Europe

Gavin Mortimer

Is Macron a ‘danger for peace’ in Ukraine?

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are in competition to be the de facto leader of the European response to the diplomatic crisis between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president Zelensky. The cynic might wonder if Macron isn’t perhaps making the most of the fallout to boost his standing after a calamitous few months. The French president’s reputation has not recovered from his decision last June to call a snap election; the result was political chaos and three prime ministers in six months. Few French have confidence in their president to handle the situation Ukraine effectively Domestically, France is a disaster zone. Lawlessness, immigration and an ailing economy are just three reasons

Keir Starmer has had his best week since becoming Prime Minister

Even Keir Starmer’s fiercest detractors (and there are a fair few) must concede that he has had a very good week on the international stage: the best by a long chalk since he entered Downing Street. The Prime Minister, derided by critics as a political plodder, lacking in ideas and charisma-free, is a leader transformed. The new Starmer is a man with a mission, imbued with the confidence to lead. This was very much in evidence when he met US President Donald Trump for talks in Washington earlier this week. Starmer approached the discussions in the manner of the barrister he used to be, carefully mastering his brief and solely focused on

Is the Kurdish PKK about to lay down its arms?

On Thursday, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) called on his organisation to lay down their arms and dissolve themselves. If they comply, this would put an end to a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state that has claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. The statement was delivered in a crowded press conference in Istanbul by members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy party (DEM). The call appeared to be more or less unconditional. One of the speakers at the end of the conference added that ‘in practice, of course, the laying down of arms and the PKK’s self-dissolution require the recognition of democratic politics

Lisa Haseldine

Merz is caught in a defence spending trap of his own making

It’s not just in Britain that defence spending is top of the agenda. In Germany, too, the debate has turned to how the government can resurrect the country’s hollowed-out armed forces. Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU and the man pipped to become the next chancellor, is driving the discussion. But unlike the grudgingly positive response Prime Minister Keir Starmer has received for pledging to increase UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP over the next two years, Merz is blundering his way into an almighty row – and possibly a constitutional crisis.  The final vote in Sunday’s federal election had not been fully counted before Merz, whose

Russia is the big winner in Germany’s election

The real winners of Germany’s election are sitting in Moscow. Despite Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) technically claiming victory with a meagre 28 per cent showing, the truly remarkable surge belongs to the openly pro-Russian forces that now dominate the political landscape. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left party Die Linke (successor to East Germany’s communist SED) have emerged from this record 85 per cent turnout election with unprecedented strength: both unapologetically aligned with Vladimir Putin’s interests and fundamentally opposed to Germany’s Western orientation. That this Russification of German politics coincides with the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine feels less like coincidence and more like

What Europe gets wrong about the far right

The head of America’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (Doge) has written to all federal workers in the US asking them to explain in a brief email what they did last week. The exercise is intended to take no more than five minutes but has already lead to howls from many employees. How could anyone expect them to perform such a task? How can one explain the intricacies of supporting transgender opera among the Inuit in such short order? Happily, the new editor is not putting those of us on The Spectator’s payroll through any similar exercise. Nevertheless, something in the global vibe-shift perhaps impels me to mention a little of

Why Macron is offering France’s nukes to Europe

President Emmanuel Macron has raised the nuclear card. He has offered to provide nuclear cover for Europe as fears intensify that President Trump is moving further away from Nato and from America’s historic obligations towards European allies. The idea of France, the fourth largest nuclear weapons power in the world, extending its nuclear deterrence is not new. Macron is just one of many French presidents who have contemplated providing a European dimension to France’s force de frappe. However, today the context is dramatically different. For the first time in Nato’s history, the US sided with Russia and not its European allies when the Trump administration refused to condemn Moscow for the

Gavin Mortimer

Europe can’t silence its working class forever

Last December the European Commission published its ‘priorities’ for the next five years. All the bases were covered, from defence to sustainable prosperity to social fairness. And of course, the most important priority of all, democracy. ‘Europe’s future in a fractured world will depend on having a strong democracy and on defending the values that give Europeans the freedoms and rights that they cherish,’ proclaimed the Commission, which pledged it was committed to ‘putting citizens at the heart of our democracy’. December was the same month that a Romanian court cancelled the presidential election, after the surprise first round victory of the Eurosceptic and anti-progressive Călin Georgescu. It was claimed the election had been

Damian Thompson

Conclave – what really happens when a pope dies?

54 min listen

The film Conclave has picked up a host of awards across all the major ceremonies so far, including at the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, and winning Best Picture at the BAFTAs. Adapted from the novel by Robert Harris, it also has eight nominations at the upcoming 2025 Academy Awards. Full of intrigue, the film has viewers wondering how true to life the process depicted on the big screen is. And, with Pope Francis hospitalised, amidst the award season, this has only heightened interest in Papal conclaves and the election process.  Dr Kurt Martens, Professor of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America, joins Damian Thompson to unpack the process.

