World

Thursday

Jonathan Spyer

Iran may be down, but it’s not out

The sirens began at about 5 am. A Houthi ballistic missile was on its way, over Jerusalem, in the direction of the coastal plain. After half a minute or so, I began to hear the familiar sound of doors scraping and muffled voices, as people made their way to the shelter.   It has become a regular occurrence. No one makes much of a fuss anymore. For most Israelis, most of the last 70 years, Yemen was a remote country on the other edge of the Middle East, the part facing the Indian Ocean, rather than the Mediterranean. What was known about it consisted of a few items of food

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Which are the ‘Twelve Churches’ that made Christianity?

40 min listen

What links the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and St Peter’s in Rome with the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and Canaanland in Ota, Nigeria? These are just some of the churches that Anglican priest and writer the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie highlights in his new book Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings that made Christianity. The Anglican priest and writer joins Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to explain how each Church not only tells a story but also raises a surprising dilemma for modern believers. Fergus aims to tell the history of the Churches ‘warts and all’ and argues that, from Turkey to Britain, today’s Christians

Iben Thranholm

Denmark’s ‘spiritual rearmament’ is a lesson for the West

Something unusual is happening in Denmark – and other countries across Europe, including Britain, ought to pay attention. This spring, Denmark’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, stood before a group of university students and made a striking statement: ‘We will need a form of rearmament that is just as important [as the military one]. That is the spiritual one.’ Few expected such words from the leader of the Social Democrats, a party which spent much of the 20th century reducing the Church of Denmark’s influence in public life. Yet this was no passing remark. Just days earlier, Frederiksen had announced a major military build-up: increased conscription, a sharp rise in defence

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Reform’s migration crackdown, South Korea’s school phone ban and Meghan Markle misses Magic Radio

Home Nigel Farage, launching Reform’s policies on illegal migrants, said: ‘The only way we’ll stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone who comes via that route.’ A Taliban official in Kabul responded: ‘We are ready and willing to receive and embrace whoever he [Mr Farage] sends us.’ The government sought to appeal against a High Court ruling which temporarily forbade the housing of asylum seekers in the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex. Protests against asylum hotels and counter-protests continued in several places. The government said it would introduce a panel of adjudicators instead of judges to hear migrants’ appeals in the hope of speeding up the asylum

Wednesday

James Heale James Heale

Labour goes on the Farage offensive

12 min listen

As James Heale writes online for the Spectator today, ‘two issues continue to plague the government’: how best to attack Nigel Farage. and how to frame an incrementalist approach to policy ‘when the national mood favours radical change’. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for UK-EU relations, attempted to tackle both today as he came to the Spectator to set out Labour’s Europe strategy. Labour are pursuing ‘pragmatic alignment’ – what they argue is greater co-operation when beneficial to the British interest. But what does this mean? James joins Michael Simmons on the podcast to unpack the speech. And, on a day when Reform have claimed another defector (this

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France has lost control of its borders

The cynic might wonder if Keir Starmer and his government aren’t a little relieved that France is once more on the brink of political chaos. Now they have a convenient excuse for why waves of small boats continue to land on English beaches. Starmer’s Gallic counterpart, Francis Bayrou, has called a vote of confidence in his government on 8 September. Lose and he will be out, and Emmanuel Macron will be searching for his fifth Prime Minister in 21 months. A source in the British government has said that the turmoil in Paris could undermine the ‘one in, one out’ migrant treaty recently signed by the two countries. ‘We still

James Tidmarsh

Migrant riots have come to Switzerland

A stolen scooter, a police chase, and a fatal crash left a 17-year-old of migrant background dead. Within hours, Lausanne erupted in the worst rioting Switzerland has seen in decades. Two nights of violence tore apart Switzerland’s image as a stable and quiet country. Masked youths, overwhelmingly black, took to the streets, setting bins alight, vandalising buses, and clashing with police using fireworks and stones. By the second night, more than 200 rioters clashed with Swiss police as tear gas clouded the air and water cannons roared through the city. It could very well have been a suburb of Paris or Lyon, but this was Lausanne, just along the lake

Edward Howell

Can Kim Jong-un be persuaded to meet Donald Trump?

