World

Monday

Steven Barrett

The parallel world of EU law

The EU courts are not like our courts. They are given a specific purpose of advancing the union. That purpose can be hard to spot and does get denied. I would say that is a court being required to do politics. Our courts do not try to advance the interests of our country – they just do law. In 2014 on the EU Courts the more diplomatic Foreign Office said ‘Both principles [subsidiarity and proportionality] are “legal” principles in that the EU institutions are bound by them and cannot legally act in breach of them. However, given their nature, they require significant political judgment’. Those quote marks in paragraph 2.7

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The radical age of Chinese cinema

44 min listen

You probably wouldn’t expect to see the Cultural Revolution in Chinese films, or the Great Leap Forward, or the Tiananmen Square protests. But for a certain generation and a certain corner of the Chinese film industry, these were actually common themes to deal with. Their films weren’t always welcome to the censors, but they weren’t always banned, either. I recently wrote a column for The Spectator on Chinese cinema, and the golden age it experienced just after the end of the Cultural Revolution. You’d be surprised at the amazing political – and social – subversiveness of directors like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. This episode is all about that golden

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Does Putin’s shopping centre strike signal a new strategy?

A crowded shopping mall in Kremenchuk has become the latest target for Russia’s missile attack. There were more than a thousand civilians’ in the mall, Volodymyr Zelensky said, ‘The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire. The number of victims is impossible to imagine’. X-22 missiles were fired from Tu-22 M3 long-range bombers, with launches made from the Kursk region, according to Ukrainian Air Force Command. The death toll so far is 13 with about 40 injured. An air raid siren sounding shortly before the blast may have allowed some to escape to safety, but rescuers are seeking to salvage bodies now. There have long been fears that Russia

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Are the Abraham Accords working?

Two years ago, UAE citizens were barred from entering Israel. No longer. The inaugural Emirates flight touched down in Tel Aviv last week, a Boeing 777 carrying 335 passengers. For much of the 20th century, the only thing that the Middle East could agree on was the destruction of the Jewish state. But attitudes are changing. The purported reason is the so-called Abraham Accords, signed in 2020 after Donald Trump decided to solve the seemingly intractable problem of the Middle East. If Don the Dealmaker couldn’t do it, who could? Seven decades of antagonism had failed, the White House argued, and the Palestinian cause seemed as troubled as ever, so

Ed Condon

Why the Catholic Church won’t excommunicate Joe Biden

Following Friday’s decision by the Supreme Court to overturn the 50-year-old decision Roe v. Wade, and determine that legislating the legality and limits of abortion is within the power of state legislatures, some pro-abortion activists have targeted the homes of the court’s justices. Others have laid the blame, or part of it at least, at the door of the Catholic Church. Demonstrators paraded around St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York, a city where abortion remains legal on demand up to, and including, during birth. Some online groups called for a ‘night of rage’ against church buildings. It is true that the Catholic Church remains, squarely and unfashionably, of the opinion that the

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

What Russia’s military shake-up reveals about Putin’s war in Ukraine

When General Alexander Dvornikov was made overall commander of Russia’s forces in April, it looked as if the amateurishness and incoordination of the early stage of the Ukraine war might be being addressed. Now, though, Dvornikov is not around, and a new commander may shape a savage new phase of operations. In recent days, the Russian defence ministry announced that Colonel General Alexander Lapin was in command of the Central Group of Forces in Ukraine, while General Sergei Surovikin was heading the Southern Group of Forces during the invasion. Of Dvornikov, who has not been seen for weeks, there was no mention, and the British Ministry of Defence suggests he

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Abortion should not be just another culture-war ding dong

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is an American story, and a global one. What the hell – it’s asked with some justice – does it have to do with the rest of us? In part because, as is sometimes said, when America sneezes the UK catches a cold. But also because the intoxicated global reaction to what, looked at from one angle, is a narrow point of US constitutional law, shows us something about where we’re at. As someone generally of the liberal tribe I find myself slightly out of kilter with my natural allies on this subject. I’m as horrified as the next bloke in a ‘this is

Sunday

Mark Hollingsworth

How Russia’s oligarchs are evading sanctions

On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, a select group of oligarchs attended a private meeting with President Putin in the Kremlin’s St. Catherine’s Hall. It was ostensibly to discuss how the government would assist state-owned Russian banks who were about to be sanctioned by the USA, notably Sberbank and VTB Group. The deputy prime minister Andrey Belousov asked the oligarchs and corporate titans to keep working with sanctioned banks. He said that confidence in the banks was crucial for a country where historically financial chaos has destroyed savings and people’s livelihoods. Among those present was a Russian billionaire called Dmitry Mazepin, best known in the UK

