World

Monday

Limor Simhony Philpott

Joe Biden’s ceasefire proposal could sink Benjamin Netanyahu

Joe Biden’s introduction of the three-stage deal to end the war in Gaza was a clever rout to bypass Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden has lost confidence in Netanyahu’s readiness to present things to the Israeli public, and to his own cabinet, in an honest and truthful way. By presenting the terms of the deal clearly and independently from Netanyahu’s spins, Biden was in full control of the message, in the hope that the Israeli public will back the deal and make it impossible for Netanyahu to back out of it. Netanyahu’s already unstable coalition is on even shakier ground now Netanyahu has spent the past eight months manoeuvring between the demands

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

It feels like the social order is crumbling in Germany

I’ve been in and out of Germany a lot in recent months, and it’s hard not to gain the impression that its society is falling apart at the seams. Wherever you go, there seem to be angry political rallies and street protests. The news is full of violent attacks on politicians and activists. The fear is of a resurgence of far-right sentiments nearly eight decades after the fall of the Nazi regime. The concept of irrational German angst has become a bit of a cliche over the years, but this time the threats to social cohesion feel very real.  The sheer brutality of the attack is enough to appal people,

Geoff Hill

Jacob Zuma remains a problem for South Africa

More than 30 years after the Berlin Wall came down, leaders of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s long-time ruling party, still refer to each other as ‘comrade’. Unless, that is, you’re seen as a problem. ‘Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa will be here,’ ANC secretary general Fikile Mbabula told journalists on Sunday morning as he explained how, around 5 p.m., the President would receive the final election results at the main counting centre between Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria. ‘There’s nothing to celebrate in terms of performance of the ANC,’ he said.  Zuma has come away with 14.6 per cent of the vote but still claims it was rigged against

Sunday

Andrew Kenny

What the end of sole ANC rule means for South Africa

Election day on 29 May was a tumultuous, wonderful day for South Africa. 30 years of corruption and ruin under the sole rule of the African National Congress (ANC) party came to an end. The ANC, which won 63 per cent of the vote in the first democratic election in 1994, and 70 per cent in 2004, now only won 40 per cent. When the ANC took power in April 1994, South Africa had the strongest economy and the best infrastructure in Africa. We had a plentiful supply of the world’s cheapest electricity and the world’s greatest mineral treasure. The horrible apartheid laws had been scrapped by the last white

Carson Becker

The airport dividing Poland’s politicians

In 2017, the Polish government set out to build one of the largest airports in Europe on the outskirts of Warsaw. The project, known as the Central Communication Port, or CPK, was meant to combine a new international airport with a high speed railway network, connecting the Polish capital and the country’s peripheral regions. With the austerity of the communist era fading from memory, the CPK has come to symbolise the rapid development of Poland, a nation which has risen from political obscurity to become the EU’s sixth largest economy and one of Nato’s strongest military powers. Following last year’s parliamentary elections, and the subsequent change of government, conflicting visions

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron is to blame for France’s dismal economy

Standard & Poor’s downgrading of France’s credit rating on Friday is a hammer blow to President Macron’s reputation. The ratings agency has reduced France from AA to AA-, putting it on a par with the Czech Republic and Estonia and one notch below the UK. It is the first time S&P has downgraded France’s debt since 2013, although the firm Fitch did so in April 2023. This is comeuppance for years of ‘as much as it takes’ spending by a president haunted by the gilets jaunes movement. The credit rating downgrade comes just a week before the European elections, where Macron’s Renaissance party is trailing the Rassemblement National (RN) by over 16

Saturday

Rohit Kachroo

Why South Africans lost faith in the ANC

A red dawn had just broken when Stephanie Sathege joined the queue to vote at her local polling station in the Johannesburg township of Alexander on Wednesday. The voting booths hadn’t yet opened, but she and dozens of other people were enthusiastic enough to be there ahead of time. A 62-old black South African, this was the seventh time she had been allowed to vote in a general election, having lived under democracy only half her life.  Today, just as she did 30 years ago, Stephanie is contributing to an historic outcome. But this election day would be different to all the previous ones.  ‘Since 1994, I have been voting for the

Nicholas Lezard

Peter Parker, Wayne Hunt, Nicholas Lezard, Mark Mason and Nicholas Farrell

33 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Peter Parker takes us through the history of guardsmen and homosexuality (1:12); Prof. Wayne Hunt explains what the Conservatives could learn from the 1993 Canadian election (9:10); Nicholas Lezard reflects on the diaries of Franz Kafka, on the eve of his centenary (16:06); Mark Mason provides his notes on Horse Guards (22:52); and, Nicholas Farrell ponders his wife’s potential suitors, once he’s died (26:01). Presented and produced by Patrick Gibbons.  