Hours after his first bilateral meeting with Donald Trump earlier this week, the South Korean President Lee Jae-myung admitted that he feared that his one-to-one would become a ‘Zelensky moment’. Although the reality was far from the case, it made for somewhat vomit-inducing listening. As Lee showered Trump with praise for his handling of North Korea during his first term, Trump’s ego ballooned one sentence at a time. Monday’s episode was a clear example of how Trump likes diplomacy to be done, but for all Trump and Lee’s calls for talks with Kim Jong-un, both leaders will face the obstacle of North Korea’s recent affirmations of its lack of interest

Tuesday

Eliot Wilson

Trump’s military purge is a disaster waiting to happen

The Duke of Wellington, assessing newly arrived British soldiers during the Peninsular War, is supposed to have said, ‘I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they terrify me.’ Having watched Donald Trump greet Vladimir Putin with a red carpet in Alaska a week ago, then direct his secretary of defense Pete Hegseth to sack another general and two admirals, I’m not certain that the US President even knows who the enemy in this case is. Leading the most recent casualties was Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, an experienced intelligence officer serving as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. His mortal sin was obvious:

Terry Barnes

Australia has finally woken up to the Iranian threat

Geographically, eastern Australia is about as far from Israel and Gaza as anyone can get. But given the Australian government’s provocative decision to recognise a Palestinian state while Hamas still exists, you could be forgiven for thinking the conflict is being fought on our doorstep. And on Tuesday, it was revealed that, in a very real sense, it is. Thanks to Iran and the IRGC, and at least partly because of the anti-Jewish hostility that has afflicted Australia since 7 October, the Gaza conflict has been brought here In a dramatic press conference outside his Parliament House office in Canberra, Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese, flanked by his home and foreign

Matthew Lynn

Is France about to trigger the next financial crash?

Its debts are out of control. There is very little space left to raise taxes any further. And the political establishment can’t agree on anything apart from postponing the whole issue for another year or two. It is a description that could apply to plenty of countries, and not least the UK. But right now, it is one that applies most acutely to France. With yet another government about to fall, and the CAC-40 stock market index falling sharply, the real question is this: will Paris be the centre of the next financial crash? The French prime minister François Bayrou yesterday took the plucky, if foolish, decision to recall parliament

James Tidmarsh

Is this the end for Emmanuel Macron?

Prime Minister François Bayrou has recalled parliament for a confidence vote on 8 September, betting he can outmanoeuvre a surging protest movement before it paralyzes France. The grassroots ‘Bloquons tout’ campaign, echoing the gilets jaunes and fuelled by the hard left, plans to halt trains, buses, schools, taxis, refineries and ports. It is a general strike in all but name. Bayrou’s move aims to reassert control before chaos takes hold, but with the vote just two days before the open-ended strike begins, failure could topple his government and ignite a broader assault on President Macron’s authority. This morning, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) announced its plans to file a

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Will Donald Trump meet Lucy Connolly?

‘Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.’ Britain’s free-speech wars are going global Those 51 words earned Lucy Connolly – a babysitter from Northampton, in the East Midlands – the longest sentence ever handed down in the UK for a single social-media post. Last week, Connolly was released from prison, having served nine months of a 31-month term for “inciting racial hatred.” She will serve the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron is blind to the decivilisation of France

For the second time in a week, Emmanuel Macron has been criticised for allowing antisemitism to run riot in France. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed last week that antisemitism had ‘surged’ in France after Macron announced his intention to recognise Palestinian statehood next month. It is not only France’s Jews who are living in fear. Last week police in Nantes warned the city’s gay community to take extra precautions On Sunday, the US ambassador to Paris, Charles Kushner, wrote to Macron to express his concern that the president was not doing enough to combat rising antisemitism in France. There have been several troubling incidents since Macron made his declaration

