Juan Dávila is a First Year reading Engineering Science at St. John’s College

As an international student who enjoys political discussion the question “so how’s Spain doing?” was bound to come up, thankfully (for the conversation if not my home country) the situation offers ample space for commentary and discussion. I can tell a tale of rising and falling powers, backstabbing, and shifty players, who defend their fiefdoms using them as power bases to control the machinery of state. This can all sound rather grandiose and evoke imagery of political dramas, where we would see Pablo Iglesias ride in on a dragon and scorch the bourgeoisie. However, this is not the case - a more apt comparison would be a Latin-American “Telenovela”, ironically.

The UK faces a conundrum: continue to trade with third world countries which damage the environment or cease to and consign millions of people to languish in poverty. This is a dilemma that policy-makers across a wide spectrum face, that of whether to prioritise free trade and anti-poverty measures or anti global-warming measures. However, this dichotomy misses the subtlety in which foreign aid and trade deals can branch the divide. With a fresh new mandate and the Conservatives’ impressive record on conservation and foreign aid, it is more important than ever to make the case for a more radical system of green trade and green aid.