time-blocks (lessons) and chairs, with students sitting still for hours on end.

  • Exams that are terminal, summative, determined in a narrow timeframe and often divorced from the “real” problems pupils will face.

  • Little allowance for physical movement, cross-curricular exploration, problem-solving or student-agency.

  • A model that—I’m going to say it—feels weird, abnormal, cruel even, for keeping young children in chairs all day, little movement, scant exposure to purposeful activity or physical literacy. Meanwhile outside the gates they’ll live in a world wired for movement, disruption, interdisciplinarity.

In this model we risk producing young people who are: passive, desk-bound, conditioned to consume rather than create; taught to do school rather than do life. We train couch-potatoes for the hamster wheel of assessment rather than citizens capable of invention, exploration, critical thinking and embodied well-being.

What might a “real-world curriculum” look like?

Drawing on those international examples and your own teacher-intuitions, here are some provocations for UK schooling:

  1. Project-based, cross-curricular blocks
    Remove a full week (or more) per term from the timetable and turn it into a “challenge week”. Students choose or are assigned real problems: e.g., reduce poverty in a developing country, design a local food-supply solution, map the impact of climate change on migration. They use maths (statistics, modelling), geography (mapping), history (colonial legacies), languages (communication), science (systems thinking), psychology (behaviour change), ethics/citizenship (values). Teachers co-design and cross-facilitate rather than lead discrete 45-minute lessons.

  2. Flexible pathways, subject-by-subject
    Instead of rigid sets and tracks, allow students from Year 8/9 onwards to select subject-levels per subject based on interest, aptitude and growth—not past performance alone. Build in teacher-recommendation + student-choice models, as Singapore is doing.

  3. Life-skills & movement embedded, not optional

    • Integrate financial literacy, citizenship, personal data literacy (AI, privacy), entrepreneurial skills into the timetable.

    • Make movement (sports, outdoor education, active learning) a core part of the day: e.g., “walk-and-talk” lessons, outdoor problem-solving, labs under trees, standing/desks zones.

    • Schedule regular “bagless days” or “real-world internships” even for younger secondary pupils: local community projects, labs, fieldwork, digital-maker tasks.

  4. Iterative assessment, not one-shot exams
    Take a leaf from India: board-style exams + repeated attempts. In the UK context: split major assessments across the year, feed forward into the next block, allow ‘best score’ replacement, create more pupil-agency in when/how they demonstrate competence.

  5. Pedagogy aligned to complexity
    Shift from “teacher-tells” → “student-invents, collaborates, presents”. Use scaffolding but allow open-ended enquiry, design thinking, peer-review, public outcomes (presentations, exhibitions, digital portfolios). Curriculum design must explicitly graph skills like “team‐working”, “data-literacy”, “global-citizen hood”, “adaptability to AI”.

Vision required

Schools are not factories for producing uniform exam results. They are ecosystems for shaping young people who will live in an age of AI, climate instability, global mobility, social fragmentation and opportunity gaps. If we continue to treat them as though the 20th-century paradigm (boxed subjects, chairs in rows, summative exams) still fits, we are doing our children a disservice.

So I ask: Is it time we tore down the walls between our subjects, threw open the classroom door, took the chairs outside, gave pupils agency to solve real problems, taught them how to manage their money and data and bodies and minds — and changed the assessment regime from final-boss exam to ongoing, real-world performance?

The UK curriculum deserves this overhaul. Let the global examples inspire us—but the real work begins in our classrooms, as soon as we can find a minister for education with a vision.

Can a woman who can’t lead herself lead a nation?

It’s one of the oldest questions in politics and leadership: does moral integrity matter? Should we judge public figures by their private lives, or only by the outcomes of their public actions?

If a man or woman leads a country out of war, rescues an economy, or inspires a generation, should it concern us that they live a private life of chaos — sex, drugs, and rock and roll behind the curtain? Would Churchill’s whisky, Kennedy’s women, or today’s presidents’ indiscretions cancel out their public legacy?

Or is moral character inseparable from public trust — a person who cannot lead their own life or family surely cannot lead a nation with consistency, compassion, or restraint?

The convenient split

We like to split our heroes into compartments: the “private sinner” and the “public saviour.” It’s a comforting division. It allows us to admire brilliance while ignoring hypocrisy. But the two lives often bleed into one another.

A politician who cheats on his spouse might also cheat the public purse. A bishop who silences victims to protect the Church’s “reputation” might also protect power over truth. The capacity to lie at home often mirrors the capacity to lie in office.

Yet we’re also inconsistent in how we apply moral judgment. We forgive King Charles for betraying Diana — perhaps because his failings feel very human, almost Shakespearean. We condemn Prince Andrew, perhaps because his moral failures are no longer deniable. We elected a U.S. president with a criminal record, while deriding other nations for their corruption. And Boris Johnson — a man who fathered children by multiple women and lied with theatrical ease — remains, for some, a symbol of British optimism and charm.

Why? Because we admire confidence and results more than truthfulness. We are addicted to charisma, even when it’s dishonest.

The hypocrisy trap

Double standards abound. Politicians who campaign for “family values” are caught in affairs. Leaders who condemn crime are found embezzling taxes or funnelling money through offshore accounts. Religious figures who preach humility dress in gold and cover up abuse.

We seem to accept a quiet hypocrisy as part of public life. Perhaps we believe everyone is flawed. Perhaps we have grown cynical. Or perhaps, deep down, we know that to hold others accountable would mean holding ourselves accountable too.

But what about results?

The counterargument is simple: results matter. If a morally ambiguous leader ends a war, rebuilds an economy, or brings stability, should we care what happens in their bedroom? Isn’t the private life a private matter?

Yet the danger lies in normalising duplicity. If we say integrity is optional, we lose the right to expect honesty at all. The same man who cheats his wife may one day cheat his country — and we will have taught him that it doesn’t matter.

The measure of leadership

True leadership begins with self-leadership. A person who cannot govern their own impulses, desires, and relationships will eventually govern others with the same inconsistency. Integrity is not about moral perfection — it’s about coherence. When private truth aligns with public duty, trust becomes possible.

A man who cannot lead himself, or his family, may command authority, but he does not inspire it. Without inner discipline, power becomes performance.

The uncomfortable truth

Perhaps the question is not whether moral integrity matters — but why we keep pretending it doesn’t.

We can tolerate imperfection. We can forgive mistakes. But when deceit becomes normalised, leadership turns hollow. A man or woman who cannot tell the truth in private cannot be trusted to tell it in public.

And that, surely, is where the line must still be drawn.