Monday

James Tidmarsh

The death of a streamer is being used to stifle free speech

One viewer whispered on the livestream: ‘Yes, keep going… Keep going’. Moments later, Jean Pormanove was dead. Last Sunday night around 10,000 people watched as 46-year-old Raphaël Graven slumped forward on camera, unresponsive. As he died the chat spiralled into a frenzy, as the moment was streamed from a quiet village north of Nice in the French Alpes-Maritimes. Nobody called for help. Nobody stopped the broadcast. By the time the authorities arrived in the once quiet village, Graven was dead. Pormanove’s death risks becoming a convenient pretext to tighten control over domestic media while leaving global platforms untouched Raphaël Graven, better known by his online alias Jean Pormanove or ‘JP’,

Sunday

Nicholas Farrell

Meloni is winning her war on left-wing squats

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has won what looks like a significant victory in her quest to eradicate squatting. About 250 carabinieri and police officers took possession this week of a former paper mill in Milan which had been occupied by numerous groups of squatters for 31 years. The 4,000 square metre building was a citadel of far-left extra-parliamentary politics and culture, and also of loud late-night music and hard drug abuse. The parliamentary and mainstream left, meanwhile, were and remain, complicit. Fourteen governments and four Popes came and went but an ever-changing cast of protagonists remained limpet-like inside what they called the Centro Sociale Leoncavallo to keep the revolutionary

Ian Williams Ian Williams

How China fools the West

The mimic octopus is a remarkable creature. It is the world’s master at shapeshifting. It is able to transform its appearance into that of more than 15 different aquatic animals, depending on the needs of the moment. It can ward off predators by appearing to be more deadly than it really is – by impersonating a poisonous lionfish, for example. It can also lure prey by mimicking a crab, say, trying to attract a mate, before smothering, paralysing and devouring the hapless suitor. It is much studied by marine biologists, but it deserves more attention from economists and diplomats – particularly those trying to understand the Chinese Communist party. Its portrait should hang

James Tidmarsh

The awkward truth about tourists in Paris

As Parisians slowly return from their long summer breaks, locals are beginning to do what they do best: complaining. Montmartre, one of Paris’s most visited neighbourhoods, has become the centre of a growing backlash against overtourism. ‘Behind the postcard: locals mistreated by the Mayor’, reads one banner in English. Another declares: ‘Montmartre residents resisting’. The neighbourhood around Sacré-Cœur, once Paris’s bohemian hilltop village, says it’s had enough. Tourists aren’t destroying Paris, they’re underwriting it. If Montmartre wants to see what life looks like without so-called ‘Disneyfication’, it should try a weekend without tourist euros With 11 million visitors a year, more than the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre has become the prime

Saturday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Will Germany really send troops to Ukraine?

As Donald Trump presses on with his breathless efforts to secure an end to the war in Ukraine, the leaders of Europe face a task of their own. In the event of a peace deal with Russia, how will they – in place of an America that can’t be trusted as a reliable ally – provide Kyiv with the security guarantees against Russian aggression that it craves? And even if they are willing, are they capable of delivering them? The idea of sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine at some point in the future has split Germany down the middle Stepping out of the White House following Monday’s hastily arranged

Friday

Jonathan Spyer

What is the purpose of Israel’s Gaza City operation?

Israel’s security cabinet yesterday approved the Israel Defense Force’s plans for a major operation into Gaza City. The cabinet decision comes after the mobilisation of 60,000 IDF reservists over the past week. Israeli forces are already operating on the outskirts of the city. Should the operation commence, it appears set to bring five Israeli divisions into areas of Gaza as yet untouched in the course of nearly two years of war. At a certain point a decision must be made. Hamas must be either conceded to or destroyed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described Gaza City as containing Hamas’s ‘last strongholds.’ In a statement made before yesterday’s cabinet meeting, Netanyahu described the war