title: European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess  and How to Put Them Right
author:  Philippe Legrain 
description: Philippe Legrain is an independent thinker and communicator who also has practical experience of policymaking at the highest level. From February 2011 to February 2014, he was independent economic adviser to the President of the European Commission and head of the team that provides the president with strategic policy advice. He is also the author of three critically acclaimed books  Open World: The Truth about Globalisation (2002); Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (2007); and Aftershock: Reshaping the World Economy After the Crisis (2010). He tweets as @plegrain. For more details, see philippelegrain.com/about/
zlib_text: FEBRUARY 1ST–7TH 2020
  Coronavirus: a pandemic in the making?
  Trump’s one-sided peace plan
  Private markets–a dangerous obsession
  The problem with puberty blockers
  Into the unknown
  
  The Economist February 1st 2020
  5
  Contents continues overleaf
  1
  Contents
  The world this week
  7 A summary of political
  and business news
  Leaders
  9 Britain after Brexit
  Into the unknown
  10 Coronavirus
  How bad will it get?
  11 Trump’s peace plan
  Dead on arrival
  11 Goldman Sachs
  How the mighty have
  fallen
  12 Puberty blockers
  Pill-pushers
  Letters
  14 On one-nation Tories,
  chips, back pain, Boeing,
  disgust
  Brieﬁng
  17 The special relationship
  No longer such a smooth
  ride
  Britain
  21 Regulatory divergence
  22 Farewell to the euro-myth
  23 Fisheries
  24 Immigration
  24 Doing trade deals
  25 Rail nationalisation
  25 BBC cuts
  26 The pushback against
  trans rights
  27 Bagehot English
  nationalism
  Europe
  28 Salvini’s Sardine surprise
  29 Taking on Viktor Orban
  30 Elections in Paris
  30 Cleaning up Greece
  31 China and Turkey
  31 Club dea