Ahead of New Zealand’s 2017 election, I floated the idea of a grand coalition between National and Labour in a few columns. The circumstances back then made it appealing. Read more

A German economist writing satire about New Zealand sounds like the opening line of a bad joke. The joke gets longer when you learn the plot: two Martian auditors land in the Wairarapa expecting humanity at its best, are promptly fined for parking without consent, and proceed on a reluctant tiki tour of the country in the company of a Wellington bureaucrat named Ben, who has quietly decided his career is over and he may as well help them. Read more

Russian power has always sat on a contradiction. The country can put satellites into orbit and tanks across borders, but it cannot build a normal economy. Read more

It is hard to convince anyone they need to change when they think nothing is broken. The story of the emperor’s new clothes captures it. Read more

Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan in 1651, amid the wreckage of the English Civil War. We know him for his defence of the state: without a sovereign authority to impose order, human life reverts to a “war of every man against every man”, where existence is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. Read more

On Tuesday morning, President Trump told CNBC he did not want to extend the ceasefire with Iran. Yet on Tuesday afternoon, he extended it. Read more

In May 1935, as Winston Churchill later told the story, Pierre Laval travelled to Moscow to sound out Stalin about an alliance against Hitler. Late in the talks, the French foreign minister asked whether the Soviet leader might ease his persecution of Russian Catholics. Read more

Last Friday, New Zealand signed its first city deal, a formal agreement between central government and Auckland, the country’s largest city. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called Auckland “New Zealand’s economic engine room” and promised to get it “firing on all cylinders.” Among the deal’s headline commitments are a plan to roof the Auckland Tennis Centre, a review of the ownership model for Eden Park, the national stadium, and $10 million to relocate Auckland Cricket to Colin Maiden Park. Read more