World

Thursday

Patrick Gibbons

How Catherine Connolly could change Ireland

‘How could you possibly say the EU is good as it stands?’ the woman says. Brexit, she continues, is a ‘first step [in] exposing the EU’. The speaker is Catherine Connolly. She is the frontrunner to win Ireland’s presidential election tomorrow. The footage stands out for two reasons. One, it’s rare for an Irish politician so close to high office to be seen as critical of the EU. Two, the video has only just resurfaced, despite being nine years old. While support for EU membership in Ireland typically polls between 70 and 90 per cent, opinion is becoming less homogenous, an interest in alternative views about the bloc is growing. The

Owen Matthews

Trump is getting serious about punishing Putin

Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again threats to sanction Russia for its intransigence over peace talks in Ukraine solidified today into concrete action. The US has announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, two of Russia’s largest oil companies, and their dozens of subsidiaries. Between them, the two giants are responsible for nearly half of Russia’s oil exports – and a serious crackdown on their ability to export crude could deal a serious blow to Russia’s war economy. How serious that blow is depends entirely on how far the White House is prepared to pursue the sanctions. And whether it will cause Putin to cease and desist from his offensive against Ukraine is

Limor Simhony Philpott

Could Marwan Barghouti be Palestine’s Mandela?

Calls to release Marwan Barghouti – the leader of Fatah’s armed wing, who is currently serving multiple life sentences in Israel – is gaining traction. Supporters see him as the only credible Palestinian leader to challenge Hamas and negotiate peace. But freeing a convicted terrorist is never a simple calculation, and the risks are great. Barghouti’s popularity dwarfs that of any other Palestinian figure. Polls found he could win 50 per cent of the vote if elections were held now, followed by Hamas’s Khalid Mishal (on 35 per cent) and Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas (on 11 per cent) lagging far behind. Without Abbas in the running, Barghouti’s popularity rises

Gavin Mortimer

‘One in, one out’ is dead

France is not a safe country. That was the excuse given by an Iranian man who returned to Britain last weekend a month after his deportation. The man was one of the first illegal immigrants to have been sent back to France as part of the ‘one in, one out’ deal agreed between the two countries this summer. The Iranian was detained on 6 August and deported on a scheduled flight on 19 September. He crossed the Channel last Saturday along with 368 other migrants, a handful of the 36,816 who have made the voyage this year, which is more than the figure for the whole of 2024. Border officials

Michael Henderson

My debt to the teacher who introduced me to Wagner

We saw the world end in Berlin, again. Another Ring Cycle – hurrah! – in the beautiful Staatsoper theatre on Unter den Linden. Christian Thielemann led the house’s superb orchestra from the dawn of Creation in Das Rheingold to the downfall of the Gods in Götterdämerung. It was a brisk Ring, coming in at seven minutes over 14 hours. The playing was magnificent, the singing of a very high order and the anti-mythological staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov startling. Particular praise must go to the Sieglinde of Lithuanian soprano Vida Mikneviciute – try saying that after a few scoops of pilsner. Thrilling hardly does her justice. In April 2002 I was

Martin Vander Weyer

The Chinese spy case you won’t have heard about

The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, handsomely housed in London’s Bedford Square, is responsible for trade relations between the formerly British ‘special administrative region of the People’s Republic’ and the UK, Scandinavian and Baltic states, and Russia. Its organigram boasts a ‘dedicated team for attracting businesses and talents’, including specialists in ‘investment promotion (fintech)’. So far so good: those who detest China’s suppression of Hong Kong also tend to believe its best hope for a return to relative freedom lies in attracting global attention as a hub of trade and finance. But also on the HKETO chart is ‘Office Manager Bill C.B. Yuen’, who will shortly be attracting headlines

