BBC News (World) x.com/BBCWorld/statu…

Thread on the real size of things 🧵 1. Titanic compared to a modern cruise ship

Whether or not the UK rejoins the EU comes down to how UK leadership cadres come to terms with loss of geopolitical status. It could go either way depending on how UK elite groups cope with middle power status on the borders of Europe's hegemonic power.

Q: If a national abortion ban came across your desk, would you veto it? Trump: I don't want to answer

This would be seen as utterly disrespectful and extremely unprofessional in any country or region.

🚨 Ursula von der Leyen strikes back at member states for not nominating enough women for the next European Commission. "Half of the people in the European Union are women," she says. "My experience is: if you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it. It does not come naturally."

Inspired by this survey, I decided to ask people while in Greece the past month for their most negative stereotype of tourists from each country. Here's the consensus I got: Tourists in Europe who are the most... arrogant: 🇫🇷 dumb: 🇺🇸 badly-behaved: 🇬🇧 selfish: 🇩🇪 cheap: 🇳🇱

Vice President Vestager on the tremendous disrespect Europe's leaders have shown to 🇪🇺President @VonDerLeyen by ignoring her request for gender parity.

This is fascinating. Russia is almost always at the top, for 300 years.

Michel Barnier, the man the pro-Brexit press loved to hate could emerge today as the new French PM. According to Fr media, Barnier (73) will be “tested” by Macron today as an elder statesman who might be broadly acceptable to a majority in the much-splintered National Assembly 1/

The FBI report has confirmed what was long known: Putin has been working overtime this year to interfere with elections in America and Europe. But it's interesting to see that Russia is in particular targeting Germany as vulnerable to disinformation. politico.eu/article/fbi-do…

BREAKING: the conservative former Brexit negotiator and 🇪🇺Commissioner Michel Barnier has been appointed as French Prime Minister. euractiv.com/section/electi…

The german leader of the opposition stoking up an anti-immigration debate to appease the far right. This is dangerous and irresponsible and usually ends with the self-destruction of the centre right. Has he not seen what happened to the Tories or his sister parties in France?

Le front républicain...

Though he was strangely portrayed as some kind of radical EU federalist in the British media during the Brexit years, Michel Barnier is in fact a very conservative Gaulist with strong nationalist inclinations. My take on the 🇫🇷PM announcement: davekeating.substack.com/p/what-does-fr…

He's right. It's called representative democracy.