What we actually think — and why. Opinion that earns its keep: stated plainly, defended with reasons, grounded in enough accumulated knowledge that it cannot be dismissed as a vibe.
Opinion is not difficult to produce. The internet has demonstrated this definitively. What is difficult is an opinion that earns its keep: stated plainly, defended with reasons, and grounded in enough accumulated knowledge that it cannot be dismissed as a vibe.
These are not balanced takes. Not all positions on questions of democratic governance, rule of law, and European self-reliance are equally legitimate — and we do not perform the kind of false balance that pretends otherwise. There are genuine trade-offs in almost everything, and we acknowledge them. However, there is a difference between a genuine trade-off and a question that has a defensible answer. This pillar operates on that distinction.
We can be wrong. The best counter-argument is always included — not as a courtesy, but because engaging with it seriously is the only way to know whether the position actually holds. When the counter-argument is partially correct, we say so. A caveat is not a weakness. It is evidence that the thinking is real.
Two convictions run beneath everything published here. They are not talking points. They are the editorial orientations from which the arguments follow — held firmly, but not worn as identity badges.
Europe should be capable of relying on itself — in energy, security, technology, and culture. Not nationalism. Strategic seriousness. The Perfect European notices, with a certain dry weariness, that Europe spent decades outsourcing its security, its energy supply, its technology, and even its intellectual self-confidence to others. This is not treasonous. It is simply imprudent — like a person who has quietly stopped carrying their own keys and then seems surprised when they cannot get home. The argument for European self-reliance is not about closing borders or privileging the domestic by default. It is about a civilisation serious enough about its values to also be serious about its capacity to defend them.
Europe is the custodian of liberal democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and tolerance. These are achievements, not assumptions. They were built over centuries, they can be dismantled in a decade, and they require a citizenry willing to defend them when it becomes inconvenient. The opinions published here reflect a low threshold for calling out the erosion of democratic norms — however procedurally dressed that erosion arrives — and a refusal to treat all political positions as equally legitimate simply because they have been expressed through electoral mechanisms.
Everything else follows from those two convictions.
The territory is specific. On European debates — why the EU’s young person problem is a substance problem, not a communications one; why cultural funding that does not reach distribution infrastructure is not actually cultural policy; why the defence conversation is still, in most European capitals, a conversation about appearances rather than capacity.
On democratic backsliding — what it looks like when it is happening slowly and procedurally, why liberal institutions underestimate it until it is expensive to reverse, and what a serious response looks like in practice rather than in communiqués.
On populism — its internal logic, its genuine appeal to legitimate grievances, and why the proposed cure is usually worse than the disease it claims to treat. This is not said with contempt for the grievances. It is said with clarity about the proposed remedy.
On the assumption, which we reject with a certain gentle firmness, that the best version of anything — governance, technology, cultural production, strategic thinking — originates elsewhere. Europe has its own standards, its own excellences, and its own failures. They are more interesting when examined on their own terms.
The calibrated, evidence-based companion to these opinions is The Self-Reliance Monitor — a monthly assessment of where European self-reliance is actually advancing and where it remains announcement rather than delivery.
Every piece in Opinions, Held Firmly follows the same intellectual discipline. State the position in the first paragraph. Present the best version of the opposing argument — not a weakened version, not a caricature, but the strongest form in which a serious person holds it. Then explain why the position stands, or where the counter-argument requires updating it.
This discipline exists for two reasons. First: it is the only honest way to hold an opinion. Second: it is what earns the right to be read by people who do not already agree — which is the only audience worth writing for. The Chatham House Rule governs many of the conversations that produce these opinions. The rule exists because serious people say more honest things when they are not on the record. Opinions, Held Firmly exists because someone should then be willing to say those things on the record, with their name — or at least their editorial sensibility — attached.
Three entry points, chosen for range.
The EU’s young person problem is not a communications problem is the clearest example of the pillar’s method: a widely held misdiagnosis, stated plainly, with the specific structural argument for why it is wrong and one concrete thing that would constitute a real response.
Europe funds its culture and then loses it covers the gap between cultural subsidy and cultural distribution — with the specific numbers that make the gap impossible to explain away as a matter of priorities. [INTERNAL LINK 3 — to cultural distribution post]
The best argument against these convictions is also published here. The Best Argument Against Us is the series that steelmans the credible opposing view — the case that European liberal politics has become a class identity rather than a political programme, that strategic autonomy is protectionism with better branding, or that the EU’s democratic deficit is structural and unfixable. We engage with these arguments seriously. Occasionally they require updating the position. That updating is also published.
The full archive is below. The pieces can be read in any order. Each one stands on its own. But read across the archive, they accumulate into a coherent editorial position — one that is, we think, defensible. The counter-arguments are welcome.