John Keiger

How Macron beat Starmer to Trump

Emmanuel Macron’s lightning visit to the White House was a tour de force of French diplomatic energy, skill and bravado. Whether Macron has managed to convince Donald Trump of the need to involve Kyiv and Europe in US-Russian negotiations on the war in Ukraine will become clear in the next fortnight. But what it demonstrated forcefully was the striking humiliation of the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the slothful incompetence of diplomacy in London and Washington. It is a stark warning of how President Macron and the EU will run rings round the Labour government and its ‘reset’ with Brussels. The Labour government announced some two weeks ago a Keir Starmer visit

Gavin Mortimer

France’s National Rally has lost its way

Jordan Bardella flew to America last week on a trip he had long boasted about. The president of the National Rally – and all his party – had been a little put out that the only French politicians invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration were Eric Zemmour and Sarah Knafo of the right-wing Reconquest. It was with relish, then, that Bardella boarded a flight to Washington to attend the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Here was his party’s chance to announce itself to America, while rubbing shoulders with the representatives of the new zeitgeist: JD Vance, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, Giorgia Meloni, Argentine President Javier Milei, Blighty’s own Nigel

The AfD will be a thorn in Merz’s side

Alice Weidel, the leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, didn’t mince her words. Speaking immediately after the German federal election on national television in Berlin on what’s known as ‘the leaders round’, she claimed that the mainstream conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) merely won a ‘pyrrhic victory’. Its head, Friedrich Merz, had no real choice, Weidel said, but to form a coalition with her radical right party (which scored over 20 per cent of the vote). A three- party coalition, she added, would be ‘a millstone around Merz’s neck’. The AfD will enjoy the luxury of being able to criticise any new government at will Merz was having none

Lisa Haseldine

Friedrich Merz on track to win German federal election

After two torturous months of campaigning, the wait is over. Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative CDU party, is on track to win Germany’s federal election. According to the official exit poll, published at 5pm UK time, his party has won 28.9 per cent of the vote. This means they are set to become the largest party in Berlin’s new parliament. Hot on the heels of the CDU is the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which has achieved 19.7 per cent of the vote. While it is its highest ever result in a federal election, their projected vote share suggests the far-right party will be just shy of the

Gavin Mortimer

Will Macron get tough on Algeria over the French knife attack?

Emmanuel Macron will hold talks with Donald Trump on Monday at which the President of France will attempt to ‘make Europe’s voice heard’. Still seething about being excluded from America’s peace negotiations with Russia, Macron wants to reassert the continent’s authority Stateside.  It will be a forlorn exercise. One of the reasons America – not just Trump’s administration but the one that preceded it – no longer attaches much importance to the EU is because they can see how weak it’s become. The world understands that Macron talks the talk but never walks the walk It’s timidity towards Algeria is a prime example. On Saturday, an Algerian man was arrested

Lisa Haseldine

What to look out for in Germany’s federal election

After two long months of campaigning, Germany heads to the polls today for its federal election. Approximately 60 million voters across the country’s 16 states will elect the new government. Will incumbent SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party be punished for his three years in power? Will the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) cruise to its highest ever federal result? Will Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU do well enough to only need one partner to form a coalition? This is what to watch out for tonight. To enter the Bundestag, the parties need to win at least 5 per cent of the national vote. The German proportional representation system means that everyone gets

Hugh Schofield, Igor Toronyi-Lalic & Michael Simmons, Lisa Haseldine, Alice Loxton and Aidan Hartley

37 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Hugh Schofield asks why there is no campaign to free the novelist Boualem Sansal (1:26); The Spectator’s arts editor, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, reacts to the magazine’s campaign against frivolous funding and, continuing the campaign, Michael Simmons wonders if Britain is funding organisations that wish us harm (8:00); Lisa Haseldine reflects on whether the AfD’s rise could mean ‘Weimar 2.0’ for Germany (17:08); reviewing Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain, by Blessin Adams, Alice Loxton explores the gruesome ways in which women killed (25:05); and, from Kenya, Aidan Hartley reflects on how a secret half-brother impacted his relationship with his father (35:13).  Produced and presented

Gavin Mortimer

The Nigerian drug mafia is heading for Britain

It’s an established fact that most of Britain’s drug trade is controlled by Albanians. There is some competition from Turks and Pakistanis but Albanians dominate the industry with their ‘business-like’ methods. They may soon have another partner in crime. Nigerian gangs are increasingly making their presence felt in Europe: this week they were among 27 people arrested in coordinated police raids in Italy, Spain and Albania. According to Italy’s Carabinieri, the arrests encompassed two drug trafficking gangs, one of which was a Nigerian operation in which they used their young compatriots seeking a new life in Europe to traffic marijuana across the continent. Their base was the bus terminal near

Lisa Haseldine

How far-right might Germany go?

In the Thuringian city of Weimar, opposite the theatre where the National Assembly hashed out Germany’s constitution in 1918, stands the museum of the history of the Weimar Republic. ‘A spectre is rising in Europe – the spectre of populism,’ a plaque reads. ‘Forces long thought overcome seem to be returning to threaten the basis of democracy. The Weimar Republic and its neighbours knew the phenomenon only too well.’ It’s a warning that will be weighing on the mind of Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and the man who will probably become Germany’s next chancellor. The federal election this Sunday is the culmination

Katja Hoyer

Can Germany rise to the challenge of protecting Europe?

When European leaders discussed their response to US-Russian negotiations about ending the war in Ukraine, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz felt ‘a little irritated’. France and Britain suggested sending European troops to secure a peace deal. Days away from an election likely to boot him out of power, Scholz found this an ‘inappropriate debate at the wrong time’. It will likely fall to his successor to shoulder Germany’s fair share of responsibility for European security. US and Russian officials have today held the first of peace talks in Saudi Arabia, forcing European countries to determine their role as a matter of urgency. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said ‘European nations