European Union

The exoskeleton of the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect is such a deep, glazed black that it looks like it crawled out of a Flemish oil painting. When Jenny Gray, the CEO of Zoos Victoria, holds one in her outstretched hand (firmly cuffing her sleeve with the other), its long body stretches from the base of her palm to the tip of her fingers. Gray tells me that in the early twentieth century a s

Last month’s hung parliament in the British election confirms a basic rule of modern politics: whenever markets fail, representative democracy falters. Not just in the UK, but throughout the European Union, the near collapse of the credit and banking system is fuelling deep public disaffection with parties, politicians and parliaments. In Iceland, a whole government was sacked by angry vote