World

Saturday

Terry Barnes

Will Australia’s angry voters punish Labor at the polls?

Australia goes to the polls today, pitting the first-term Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese against the Liberal-National party coalition headed by Liberal leader Peter Dutton. As the election campaign for the federal election entered its final week, the agenda-setting Newspoll in the Australian newspaper asked voters whether Albanese’s government deserves re-election. Damningly, less than two-fifths said yes; well over half said it deserves throwing out. It’s no wonder voters feel angry about Labor Yet Newspoll, and all other opinion polls, have Labor on track to win today, either in a narrow majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives, or in minority supported by a left-leaning crossbench. It’s no

Friday

Nigel Jones

Labelling the AfD ‘extremists’ will backfire

By officially classing the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as ‘right-wing extremists’, the German establishment may have scored an own goal – or even shot itself in the foot. The domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), announced its decision today after keeping the insurgent party under close observation – including by state spies – for years. But the AfD is no tiny sect of secretive neo-Nazis. It is a legal and open party, founded in 2013, that no fewer than 20.8 per cent of Germans voted for in this year’s general election. Now that the centre-right CDU/CSU and the centre-left SPD are forming a

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The AfD’s ‘extremist’ label is a long time coming

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has been classified as ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. Until now, the party – which came second in federal elections in February – had been considered ‘suspected right-wing extremist’. After this upgrade, in the eyes of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (known by its German acronym BfV), the AfD and the values it holds stand in violation of Germany’s constitution. The BfV had been investigating the party for many months, finally submitting a lengthy report to the Ministry of the Interior this week. They had reportedly wanted to submit their findings to the government at the

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Marco Rubio the next Henry Kissinger?

Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokesperson, was flummoxed. ‘I just heard this from you,’ she responded after a reporter told her at a briefing session that President Trump has appointed Marco Rubio to replace Mike Waltz as his acting National Security Advisor. But this isn’t his final Waltz. Waltz is now headed to the United Nations, where he will fill the ambassador slot which Representative Elise Stefanik coveted but was forced to surrender to ensure the Republicans maintain their slender majority in the House.   Little Marco may play a bigger role in the Trump administration than anyone had anticipated News reports earlier, first from Mark Halperin, had posited that Waltz

Eliot Wilson

Mike Waltz’s fall from grace will change little

Oh what a circus, oh what a show. It began on Thursday morning, with stories circulating that the US national security advisor, Michael Waltz, was about to be dropped. This seemed to be confirmed when President Trump spoke at an event for the National Day of Prayer, and reeled off praise for his top team, including Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA – but made no mention of Waltz. Waltz’s departure had long been thought likely. While the most vainglorious and locker room chat-like braggadocio in the Signalgate scandal earlier this year had come from Hegseth and Vice President J.D. Vance, Waltz had

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Ian Williams, Philip Patrick, Guy Stagg, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Mark Mason and Catriona Olding

37 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Ian Williams looks at Chinese influence in the UK (1:39); Philip Patrick interviews Japan’s last ninja (9:35); Guy Stagg reviews Damian Le Bas and explores the myths behind the city of Atlantis (18:23); Ysenda Maxtone Graham reviews an exhibition on school dinners at the Food Museum in Stowmarket (23:38); Mark Mason provides his notes on quizzes, ahead of the Spectator’s garden quiz (28:00); and, swapping Provence to visit family in America, Catriona Olding takes us on a trip up the east coast (31:27).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Victor Davis Hanson on DEI, counter revolutions and why Trump is a ‘tragic hero’

49 min listen

Victor Davis Hanson joins Spectator TV to talk about the first 101 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency, describing it as a bold counterrevolution against decades of cultural, political, and economic drift. He discusses Trump’s sweeping agenda—from closing the border and challenging DEI initiatives to confronting foreign policy orthodoxy and trade imbalances—framing it as a populist backlash against elite institutions and progressive ideologies. Hanson highlights the deepening divide between America’s coastal elites and its working class, and argues that Trump’s unorthodox style and aggressive reforms are reshaping the political landscape in ways not seen in modern American history

