The 25th anniversary meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in the Kyrgyz capital may offer a glimmer of hope that international relations do not need to be defined by endless confrontation, writes KENNY COYLE
SO SAID the Sunday Telegraph last week. The Sunday Telegraph is more the weekend reading of the average Conservative voter than it is the authoritative voice of our ruling class.
It said: “Jeremy Corbyn is on course to sweep into No 10 after Theresa May failed to deliver on her promise to take the UK out of the EU by March 29.”
This scary analysis — designed to galvanise Tory opinion — is that Conservatives “would lose 59 seats in the event of a general election, making Labour the largest party in the Commons.”
Renewed illusions in social democratic reformism are sprouting as a result of Andy Burnham’s rhetoric, but material conditions are already intruding into the debate, argues NICK WRIGHT
NICK WRIGHT continues his series analysing the trends in European politics
Friedrich Merz’s call for a new Plaza Accord ignores how Washington’s 1985 currency ambush destroyed Japan without fixing US deficits — China, a sovereign socialist state with 1.4 billion consumers, cannot be bullied the same way, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year