Tom Gross

The westerners helping Hamas win the propaganda war

After two years of war, and despite Israel’s many successes on the battlefield, Hamas can also claim a kind of victory – at least for now. The terror group has survived and is once again exerting control in the areas of Gaza under its authority. Public executions, whippings, stonings and kneecappings have returned. In the first five days of the ceasefire, Hamas executed at least 100 Gazans. Hamas’s survival was achieved not only through its remaining fighters and its holding of hostages, but also thanks to a chorus of western apologists. A coalition of so-called progressives and professional activists has excused, rationalised and defended the group’s actions across universities and

Angus Colwell and Max Jeffery

The Ultras: meet Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance

Ayoub Khan seemed delighted. Last Thursday, it was announced that fans of the Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv would be banned from attending their match against Aston Villa next month, an outcome that Khan, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, had been lobbying for since September. That night, Khan took himself on a broadcast round to celebrate. Keir Starmer had said the ban was the ‘wrong decision’, but on Newsnight Khan told him to back off. ‘The Prime Minister should stay out of operational matters,’ he said. ‘That’s not a matter for him, sitting in No. 10.’ It has been a satisfying 15 months for Khan since his election.

Madeline Grant

How America’s Wasps lost their sting

They moved, with a sort of nonchalant intent, up the aisle to make communion with their God; the men in bow ties and immaculate blazers, the women in pearls. They spent the service making small bows, singing (but not too loudly) and wearing looks of pacific – or rather, north Atlantic – calm. These were the Wasps and this was St Thomas Fifth Avenue, one of their high temples in New York, where they come for their moments of triumph and where the world often bids them adieu. It was hard to tell from those gathered on a recent Sunday morning if the stiffness of their physical motions was the

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Will peace in Ukraine elude Trump?

28 min listen

With a Gaza ceasefire deal, President Trump’s attention has turned to ending the war in Ukraine. A meeting with Putin was suggested, before coming to nothing. Owen Matthews joins Freddy Gray to talk about the fundamental differences between Trump and Putin, the limits on Ukraine’s President Zelensky when it comes to negotiation and why the global west keeps misunderstanding Russia time and time again. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy.

Geoff Hill

Will Ivory Coast’s old guard ever let go?

Next time you bite into a bar of chocolate, spare a thought for Ivory Coast. As the world’s largest supplier of cocoa, chances are the beans in your slab came from there. Elections, alas, have not been so sweet and with one due on Saturday 25 October, there are worries the protests, killings and all-out civil war that came in the wake of past votes could happen again. President Alassane Ouattara, the incumbent, is 83 and seeking a fourth term under a constitution that, like the United States, allows just two. The Constitutional Council which vets all candidates for high office has barred most of the contenders, so Ouattara should cruise to

Joseph Dinnage

Starmer won’t stop Putin exploiting Europe’s migrant crisis

Another week, another migration scandal. On Monday, the Times reported that Russian spies have been working with international human rights groups to ‘flood Europe with illegal migrants’. The revelations come from Daniel Mitov, Bulgaria’s interior minister, who claims to have evidence that the Russians are assisting people smugglers in finding weak spots along the Bulgaria-Turkey border and instructing migrants on how to avoid detection.  Mitov – as I’m sure you’ll understand – isn’t thrilled by this. Rather than regarding waves of new arrivals pouring through his country’s borders as just the injection of diversity that Bulgaria needs, the interior minister sees it as a naked attempt by Vladimir Putin to

Gavin Mortimer

France has failed its daughters

It is just over three years since a 12-year-old Parisian girl called Lola was raped and murdered in a crime that shocked France. The woman accused of the murder, 27-year-old Dahbia Benkired, is now on trial and on Monday the court heard chilling evidence from a man who encountered the defendant shortly after the death of Lola. Karim Bellazoug told the court that Benkired was carrying a large trunk and told him she had items to sell. When he glanced inside he saw what looked like a body. ‘I thought she was crazy, that she was a psychopath,’ Bellazoug declared. The motivation as well as the mental state of Benkired

Tuesday

Damian Thompson

Is the Anglican Communion dead?

