A couple of days ago I wrote how comforting it was to spend Christmas Day with my family. We were in the very North London house which used to belong to my grandparents, and which I still have extremely warm, happy memories of. For that day, the woes of the wider world seemed unfathomably distant. I have, however, just come across this article by John Simpson, and the woes of the wider world have come crashing back. I’m not sure how much of it is hyperbole or exaggeration, but it is the first time I have seen someone talking so openly about the prospect of an imminent Third World War. Simpson writes “I’ve reported on more than 40 wars around the world during my career, which goes back to the 1960s. I watched the Cold War reach its height, then simply evaporate. But I’ve never seen a year quite as worrying as 2025 has been – not just because several major conflicts are raging but because it is becoming clear that one of them has geopolitical implications of unparalleled importance.”

With Russia more warlike and confrontational than it has been in decades, and Putin’s puppet now installed in the States, the world clearly now stands at an extremely dangerous juncture. For the most part, my generation grew up in a world of peace: It’s all we have known, and it is what we have come to expect. Yet, from the sound of it, that is about to come to a crashing, catastrophic end. Largely thanks to things like Brexit and the rise of Trump, the old certainties we once depended upon have now evaporated. Russia is growing ever stronger and eager to dominate; America is becoming isolationist and inward-looking; Europe is becoming weaker and more powerless to intervene. As much as I hope this is just exaggeration and melodrama, reading articles like this should make us all gravely concerned.