The dream of a truly strong leader who in one leap can free the United Kingdom from its dilemmas may be just that.

Some great issues in human affairs can never be neatly and swiftly tied up and solved. Brexit is one of them.

At long last, a whiff of compromise is in the air.

The China presence in Europe seems far more complicated, extensive and insidious than that of Japan during its economic heyday.

In much of Asia, the left-right ideological struggle is over and it is technocracy and technology that now reign supreme.

The headline-grabbing departures are only a tiny fraction of the dozens of Japanese companies in the U.K. and the150,000 jobs that they provide.

The immediate outcome is reduced to two routes, neither very attractive but at least going forward.

With almost every individual empowered by web access, the whole system of garnering and marshalling opinion becomes impossibly distorted.

The ugly truth is that the emissions battle will be won or lost (and at present is being lost) thanks to the energy policies of China, India, the U.S. and Russia.