World

Thursday

Michael Gove

Weimar Britain, the war on science & are you a competitive reader?

36 min listen

First: a warning from history Politics moving increasingly from the corridors of power into the streets, economic insecurity exacerbating tensions and the centre of politics failing to hold; these are just some of the echoes from Weimar Germany that the Spectator’s editor Michael Gove sees when looking at present-day Britain. But, he says, ‘there are grounds for hope’ – what are they? Michael joined the podcast to discuss.   Next: why did science succumb to the ‘culture wars’? Biologist and peer Matt Ridley bemoans the ‘cultification of science’, arguing that ‘left-wing ideological nonsense’ ended up permeating through all scientific disciplines. Thinking ‘neutral facts’ were safe, Matt admits he – and colleagues

Donald Trump

Full text: Donald Trump's state banquet speech

It’s a singular privilege to be the first American president welcomed here. And if you think about it, it’s a lot of presidents, and this was the second state visit – and that’s a first and maybe that’s going to be the last time. I hope it is actually. But this is truly one of the highest honours of my life. Such respect for you and such respect for your country. For many decades, His Majesty the King has epitomised the fortitude, nobility, and the spirit of the British monarchy and the British people. He’s dedicated himself to preserving the glory and unique character of this kingdom, restoring life to

Peter Frankopan

A new era of nuclear weapons is here

The world is moving into a more dangerous age. According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo, last year set a grim record, namely the highest number of state-based armed conflicts in more than seven decades. At the same time, we are seeing a fundamental realignment of global geopolitics – made clear from the recent meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in Tianjin and the ‘Victory Day’ parade held in Beijing shortly afterwards. There, the leaders of what many in the West see as an emerging new world order stood shoulder to shoulder as Chinese military hardware was put on display to mark 80 years since the end of the second

Nicholas Farrell

Was I the victim of a sex crime?

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I went up to her and got straight to the point: ‘What are you using for bait?’ I say ‘her’ but you never know round here. We live a mile inland from one of the last unspoiled stretches of Adriatic coast, part of which was stolen several decades ago by highly trained nudists. The nudists, who seem to be mostly men, attract several fringe groups, such as trans women (men who identify as women). One of the best-known was christened Cesare but is now a peroxide blonde called Cesarea. ‘She’ is taller than anyone else in the village apart from me and has enormous hands. Besides, it

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Charlie Kirk killed, Peter Mandelson sacked and Harry takes tea with the King

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, asked Lord Mandelson to step back as ambassador to Washington. This followed the publication of alarming emails of support Lord Mandelson had sent to Jeffrey Epstein after the financier’s conviction for sexual crimes. Questions remained about what Sir Keir knew and when before Lord Mandelson’s sacking and appointment. Some Labour MPs expressed frustration with the Prime Minister’s leadership. His director of political strategy, Paul Ovenden, resigned over a lewd joke about Diane Abbott he had relayed eight years ago. Some claimed Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester who has set up a soft-left group called Mainstream, was going to try to become

Wednesday

Yossi Melman

Israel is waging war for war's sake

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has begun the most senseless battle in the history of Israel. Two conscript divisions with Merkava tanks, APCs and artillery, supported in the skies by the Israeli Air Force, are now engaged in a battle to conquer Gaza City. As they go, they are seizing what remains of the asphalt roads in Gaza. Artillery and air force planes are bombing and destroying more houses – about 70 per cent of the buildings in Gaza have already been destroyed by the IDF. This is now the most political war in Israel’s history. The country fought three wars against regular armies out of necessity: the War of

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why Putin's military drills are good news for the West

Another Russian military exercise is over, and some Western commentators would have us believe that we ought to be heaving a collective sigh of relief that Putin’s legions didn’t use this as an excuse for another invasion. Of course, that was very overblown hype. Instead, what we saw was a Russian military still clinging to outmoded ways of war, as if its armoured columns had not been blocked and burnt when they rolled into Ukraine in 2022. The Zapad-2025 (West-2025) exercises, which concluded on Tuesday, involved perhaps 30,000 Russian and Belarusian soldiers in a wargame stretching from the Arctic Circle to Belarus. This was the latest iteration of a biennial

Druin Burch

How I came to (reluctantly) like Trump

The Donald is in Britain. As a holidaymaker used to budget flights, I associate Stansted airport, where Trump landed last night, with precisely the amount of glamour it currently offers, but I also know it was where planes in distress are directed to on their return – its long runway giving them the best chance of survival. Stansted is where imperilled dreams go in the hope of rescue. As Trump arrived, I realised its tarmac had not done for me what it once did for others. For them, that blessedly long runway was salvation. For me, it’s where my resistance crashed and burned. As I peered at the pictures of

Mark Nayler

Pedro Sanchez's pro-Palestine obsession is damaging Spain

‘Today Spain shines as an example and as a source of pride. It’s [giving] an example to the international community by taking a step forward in defence of human rights.’ So said Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez on Sunday, in praise of the pro-Palestine mob that brought the Vuelta a España cycle race to a premature end in Madrid. Sanchez’s support for these disruptive protests came a week after his promise to ‘consolidate in law’ a ban on Spain purchasing Israeli military equipment, in reaction to what he calls Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza.  Cyclists on the Vuelta still had several circuits of the Spanish capital to complete that afternoon,

