And the winner is . . .

Who I wonder is to be this year’s Nobel Peace Laureate? I would be willing to bet that the public choice would come down to Thunberg versus Navalny. Of the two I would favour Greta, since in a way she is the least tainted by politics, though how long that will last is anybody’s guess. One wonders what she’ll be saying in five years’ time, after what will have seemed like a lifetime struggling with the vested interests she rightly rails against. As for Navalny, regardless of some doubts about his right leaning past, it cannot be understated how his choice to return to Russia makes him something of a hero. But fighting Putin is not the same as fighting climate change, one affects us all, the other is largely a local affair, despite all the allegations about Russia’s supposed malign influence in global affairs (and the problem with that allegation, which may well be true is that we’re up to the same tricks and always have been). The Peace Prize committee has blotted its copy book in the past—Kissinger!—and more recently giving the award to Obama for merely being elected. I think my money is on Thunberg, unless of course the committee finds some obscure but well meaning individual nobody’s heard of. Or would rather forget.