Yep

My new book, The Swiss Democracy Dictionary, asks a deceptively simple question: do we need better politicians, or do we need a better way of organising political power? This 365-page guide contains 72 entries explaining, in clear and accessible language, the institutions, ideas, history and mechanisms that make Swiss democracy so different. Each entry runs across several pages, making the book equally accessible to the curious layperson, while also providing a useful reference for academics, constitutionalists, politicians and anyone interested in how democracy can work differently. And Switzerland 🇨🇭provides a rather remarkable case study. It is not simply that Switzerland 🇨🇭is wealthy. It repeatedly performs exceptionally well across an extraordinary range of measures. It has one of the world's highest life expectancies. It remains the world's number one country for innovation, topping the Global Innovation Index for the 16th consecutive year in 2026. It was ranked the world's most competitive economy by IMD in 2025 and, even after falling to third in 2026, remained number one for government efficiency and infrastructure. It is also consistently among the world's most peaceful countries, with low levels of violent crime, and ranks highly for political stability and institutional quality. Switzerland 🇨🇭was ranked 5th in the 2025 Global Peace Index and 8th in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index. So we have a country that combines remarkable economic performance with innovation, infrastructure, stability, security, high institutional quality and an exceptionally high quality of life. Is that simply coincidence? Or is there something about the way Switzerland 🇨🇭organises and distributes political power that helps explain the result? That is one of the questions this dictionary explores. It looks beyond the familiar idea of referendums to examine the much bigger picture: subsidiarity, federalism, decentralisation, local government, civic participation, accountability, political compromise and, above all, the principle that citizens should retain meaningful political power between elections. I have lived under the Swiss system for two decades. It is certainly not perfect. No country is. Switzerland 🇨🇭has its own problems, disagreements and political failures. But there has to be a reason why the same country keeps appearing near the top of so many completely different international measures. And once you start looking closely at how its political system actually works, some uncomfortable questions begin to emerge. Why can Swiss citizens challenge laws directly? Why can they propose constitutional change themselves? Why is so much political power held at cantonal and communal level? Why does Parliament not sit all year? Why do citizens have so many opportunities to intervene between elections? And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: If citizens can be trusted to choose their politicians, why shouldn't they also be trusted to decide some of the things politicians decide for them? This dictionary follows my two non-fiction books and four novels exploring direct democracy. It is intended as an easy guide to a system that gives citizens something many representative democracies largely reserve for politicians: the power to decide. I make no claim that Switzerland 🇨🇭has discovered a perfect political formula, or that direct democracy alone explains its success. But I do believe there is an inconvenient truth worth examining. When citizens are given meaningful democratic tools, something rather interesting can happen. They do not necessarily become more extreme, more chaotic or less responsible. They can become more engaged. They can challenge those in power. They can reject proposals they dislike. They can demand change when politicians refuse to act. And, importantly, they can also reject attractive-sounding proposals when they believe the consequences are wrong. That is the Swiss experiment. The Swiss have been practising it for more than a century. Now political movements and newly formed parties around the world are increasingly looking towards Switzerland 🇨🇭and asking whether direct democracy might represent the next stage in the evolution of democratic government. Perhaps they are discovering something Switzerland 🇨🇭has known for generations. This book is an invitation to look closely. Not just at Switzerland. 🇨🇭 At your own system. Because after 72 entries and 365 pages, I suspect many readers will find themselves asking a rather uncomfortable question: “What on earth is the system I have been living under?” There is no perfect democracy. But perhaps there is such a thing as a better one. And perhaps Switzerland 🇨🇭gives us a rather compelling place to start looking. #DirectDemocracy