Niko Vorobyov

Mexico’s narcos election

17 October 2019 will forever be etched in the memory of Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa in northwest Mexico, as Black Thursday. That afternoon, two convoys of soldiers knocked on the door of a safehouse hiding Ovidio Guzmán López, son of drug baron ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and scion of the Sinaloa Cartel, to execute an arrest warrant. ‘The boss has fallen! The boss has fallen!’ crackled the walkie-talkies. Within minutes, heavy gunfire erupted as mobsters arrived with machine gun turrets mounted on the back of their pick-up trucks. They took over the neighbouring streets and then the rest of the city, seizing roads and bridges and setting buses alight to act as burning

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Bashing Brexit won’t help Macron defeat Le Pen

The Prime Minister of France has warned his people that any form of Frexit would leave them weeping into their pastis. ‘Don’t be like the British who cried after Brexit,’ said Gabriel Attal, in a radio interview on Thursday.  ‘A large majority of British people regret Brexit and sometimes regret not turning out to vote, or voting for something that was negative for their country.’ Attal then cited a couple of examples of this negativity; what he described as ‘massive economic difficulties’ and more ‘illegal immigration than ever’. Attal’s Brexit bashing is an indication of the panic spreading through the ruling party The man described as a ‘mini-Macron’ has clearly

Friday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Biden partially lifts ban on strikes within Russia

David Cameron publicly said it was up to Ukraine to decide whether to use British weapons to strike targets on Russian territory earlier this month. But nothing has happened since then: no Storm Shadow missiles have flown over the Ukraine-Russia border. Last night, Volodymyr Zelensky explained why: the UK had not given ‘100 per cent permission’ to do so. ‘We raised this issue twice. We did not get confirmation from him [Cameron].’ In reality, Downing Street is waiting on the Americans, he said. The calls for the US and other allies to allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with western arms have grown louder after Russia launched a second offensive

Lionel Shriver and Freddy Gray

Trump found guilty

23 min listen

Donald Trump has been found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. The Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver joins Freddy Gray to respond to the news. Was it a fair trial? What could it mean for the 2024 presidential election? And what are the wider implications for American democracy? Produced by Megan McElroy, Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.

Jim Lawley

Pedro Sanchez may come to regret passing Spain’s amnesty law

When has any nation’s government amnestied hundreds of people facing criminal charges in return for the votes that allow it to stay in office? That’s what Spain’s government has just done. After last July’s general election, Pedro Sánchez, the incumbent left-wing prime minister, discovered that he needed the 14 votes of two Catalan separatist parties in order to cling onto power. The price of those 14 votes? A general amnesty for several hundred people accused of criminal activities during Catalonia’s secession push, including 2017’s illegal declaration of independence. The amnesty bill, fast-tracked through parliament, was passed yesterday after a spectacularly acrimonious debate: 177 votes in favour and 172 against. The

Lee Cohen

Trump’s conviction is a disaster for American democracy

Donald Trump’s trial and his conviction on 34 felony counts is disgraceful. As the legal expert and former Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, has argued, ‘the judge essentially instructed the jury to convict Trump.’ Biden’s America has shamefully crossed the Rubicon. The rule of law has been supplanted by the whims of elites and the machinery of power. The verdict of the jury in New York City, finding Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a hush-money trial, calls into urgent question the integrity of the American legal system and the sanctity of democratic norms. The perception of selective justice is only going to undermine

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump is a convict, but will it matter?

This is an extremely strange moment for American democracy. Polls suggest that independent voters – the people who decide American elections – will not vote for a man who is a convicted felon. But now Donald Trump, currently the favourite to win re-election in November, has been found guilty, on 34 counts, of falsifying business records – and nobody knows if that verdict will make him more popular or less. On the one hand, a court has decided that, yes, he deliberately altered his financial accounts, possibly for election campaign reasons back in 2016. He is now a convict. Trump has a murky past, and his dodgy history now appears

Amber Duke & Matt McDonald

Donald Trump found guilty

Ajury delivered a guilty verdict Thursday on all thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records in former president Donald Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial. The jury deliberated for just a couple of days before returning its verdict, although they did go back to the judge several times asking for a re-read of the instructions and testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. Trump was in the courtroom when the verdict was returned, as was Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the charges. According to the New York Times’s Jesse McKinley, reporting from the scene, ‘He is largely expressionless, a glum look on his face, as ‘guilty’ has just been heard

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Wannabes: are any of them ready?

36 min listen

On this week’s Edition: Wannabes – are any of them ready? Our cover piece takes a look at the state of the parties a week into the UK general election campaign. The election announcement took everyone by surprise, including Tory MPs, so what’s been the fallout since? To provide the latest analysis, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls joins the podcast (2:00). Then: Angus Colwell reports on how the election is playing out on social media, and the increasing role of the political ‘spinfluencer’. These accounts have millions of likes, but how influential could they be during the election? Alongside Angus, Harry Boeken, aka @thechampagne_socialist on TikTok, joins us to share their

Matthew Lynn

A Musk-Trump White House collaboration will only end badly

He has created a major automobile company. He has built space rockets, taken over X, made himself hundreds of billions, and even found time to father lots of children. Elon Musk has plenty of achievements. And yet he may soon have one more. A cabinet post in the next Trump administration. But hold on: Musk may look an attractive candidate, but it will surely ends badly. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Trump have been discussing an advisory role for the billionaire if he wins the White House in the election in November. Musk apparently might help out on economic policy, as well as border

Geoff Hill

Who will win South Africa’s election?

From the start, it didn’t look good this time round for the African National Congress (ANC), which has ruled South Africa since Nelson Mandela came to power in the first democratic elections 30 years ago. Since mid-2023, polls for the ANC have ranged from 38 per cent to the high-40s, a long way down from the 57 per cent President Cyril Ramaphosa had won five years ago. ANC party faithful have long chanted, ‘We will rule till Jesus comes’ The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) says it will only have the full results by Sunday, given the unexpectedly high turnout. At the first national vote in 1994, a stunning 87 per cent took part,