29 min listen

In the space of a month, the Church of England has acquired its first female Archbishop of Canterbury, a majority of the world’s Anglicans have left the Anglican Communion in protest at the mother Church’s willingness to bless same-sex relationships – and the House of Bishops has suddenly backed away from introducing stand-alone gay blessings. The situation is chaotic. In this week’s Holy Smoke, theologian Andrew Graystone talks to Damian Thompson about the almost insoluble problems that will face Archbishop Mullally after she is enthroned in January.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Freddy Gray

James Orr on the ascendancy of JD Vance

90 min listen

Freddy Gray sits down with academic James Orr at the Battle of Ideas in London for a live Americano podcast to discuss Vice President JD Vance. Having been described as ‘Vance’s British sherpa’, James responds to how likely it is that JD Vance will be President one day, which weaknesses could hold him back, and how Vance’s unique closeness to Trump in office has given him vital experience to learn on the job.

Sam Olsen

The American empire is consuming itself

Over the weekend, millions of Americans took to the streets in more than 2,000 ‘No Kings’ marches nationwide, protesting what they regard as the creeping authoritarianism of President Trump. The marches – which Trump’s allies called ‘the hate America rally’ – were notable for their scale, but more importantly they are a symbol of something deeper: the erosion of political legitimacy in the world’s pre-eminent democracy. For China and Russia, the spectacle of Americans turning on their own institutions confirms a long-held belief, namely that the United States is entering a phase of irreversible decline and may soon hesitate abroad. The data bear them out. In April 2024, 19 per

Michael Evans

Zelensky faces a dilemma

Keeping abreast of President Trump’s changing moods has never been so challenging, especially for Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart. Judging by reports emerging of their meeting last Friday in the Oval Office, Trump made it clear in somewhat candid language that Zelensky should give up the eastern Donbas region of his country or face destruction by Russia. Gone was the sunny prediction made by Trump only three weeks or so earlier that if Zelensky pursued the war with Russia, backed by Europe and Nato, he could win a famous victory and drive the Russians out of all the occupied territories. The sudden about-turn followed Trump’s two-hour phone call with President

Brendan O’Neill

The shameless attempt to cover up the Amsterdam Jew hunt

I often wonder – we all do – how human beings can be made to forget terrible events. Like the Tiananmen Square massacre, wiped, just like that, from a billion minds in China. Or the burning of the Jews of Jedwabne in Poland in 1941, which lay unforgivably unremembered until the truth was dug up, literally, in the 1990s. To this list of shamefully erased horrors from history, we might now add the Jew hunt of Amsterdam in 2024. It is a crime against truth to speak of Amsterdam without mentioning the open racial hatred that fuelled the hunt for men from Israel No, the hunting of Maccabi Tel Aviv

Monday

Owen Matthews

Trump doesn’t understand what Putin wants

Is Donald Trump’s peace process in Ukraine moving forward – or it is merely going around in circles in a series of gut-wrenching loop-the-loops? Less than a fortnight ago Trump raised Ukrainian hopes by dangling the possibility of sending Tomahawk cruise missiles, describing the Kremlin as a ‘Paper Tiger’ and warning that the Russian economy was on the verge of collapse. But when Ukraine’s president Volodimir Zelensky arrived late last week in Washington for face to-face talks at the White House instead of Tomahawks he received a lecture on how he had to accede to many of Putin’s demands or face ‘annihilation’. Land – or ‘property’ as Trump puts it

Francis Pike

Will Sanae Takaichi fly or falter?

A former heavy metal drummer and biker is not someone the world would expect to become a prime minister of Japan. Particularly if that someone is a woman. But that is what is likely to happen tomorrow. Last month, 64-year-old Sanae Takaichi became the first female head of the Liberal Democrat Party – the party that has ruled Japan for all but 4 of the last 70 years – and soon she will be Japan’s first female prime minister too. On Monday, Takaichi signed off on a coalition pact with the right-leaning libertarian Japan Innovation Party (Ishin). They have replaced the Komeito, the socially conservative party that is affiliated with Soka Gakkai, a