International

The president of the Russian State Duma – the national parliament – and the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will together be looking into the question of how severed relations between the Duma and PACE – which represents all of Europe’s parliaments - can be restored. So promised Duma president Sergey Naryshkin in Moscow this week, to three of PACE’s political group presidents, including SP Senator Tiny Kox, who heads the United European Left group. Pronouncing himself happy with the outcome, Kox said: ‘In times of crisis parliamentarians must not exclude each other but look for solutions together. That is the meaning of parliamentary diplomacy.’

Sometimes I feel just like a tee-shirt which has been lying for a long time in the cupboard and has suddenly come back into fashion. Many people have seen how inequality has grown and the consequences this has had for society. Now Thomas Piketty, a French economist, is saying it – in the language of economists. And these huge contradictions are also being taken seriously in politics. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a classic book on economics, but also an item of clothing that has been taken out of the cupboard at just the right moment.