🇨🇭 The Fiscal Shield 🛡️ In Switzerland they installed a debt break, a constitutional rule introduced in 2003, following approval by approximately 85% of Swiss voters in a 2001 referendum. Its purpose was and is to prevent the federal government from continually spending more than it can sustainably afford, passing the burden of debt to future generations. The principle is straightforward: government spending must be aligned with revenue over the economic cycle. This allows flexibility during recessions and exceptional emergencies, while requiring financial discipline in normal economic conditions. Rather than relying on politicians to restrain borrowing voluntarily, the debt brake establishes a binding framework for managing public money responsibly. The results have been significant. Between 2003 and 2019, Switzerland reduced its federal debt by approximately CHF 27 billion. Lower debt also helped limit interest costs, leaving more public money available for other priorities. Academic research has found evidence that the debt brake contributed to improved fiscal outcomes, although economic growth and other policy decisions have also played a part. The Swiss model demonstrates how constitutional safeguards and democratic accountability can work together to protect public finances. Its central lesson is that governments should retain the flexibility to respond to genuine crises, but should not routinely finance today’s spending by leaving tomorrow’s taxpayers with the bill. If the UK had more #DirectDemocracy maybe it wouldn’t have 3 trillion of debt. Something to learn here from the Swiss. The Fiscal Shield 🛡️ A Sure Protection

He torches the country just before he exits

2026 - Switzerland is officially the worlds 3rd most peaceful country. 2026 Global Peace Index (GPI), published by the Institute for Economics & Peace. 🇨🇭 Switzerland has ranked third among the world’s most peaceful countries in 2026, behind Iceland (1st) and New Zealand (2nd). The index assesses 163 countries and territories using 23 indicators across: 🇨🇭 societal safety and security 🇨🇭 ongoing domestic & international conflict, 🇨🇭 and militarisation.  In a world seemingly on fire 🔥 it says a lot. Perhaps Switzerland has something to teach us! gpi.economicsandpeace.org I wonder if it has anything to do with its political system of #DirectDemocracy ?

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I like this precision from Christian Fantoli. “Every major step goes before the people…a negotiated path, slow, but chosen”

A great inspiration - the art of David Inshaw There is something profoundly English about David Inshaw’s paintings. They seem to belong to a world we recognise instinctively, yet can never quite explain: summer gardens, churchyards, fields, trees, distant hills and quiet country lanes, all rendered with an almost unnerving stillness. His landscapes are rural, but they are never merely pastoral. Beneath their apparent tranquillity there is always the suggestion of another world pressing gently against this one. Inshaw’s England is an England of memory, mythology and half-remembered stories. It has something of Thomas Hardy in it, and something of Samuel Palmer, but also something of the English imagination itself—the feeling that an ordinary landscape may contain centuries of secrets. A tree is never simply a tree; a garden may be a stage; a woman standing in a field may appear to be waiting for something that we, the viewer, have somehow arrived too early to witness. There is even something faintly Agatha Christie about it. Not the murder mystery itself, but that peculiar English atmosphere in which everything appears perfectly civilised and peaceful while, somewhere just beyond the edge of the picture, something inexplicable may have occurred. The cricket lawn is immaculate. The garden is beautifully tended. The sunlight is warm. And yet something is not quite right. You find yourself looking for clues. That is perhaps what makes Inshaw’s paintings so compelling. They do not tell us what has happened. They invite us to imagine it. His famous The Badminton Game, for instance, freezes a moment which seems both utterly ordinary and strangely charged. Inshaw himself spoke of wanting to capture a moment in time while giving it a deeper, more universal meaning, and described the Wiltshire landscape around Devizes as filled with “mystery and wonder.”  His Englishness is therefore not simply about subject matter. It is psychological. It is the England of ancient earthworks beneath modern fields, of churchyards and country houses, of summer evenings, thunderstorms, bonfires and gardens, where the present seems to coexist with everything that has gone before. His landscapes feel inhabited not only by people, but by memory. And this is where Inshaw becomes almost mystical. The countryside is not scenery; it is a vessel for emotion. Love, loss, desire, anticipation, childhood and mortality seem to linger within it. His paintings possess a strange ability to make the familiar unfamiliar—to make an English garden feel like a place from a dream. Perhaps that is the deepest mystery in David Inshaw’s work. Nothing appears to be happening, and yet everything seems about to happen. The world is completely still, but it is a stillness charged with possibility. You look at an Inshaw painting and feel that you have entered a story whose beginning you have missed, whose ending you will never know, and whose secret is somehow contained in the landscape itself. Check him out and listen

Yep - I agree with that

“Digital Finance’s Achilles’ Heel: When the Cloud Goes Down, Your Money Goes With It”

Lots of evidence coming out now!