Wall Street Journal (September 6)
Vladimir Putin’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “underscores the global nature of the threat to U.S. interests.” Indeed, the Japanese Prime Minister’s visit to Kyiv this spring was partly “because America’s allies in Asia understand that Ukraine isn’t a distant squabble. Russia has its own Pacific ambitions, including militarizing the Kuril Islands, some of which Japan also claims. A Russia that prevails in Ukraine will provoke elsewhere. Mr. Putin is also the junior partner to the neighborhood’s No. 1 threat: The Chinese Communist Party.”
Tags: Allies, Asia, CCP, Global nature, Japan, Kim, Kuril Islands, Kyiv, North Korea, Pacific ambitions, Prime minister, Provoke, Putin, Russia, Threat, U.S. interests, Ukraine
New York Times (July 9)
“Japan’s longest-serving prime minister became perhaps the most transformational politician in the country’s post-World War II history,” even though he “never achieved his goal of revising Japan’s Constitution to transform his country into what the Japanese call a ‘normal nation,’ able to employ its military to back up its national interests like any other.”
Tags: Abe, Constitution, History, Japan, Longest-serving, Military, National interests, Normal nation, Politician, Prime minister, Revising, Transformational
Financial Times (September 5)
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has “lacked distinctive policies of his own or an independent political base. Going forward, “Japan needs a different kind of leader.” The next leader “requires communication skills and a compelling programme.”
Tags: Communication, Different, Distinctive, Independent, Japan, Leader, Policies, Political base, Prime minister, Skills, Suga
The Scotsman (November 8)
“It is clear that the four-nations approach that the UK government pursed at the start of the pandemic has been replaced with something far less constructive. If Mr Johnson baulks at the suggestion that he is starting to look more like a Prime Minister of England than the UK, then he should really stop acting like one.”
Tags: Baulks, Constructive, England, Four nations, Government, Johnson, Pandemic, Prime minister, UK
The Economist (October 17)
“The prime minister’s election victory in December ought to have banished the memory of Theresa May’s hobbled premiership and rendered him dominant,” but he now bears “than a passing resemblance to his predecessor.” The first COVID-19 “wave cost Mr Johnson a great deal of his political capital. If the government’s record does not improve, the second could exhaust it.”
Tags: COVID-19, Election, Exhaust, Hobbled, Johnson, May, Political capital, Predecessor, Premiership, Prime minister, Resemblance
The Guardian (June 3)
Covid-19 has not given Boris Johnson “the Churchillian moment that he imagined. It has proved too big for him.” Both “personally and politically, Johnson has had a bad pandemic. This is not what he thought being prime minister would be like.” At this point, Johnson just wants to wash his hands of Covid-19 and “get back to being the leader of Brexit Britain.”
Bloomberg (April 7)
“Welcome to the table, Mr. Abe. Japan’s been waiting” for leadership. The Prime Minister’s “fiscal package may look bold, but action is late.”
Tags: Abe, Action, Bold, Fiscal package, Japan, Leadership, Prime minister, Waiting
The Guardian (September 12)
“Here the issue… is that a British prime minister persists in asserting the impossible. He demands that Britain leave the European single market but with a gaping hole in its border, in Ireland. He wants a border and no border.” A no-deal Brexit would cause “chaos” in a worst case scenario, but “in Ireland it is physically impossible.”
Tags: Border, Brexit, Chaos, EU, Impossible, Ireland, No-deal, Prime minister, Single market, UK
New York Times (July 23)
“Boris Johnson, to whom lying comes as easily as breathing, is on the verge of becoming prime minister. He faces the most complex and intractable political crisis to affect Britain since 1945…. His premiership could bring about the end of Britain itself.”
Tags: Britain, Complex, End, Intractable, Johnson, Lying, Political crisis, Prime minister, UK
The Independent (June 19)
“In the Tory leadership debate, the rare glimmers of truth were even more painful than the lies. It was an ingenious new method of national torture. Five would be prime ministers, appealing to reason, but knowing that in the end, only the psychopaths will decide.”
Tags: Debate, Ingenious, Leadership, Lies, Painful, Prime minister, Psychopaths, Reason, Torture, Tory, Truth