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Trump’s Ukraine minerals deal is pure extortion

So the on-again-off-again US-Ukrainian resources deal has been signed. It is perhaps appropriate that it was done without fanfare, marked by emailed press release. While its terms are rather better than originally mooted, it still shows not that ‘the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centred on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine’ as US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent put it, but to neo-colonial exploitation. For all that, Kyiv has some reason to be satisfied by what it considers less of an economic deal and more a necessary piece of performative submission to keep Donald Trump engaged with their cause. Put at its simplest, Ukraine’s natural resources –

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The US mineral deal will give Ukraine fresh hope

Overnight, Ukraine and the US finally signed a deal on Ukraine’s mineral reserves. The agreement, signed two months later than planned, sees the two countries set up what they have called the ‘United States-Ukraine Reconstructions Investment Fund’, the aim of which will be to attract ‘global investment’ into Ukraine following the end of the war with Russia. Until the last minute, it was unclear whether Ukraine would indeed sign on the dotted line, with sounds coming from Washington late last night that chances of the agreement being locked in over the coming day standing at ‘little better than 50-50’.  While details of the fund have yet to be revealed, it

Will Moore

Chambers of horrors, the ‘Dubai-ification’ of London & the enduring obsession with Diana

37 min listen

This week: the left-wing radicalism of Garden Court Garden Court Chambers has a ‘reassuringly traditional’ facade befitting the historic Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the heart of London’s legal district. Yet, writes Ross Clark in the cover article this week, ‘the facade is just that. For behind the pedimented Georgian windows there operates the most radically effective cell of left-wing activists in Britain’. Ross argues that cases taken on by Garden Court lawyers raise questions of impartiality. Is this just another example of ‘law’s expanding empire’ over the domain of elected politicians, as former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption has warned? The Spectator’s editor, and former Justice Secretary, Michael Gove joined the

Douglas Murray

The unbearable smugness of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Polls occasionally appear which reveal the extent to which people trust – or rather don’t trust – journalists. In one last year, something called the Edelman Trust Barometer found that just 31 per cent of the British public said they trust the media, a fall of 6 per cent in a year. This puts the media class at a level of trust somewhere between politicians and burglars in the public’s eyes. Still, any British hacks reading this can console themselves with one thing: at least most of our media does not cloak itself in the mantle of the utmost righteousness and hold itself out as some sort of priestly class.

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

‘It is sad that we are sometimes seen as just killers’: an interview with Japan’s last ninja

Getting an interview with Jinichi Kawakami, the man known in Japan as ‘the Last Ninja’, was no easy task – but nor should it have been. Ninjas, Japan’s legendary covert operatives and assassins, were renowned for their elusiveness, so it would have been disappointing if tracking one down had proved a cinch. It took a good deal of research and persistence before I was granted an interview by landline telephone – which also seems appropriate since ninjas were reputedly able to make themselves invisible. Kawakami is head of the Banke Shinobinoden school of ninjutsu (ninja culture), director of the Iga-ryu Ninja Museum and Ninja Council, and a professor of Ninja

Owen Matthews

What does Putin want? Whatever he can get away with

The US general Mark Clark knew a thing or two about dealing with Russians. In the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany, Clark commanded the American occupying forces in Austria. His Soviet opposite number, and nominal ally, was Marshal Ivan Konev. The two war heroes were tasked with pacifying the conquered and divided country at the dawn of the Cold War. ‘The Russians were not interested in teamwork,’ recalled Clark in his 1950 memoir, Calculated Risk. ‘They wanted to keep things boiling… They were accustomed to the use of force. They were skilled in exploiting any sign of weakness or uncertainty or appeasement. This was their national policy.’ Two

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: power cuts, local elections and the Pope’s funeral

