World

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Could the Tories suffer the same fate as the French right?

Here are some statistics that ought to send a shudder through Tory MPs. Between 1995 and 2012 the French centre-right was in presidential power, first under Jacques Chirac and then the administration of Nicolas Sarkozy. The month after Sarko was elected president in 2007, his party, Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), won 313 seats in the National Assembly. Today, following a rebrand to become Les Républicans in 2015, they have 62. This is actually better than some expected considering their 2022 presidential candidate, Valérie Pécresse, won just 4.8 per cent of the electorate’s votes, below the 5 per cent threshold required for candidates to be reimbursed their campaign expenses. Pécresse

Charles Lipson

Biden is the emperor with no clothes

The emperor is naked. The public knows it, and they’re finally beginning to speak the obvious truth. The emperor, in this case, is President Biden. He took office with high hopes from voters and a promise to bring the country together. Those aspirations are dead. The public has lost confidence in Joe Biden – lost confidence that he can do the job, and lost confidence that he is even minimally competent. They certainly don’t think he has brought the country together (though they think Republicans share the blame for that). This sour mood hurts more than the President. It hurts his entire party, and will be extremely hard to reverse.

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Sri Lanka’s revolution looks doomed

Reporting from Sri Lanka over the years has left me with mixed memories. On the one hand, there’s the horror and trauma of the Easter Bombings of 2019, which claimed 269 lives. The traumatic scenes at the hospital and morgue have been hard to forget, as have the eeriness of the tourist spots after all its foreign visitors had fled. On the other hand, there is the country itself. It is relatively poor, of course, and beset by endemic corruption and nepotism, particularly at the top of government, along with its fair share of ethnic tension. But it has an incredibly warm-hearted and hospitable culture, filled with Buddhist gentleness and

Tuesday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

How Justin Trudeau caved to Putin

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was certain that its sanctions were worth the pain. But there always was a question as to whether this resolve would last once the domestic difficulties actually started. This week, western countries moved closer to admitting it might be too much to bear. At the time of the invasion in February, a massive Russian turbine was being repaired in Montreal. It was one of many turbines used to send gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany. When the Russians moved into Ukraine, it was kept in Canada as punishment. Over the next few weeks and months Russia replied, cutting off

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China’s Ponzi banks are teetering

What began as a run on a handful of provincial banks is rapidly morphing into one of China’s worst financial scandals, threatening the stability of the country’s heavily indebted financial system. It poses a serious challenge to a Communist party obsessed with social order, which has thuggishly cracked down on desperate depositors demanding their money back. At the weekend, protesters in Henan’s capital Zhengzhou were charged, beaten and dragged away by unidentified security officials dressed in white shirts and dark trousers, who appeared to be working in concert with uniformed police. An estimated 1,000 angry depositors had gathered in front of a branch of the People’s Bank of China, carrying banners

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

End of quote. Repeat the line. Joe Biden can’t go on

How much longer can the global disaster that is Joe Biden’s presidency go on? Surely there comes a point when the Democrats do what the Tory party did to Boris Johnson last week – declare enough is enough and force him out? The odds of Biden running for a second term are shrinking dramatically – no matter how many times he insists he will go on. The more pressing question is whether he can even hold on for the remaining two years of his first four. A miserable poll just published in the New York Times shows that only 13 per cent of Americans think their nation is on the

Susanne Mundschenk Susanne Mundschenk

The problem with euro-dollar parity

The euro is nearly level with the dollar. It should not matter in theory, because of the relatively low share of the US in EU trade. But it does in practice. Some predict that the euro will fall below parity. There is a straightforward explanation for this: the war in Ukraine and unpredictable Russian gas supplies to Europe make the dollar a safe haven for investors. On top of this, US interest rates offer a higher return on investment. But it is not only the dollar. Looking at the broader picture, the European Central Bank’s measure of the euro’s real effective exchange rate against 42 partner countries confirms this trend

Jesse Singal

The problem with being anti-woke

I’m going to do something that will likely annoy you, dear reader: I am going to make an argument about a certain class of people without naming names. If I do name names, any response will devolve into a debate over whether I am unfairly tarring the individuals in question. That’s beside the point, because the phenomenon in question is undoubtedly real. That phenomenon is anti-wokeness curdling into reactionary crankery. Don’t get me wrong: as I’ve previously written, I think there’s a moral panic afoot in many liberal institutions. Whether you want to call it ‘wokeness’ or something else, it seems undeniably the case that a culture of illiberalism has corroded

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Semiconductors: the next technological arms race

44 min listen

Semiconductors are the most important thing that you’ve never heard of. These little computer chips provide the processing power for everything from cars and iPhones, to unmanned drones and missiles. In Beijing’s Made in China 2025 industrial strategy, through which China seeks to move up the value chain to become a high-tech superpower, semiconductor self-sufficiency was one of the targets. Beijing is falling far behind on this target. MIC 2025 stated the aim of meeting 70 per cent of China’s demand through domestic production by 2025, but, seven years on, it is only meeting 20 per cent of its domestic needs (by one estimate). The world’s leading manufacturer of semiconductors is in

Saturday

Francis Pike

Shinzo Abe and the long history of Japanese political violence

Shinzo Abe, perhaps the most significant Japanese politician of the last 50 years, has been assassinated. The killing was carried out by Tetsuya Yamagamu, a youngish and apparently disgruntled former employee of the Japan’s Maritime Self Defence Force.  It was a brutal and sordid end to what was an important if not uncontroversial life. Shinzo Abe was the dominant politician of his era. Forced to give up the prime ministership after just one year in 2007 because of ulcerative colitis, a congenital condition, Abe came back to win landslide elections for the Liberal Democratic Party in 2012, 2014 and 2017. In an era when many Japanese prime ministers have served

