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Philip Stephens

Director of the editorial board and chief political commentator

Philip Stephens is associate editor of the Financial Times and director of the editorial board. As chief political commentator he writes on global and British affairs.

He joined the Financial Times in 1983 after working as a correspondent for Reuters in Brussels and has been the FT’s economics editor, political editor and editor of the UK edition. He was educated at Wimbledon College and at Oxford university.

He won the David Watt Prize for Outstanding Political Journalism; Political Journalist of the Year by the UK Political Studies Association; and Political Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards.

Email Philip Stephens @philipstephens (link opens in a new browser window)
Email Philip Stephens @philipstephens (link opens in a new browser window)

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  • Thursday, 22 October, 2020
    Geopolitics
    Joe Biden’s promise is of a life beyond Donald Trump

    The Democratic candidate’s prospectus may not be heroic, but it sets a different course for the US

  • Thursday, 8 October, 2020
    Politics
    Democracy faces bigger threats than Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping 

    Western governments must counter autocrat aggression, but saving democracy starts at home

  • Thursday, 1 October, 2020
    Germany
    Germany’s tough choices amid the global disorder

    Some three decades after the Berlin wall fell, history did not end and now the Republic must take sides

  • Thursday, 24 September, 2020
    Donald Trump
    Why autocrats are lining up for Donald Trump

    The US president has put the world’s most powerful democracy on the side of authoritarianism

  • Thursday, 17 September, 2020
    Scottish independence
    Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan will break the UK union

    The insistence that England must decide what Scotland eats is a gift to the independence movement

  • Thursday, 10 September, 2020
    Brexit
    Post-Brexit UK must respect the rule of law

    Boris Johnson’s plan to rewrite EU withdrawal agreement destroys trust and undermines democracy

  • Thursday, 3 September, 2020
    Eastern Mediterranean tensions
    Home truths in the eastern Mediterranean

    Europe can no longer rely on the US to act as referee in the Greek stand-off with Turkey

  • Monday, 31 August, 2020
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    Haldane — a timely reminder of how effective politics can deliver

    John Campbell’s biography of the life and political times of forgotten statesman Richard Haldane is richly informed

  • Thursday, 13 August, 2020
    US presidential election 2020
    An election to decide America’s place in the world

    November’s contest will be as consequential for the world as any since Franklin D Roosevelt

  • Promoted Content
  • Thursday, 6 August, 2020
    UK politics & policy
    How Boris Johnson lost control

    A powerful prime minister means little without a governing purpose

  • Tuesday, 4 August, 2020
    ReviewHistory books
    America in the World — Robert Zoellick’s fine new history

    How pendulum-like swings between interventionist and isolationist impulses have shaped US foreign policy

  • Thursday, 30 July, 2020
    US foreign policy
    A cold war does not answer China’s challenge

    Guarding the west’s interests and values should not mean an ideological confrontation with Beijing

  • Thursday, 23 July, 2020
    Coronavirus pandemic
    The path from Covid-19 to a new social contract

    Pandemic offers world leaders an opportunity to rebuild faith in liberal democracy

  • Thursday, 16 July, 2020
    UK foreign policy
    Huawei and the hard facts facing global Britain

    China’s 5G bid has proved a lesson in the limits of sovereignty

  • Thursday, 2 July, 2020
    Pound Sterling
    Sterling’s faded illusion of sovereignty

    The pound has been a ball-and-chain on successive UK governments

  • Thursday, 25 June, 2020
    Russian politics
    Russia cannot afford another 15 years at war with the west

    Vladimir Putin should brush off the cold war cobwebs in pursuit of a hard-headed look at national interests

  • Thursday, 18 June, 2020
    Brexit
    Britain gets a glimpse of life after Brexit

    The lesson from the pandemic is that national ‘sovereignty’ does not answer the challenges facing the UK

  • Thursday, 11 June, 2020
    Geopolitics
    America’s allies should prepare for a Biden presidency

    The approach of the November election is not a time for Europeans to sit on their hands

  • Thursday, 4 June, 2020
    Geopolitics
    Three compass points for an EU-China policy

    Europe is nothing without its commitments to human dignity, democracy and the rule of law

  • Thursday, 28 May, 2020
    Brexit
    Britain’s Brexiters still do not understand Europe

    The underlying assumption remains that the UK is somehow ‘owed’ privileged access

  • Thursday, 21 May, 2020
    German politics
    The EU’s fate rests on Germany’s identity crisis

    Old tensions endure between ideas of a German Europe or a European Germany

  • Thursday, 14 May, 2020
    UK politics & policy
    British exceptionalism has reached the end of the road

    Illustrious history is insufficient shield against a virus and grim reality of Brexit

  • Wednesday, 29 April, 2020
    Geopolitics
    Xi and Putin are the big losers from this pandemic

    The relationship of unequals has seen both Beijing and Moscow wrongfooted by the crisis

  • Thursday, 23 April, 2020
    UK politics & policy
    How politics thwarted the UK’s Covid-19 response

    Ministers failed to grasp the threat as Boris Johnson tried to swerve a tough response

  • Thursday, 16 April, 2020
    National Health Service
    Johnson can now redeem his debt to the NHS

    Covid-19 and his brush with mortality present the UK prime minister with a unique chance

Previous You are on page 1 Next

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