Home Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, attacked current net-zero policies, saying that ‘any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail’. Pay review bodies recommended rises for public-sector workers (4 per cent for teachers; 3 per cent for NHS employees) that are higher than the 2.8 per cent budgeted for by the government. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, in applying last month’s judgment by the Supreme Court, said that in places like hospitals, shops and restaurants ‘trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological

Angus Colwell

The creeping Dubai-ification of London

In December 2023, a TikTok influencer called Maria Vehera opened a packet of ‘Dubai chocolate’ in her car and filmed herself eating it. Since then, 124.6 million people have watched her swallowing this pistachio-based gloop. Oh Maria, what have you done? A butterfly flaps its wings – or an influencer eats some chocolate – and soon people are setting their alarms for 5 a.m. to queue outside Lidl for the ‘drop’ of LIDL’S OWN DUBAI CHOCOLATE. Guess what? M&S made one too (£8.50). Morrisons then had the bright idea of creating a pistachio cream Easter egg. Waitrose’s Dubai chocolate was so popular it had to ration it to two bars

Ian Williams Ian Williams

How China bought Britain

Somewhere in the bowels of the Foreign Office, civil servants are still working on the government’s ‘China audit’. The report was commissioned by the new Labour government to ‘assess trade-offs in the UK-China relationship’ and to ‘ensure consistency across government, business and academia towards engagement with China’. Little is known about its workings or who’s being consulted. Instead of bringing clarity, the process is deepening confusion, and there are worrying reports that the audit has been pared back to support Keir Starmer’s ‘pragmatic’ approach. All the while, there have been a series of troubling events that demand extreme caution about Beijing. The British Steel debacle is only the latest. Jingye,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump’s big gambles are paying off

‘I run the country and the world,’ said President Donald Trump last week. That’s not really an exaggeration. In our ever more mediatised age, Trump doesn’t just make the news. He is the news, win or lose. Why did Mark Carney triumph in the Canadian elections? A Trump backlash. What happened at the Pope’s funeral? Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky talked peace. Is the economy tanking? It’s the Trump, stupid. Younger Donald’s ambition was to be the world’s most famous man – to achieve, as his son-in-law Jared Kushner put it, ‘virtually 100 per cent name recognition’. He surpassed that years ago. His aspirations now are far bigger. In the first

Wednesday

James Tidmarsh

Medical migration is crippling France’s healthcare system

Doctors are sounding the alarm. Across France patients are unable to get appointments and wait times in hospital emergency departments have been known to stretch to more than two days. In Nantes, such was the backlog that four people died in emergency rooms over just a three-week period while waiting to be admitted. This is a system stretched far beyond capacity. France’s hospitals are buckling, not because of a pandemic or a natural disaster, but some say because the country offers free, lifelong medical care, and often residency, to anyone from abroad with a serious illness. People are arriving in France from Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The tariff climbdown that defined Trump’s first 100 days

Donald Trump’s first 100 days back in the Oval Office have upended all universal understanding. The global trade order has been turned on its head. Due process has morphed from a right to a vibe. Capital letters have been torn out of style guides and set loose in the wild west of social media. ‘We don’t have a Free and Fair “Press” in this Country anymore’, the President shared on his Truth Social account, setting the tone for this week of reflection and analysis. Why are so many of those words capitalised? Why bother asking. It’s not supposed to make all that much sense. That is the President’s preferred political climate:

Francis Pike

Was Nixon solely to blame for the fall of Saigon?

At 7.53 a.m. on Tuesday 30 April 1975, 50 years ago today, Sergeant Juan Valdez boarded a Sea Knight helicopter sent from aircraft carrier USS Midway that had landed a few minutes earlier on the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. He was the last US soldier to be evacuated from Vietnam. As he scurried to the rooftop, he was aware that some 420 Vietnamese, who had been promised evacuation, were left in the courtyard below. They faced an uncertain fate. The day before it had been reported to Washington that Saigon Airport was under persistent rocket attack. Escape by airplane became impossible. President Gerald Ford explained: ‘The military