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Russia is militarising its economy

The ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine isn’t a war – there’s a law and a possible maximum sentence (though no one seems to have faced it yet) of 15 years in prison to stop you claiming it is in Russia. Yet Russia does seem to be inching towards a wartime economy, for all Vladimir Putin’s recent bullishness. At the recent (if rather sparsely-attended) St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin struck a triumphalist note, crowing that ‘the economic blitzkrieg against Russia never had any chances of success,’ and ‘gloomy predictions about the Russian economy’s future didn’t come true.’ That’s both true and not true. There has been no meltdown, not least

Friday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Shinzo Abe’s killing has horrified Japan

Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe has died after he was shot twice while campaigning on the streets of the city of Nara, ahead of Sunday’s upper house elections. The incident took place at 11:30 this morning. A witness told NHK (Japan’s national broadcaster) that: ‘He (Abe) was giving a speech and a man came from behind. The first shot sounded like a toy. He didn’t fall and there was a large bang. The second shot was more visible, you could see the spark and smoke. After the second shot, people surrounded him and gave him cardiac massage.’ Security attending to the former Japanese leader apprehended the suspected gunman, a 41-year-old, believed

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Boris was never Trump

The urge to compare Boris Johnson to Donald Trump was always irresistible. It has been fun, too. Both men are colourful creatures in a political environment that elevated dullards. Both men had privileged childhoods. Both are veteran womanisers with much younger wives. Both are brilliant electoral campaigners and great communicators, albeit in very different ways. Both are also much hated. Yesterday, as Johnson’s government collapsed on top of him and he appeared to be refusing to resign, some journalists instantly went for the ‘Britain Trump’ allusions. Johnson was desperately ‘clinging on’ to power; ‘unable to face reality’ and ‘refusing to respect the basic conventions of parliamentary democracy.’ Some Twitter blowhards even

Sean Thomas

An existential war: even wealthy émigrés are prepared to fight for Russia

If you’re wondering where all those urbane, clever, westernised Russian travellers have gone since the onset of the Ukrainian war – a war which has largely barred them from the West – I can tell you that at least two of them will be found in the tiny Armenian hamlet of Gnishik, high in the summery peaks of the Caucasus. I know this because I met them there last week. And what they told me – about Russia, the war, their lives since the war – was illuminating. This meeting wasn’t planned. I’d made the long, pot-holed drive from the sunburned Areni winelands, lost in their redrock canyons, up to

Hannah Lucinda Smith

Runaway inflation is proving costly for Turkey’s oil-wrestlers

Edirne, Turkey There is a distinctive sound that an oiled-up palm makes as it slaps against an oiled-up pair of leather shorts. Both squelchy and sharp, this noise rings around the Thracian town of Edirne each July as it hosts Turkey’s biggest oil-wrestling championship. As the name suggests, contenders are greased up with either olive, corn or sunflower oil before they start to fight. The competition begins with a languid ritual in which the wrestlers stomp around each other, touching the ground and themselves before commencing their tussle. The winner must then flip his opponent on to his back, often by reaching into his shorts and grabbing hold of a

Tuesday

Andrew Tettenborn

The European Court is powerless to stop Russia

Last Thursday saw a wry twist to the Ukraine war. The European Court of Human Rights solemnly intoned that Russia should stop the execution of two Englishmen condemned to death in the Donetsk People’s Republic for fighting for Ukraine. It knew perfectly well it was screaming into the void. Russia, though technically in the ECHR till September, had said it would ignore any of the court’s orders; and there is no doubt whatsoever that the People’s Republic will do exactly the same. This is not the first time the court has raised eyebrows by issuing peremptory declarations of this kind. Just under three weeks ago, a plane was about to

Monday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Chechen warlord Kadyrov mocks Zelensky in spoof video

A strange video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is currently circulating online. In it, he sits at his presidential table, dressed in his trademark khaki t-shirt. Staring straight down the camera, he addresses the Ukrainian people: ‘Dear citizens!’ At first glance, it could really be one of Zelensky’s nightly addresses. Except, almost immediately, you notice the meaty disembodied hand gripping him by the left shoulder. With apparent distress, Zelensky continues, announcing the surrender of Ukraine on ‘land, sea and air’. The meaty arm shakes him to get him to spit the words out, committing Ukraine to ‘complete denazification’ within a month of signing. Kadyrov is mocking Zelensky and the Ukrainian

Susanne Mundschenk Susanne Mundschenk

Turkey’s grain diplomacy

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is once again using Turkey’s geopolitical position for his own ends, this time dictating grain shipments from Ukraine through the Black Sea. Turkish customs authorities detained a Russian cargo ship carrying Ukrainian wheat on Sunday, following a request of Kyiv. The Russian cargo ship Zhibek Zholy left the south-eastern port of Berdyansk over the weekend carrying 7,000 tons of grain, worth about £1.75 million. The Russian-appointed head of the occupied region had hailed it as the first commercial ship to leave a Ukrainian port after months of war. He said this would take desperately-needed supplies to friendly countries, according to Politico. The reality is, of course, that

Matthew Lynn

German industry is grinding to a halt

The Soviet Union had only just collapsed. John Major was still a relatively fresh-faced Prime Minister. And the internet consisted of a few desktop computers linking together a handful of laboratories. The world was a very different place when Germany last posted a trade deficit way back in 1991. But on Monday, the country recorded that imports outstripped exports for more than 30 years. True, other countries are recording huge deficits, not least the UK. For Germany, though, it matters more. Its entire economy has been built around creating an industrial machine that dominates global markets. That machine is now grinding to a halt. By the standards of Britain, the