Matthew Lynn

Trump's steel tariffs will hurt Britain

Over the course of President Trump’s state visit, we can expect lots of investments by the giants of American industry to be unveiled. Microsoft will announce $30 billion (£22 billion) of investment in new artificial intelligence hubs and tech infrastructure. Google will pump £5 billion into AI in Britain, which presumably means getting some robots to sit in the British Library reading room for a few months until all the content has been scraped. Perhaps by the end of the week, even McDonald’s will have announced plans for a new food court on the A30. But for all the celebration, there will be no progress on the only deal that

Alexander Larman

Donald Trump will be on his best behaviour for King Charles

The Donald has touched down in Britain for his unprecedented second state visit. It makes sense in a way that this most unconventional of American presidents is being granted a privilege that has never been offered to any other US leader, namely a repeat performance of pageantry and pomp that will flatter this Anglophile’s ego to its considerable core. That the event is happening against King Charles’s wishes might bother any other prime minister, but such was Keir Starmer’s desire to curry favour with Trump that he even waved the King’s handwritten invitation on camera. And with that he ensured favourable treatment for the country he is (barely) governing. The

Tuesday

Michael Evans

Trump is living in Putin's world

It all began with such promise. Donald Trump would sweep away all the failures of past administrations, sit astride the globe like a Nobel Prize winner in the making and solve the world’s seemingly unresolvable security challenges. To be fair, it has only been eight months since he began his second term in the White House. But it is a fact that Trump has struggled to bring the force of his personality and chutzpah to bear in trying to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as he pledged he would in short shrift during his presidential campaign. His return to the White House was supposed to be the start

Monday

Matthew Lynn

Can Trump force Nato to get tough on Russian sanctions?

The pipelines would be sealed off. The supertankers would be left in the ports, and the wells would have to be capped. When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, it was confidently assumed that sanctions on Moscow’s oil and gas industry would be so punishing for its fragile economy that it would quickly force Vladimir Putin to plead for a settlement. Unfortunately, it has not worked out like that. Instead, the sanctions against Russia have been widely flouted. In response, President Trump has demaned that Nato makes them stick. But would sanctions really work and cripple Putin’s war machine?  President Trump was in typically robust form. Over the weekend, he

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Was Charlie Kirk's murder the senseless act of an internet troll?

We are in the grip of old habits. We assume, most of us, that when a prominent political figure is assassinated, the motive for the killing is political. So it was with Charlie Kirk’s assassin. Before anything was known about the killer, President Trump’s allies and outliers decided that it was a symptom of the murderous violence of soi-disant antifascists on the left. When it emerged, subsequently, that our man was from a republican family and that he potentially may have been part of the white supremacist ‘groyper’ movement, anti-Trump types chalked it up to the violence of the Right.  There may have been more justification for the latter position

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The AfD's mission to seduce West Germany is paying off

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party continued its westward march in popularity across Germany yesterday, securing third place in the local elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Preliminary results show that, alongside the outcomes of mayoralty and district administrator elections which took place in the state, the far-right party won 14.5 per cent of the vote across the 396 municipalities which went to the polls. The liberal SPD party came in second with 22.1 per cent, while the CDU – the governing party in Berlin – secured a third of the vote, with 33.3 per cent. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will be breathing a small sigh of

Sunday

Arnout Nuijt

The crime the Netherlands would rather forget

In the early hours of 20 August, a 17-year-old girl set off on her bicycle, making the journey from central Amsterdam to the nearby village of Abcoude after a carefree evening out. What followed was any parent’s worst nightmare. In distress, the girl dialled emergency services, reporting that she was being chased and assaulted by an unknown man. Police rushed to the scene. The girl, known only to the public as Lisa, was found brutally murdered on a notorious stretch of unlit road near the Amsterdam Arena football stadium. The authorities strive to manage the danger as best they can – and continue to avoid naming, let alone addressing, its

Paddy Stephens

The forgotten history of France's doomed invasion of Taiwan

The French language may not be the global lingua franca it once aspired to be, but I’ve found myself using it in some unexpected places far beyond the Hexagon. Near the busy port of Keelung (pronounced Ji-long), beneath the steep hills surrounding a natural harbour less than twenty miles from Taiwan’s capital Taipei, is a curious burial site. It has the natural placidity of a churchyard, despite its proximity to a main road; trees shade the headstones, whose first line reads “Ici repose…”. This is a French military cemetery. So what is it doing in Taiwan? Few remember this history in Europe, but in Keelung it is commemorated in a

Saturday

Sam Meadows

Javier Milei is struggling

Is patience with Javier Milei finally wearing thin? The bombastic leader of Argentina was sent a clear message of discontent by the electorate last week when he lost the province of Buenos Aires in a landslide local election. Although the contest has little consequence for the national picture, it will be causing consternation in Milei’s camp. The province, which does not include the capital city’s metropolitan area, is home to roughly 40 per cent of Argentine voters. Such a heavy loss just over a month before national midterms is a serious cause for concern. Milei is used to winning. He swept into power in 2023 with a crushing defeat of

Nicholas Farrell

France has become Italy – and not in a good way

France is taking the place of Italy, it seems, as the basket case of Europe. The turn-over of prime ministers in France – five now since the start of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term in 2022  – is worse even than Italy has ever managed. Since the fall of fascism in 1945 Italy has notoriously had 69 governments – roughly one a year – which has made governing a tricky people even trickier. But France has had nearly two a year of late. That France is now, in the words of Marine Le Pen, ‘the sick man of Europe’, is especially pleasing to Italians. Macron, who refuses to step down