Andrew Tettenborn

It’s time to trust democracy again after Roe v. Wade

Progressive outrage greeted this week’s US Supreme Court majority decision which overturned Roe v. Wade. ‘Extreme ideology,’ thundered Joe Biden. It was ‘a huge blow to women’s human rights’ according to Michelle Bachelet at the UN; a case of ‘back to the Middle Ages,’ in the view of one melodramatic performer at Glastonbury. These are understandable views. But they are still misguided. Some background can help. Before January 1973 abortion in America was a state law matter. Some states were restrictive, some liberal: it all depended on public opinion and local politics. Roe v. Wade changed all that. It determined that the US Constitution implicitly protected the right to abortion almost absolutely up

Norman Davies

The rise and fall of Mariupol

Now that the city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov has been conquered by the Russian army, it is worth looking back at how the city was founded, conquered and destroyed. It is a history that both offers deep insight into the psyche of Russia – and also lays bare the remarkable foundations of the modern Ukrainian state. From time immemorial, nomads and migrating tribes drifted through what is now Ukraine, and the shores of the future Sea of Azov provided one of the most frequented routes. The European peninsula was populated in prehistoric times by migrant groups from Eurasia, shunting each other along like uncoupled wagons on a

Saturday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The problem with Billie Eilish’s Roe v. Wade intervention

The words ‘dark day’ went viral yesterday — in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in America. Women and men the world over took to social media and the airwaves to say that the news was a great leap backwards for humanity. Almost nobody bothered to read the court’s opinion, of course, or even beyond the first two paragraphs of any news story on this actually rather complicated legal subject. But why should that stop people feeling really angry? At Glastonbury, natch, the performers did their utmost to speak to the sombre mood while still somehow having fun. Billie Eilish, the headline act, said: ‘Today is

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Could Belarus join forces with Russia in Ukraine?

Next week Putin is due to meet Alyaksandr Lukashenka, self-proclaimed president of Belarus, for the sixth time since the invasion of Ukraine. This will also be the first time in three years that they have met in Belarus. Much hooha is usually made by the Russian and Belarusian press of their meetings. There is always a ‘happy families’-style photoshoot: Lukashenka towering over Putin, grasping his hand in his meaty fist, looking like Laurel and Hardy’s grotesque reincarnation. According to official readouts, their long meetings tend to cover a variety of mundane topics: agricultural output, the state of their economies, general commitments of mutual support. These meetings are, in themselves, nothing

Sarah Ditum

How the war on Roe was won

When did it become certain that American women’s abortion rights would fall? The Supreme Court’s ruling that ‘Roe was egregiously wrong from the start’ was leaked almost two months ago, so the formal release of the judgment yesterday is bitter but hardly a surprise. Certainly, Donald Trump can take a lot of the credit. Somehow, an administration that gave every impression of being a blazing car crash from which hapless apparatchiks were ejected at speed managed to appoint three — three! — Supreme Court judges, every one of them a copper-bottomed social conservative. But he could never have achieved that without the unlikely help of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that

Friday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Guerilla warfare and targeted assassinations: Inside Ukraine’s partisan resistance

Dmytro Savluchenko was one of Moscow’s useful idiots: a Ukrainian advocate of Russkiy Mir (or ‘Russian world’), Putin’s idea of a kind of reich of Russian-speaking peoples. Back in 2014, when the Russian army stormed the Donbas region, Savluchenko campaigned for Kherson (an area bordering Crimea) to join Russia. More recently, Savluchenko has served as a senior official in the Russian-installed administration of Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region. His career ended this morning, when he was killed by a car bomb. His killing marks the start of a new phase in the war: guerilla warfare and targeted assassination. ‘Our partisans have another victory…a Russian activist and traitor was blown up in a car in one of Kherson’s

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Zelensky’s peculiar Glastonbury appearance

Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t quite make it onto the Glastonbury line-up posters. Perhaps Michael Eavis, the owner of ever-so Worthy Farm, had last-minute difficulties with the Ukrainian President’s booking agent. No matter. An eight-foot-high image of President Zelensky’s face graced the Pyramid Stage on Friday, right before ageing indie rockers The Libertines belted out their two-decades-old bangers. ‘Time for Heroes’, but not before festival-goers had enjoyed a brief set by Europe’s very own hero. You’d be forgiven for thinking the shtick’s getting a bit tired – but at least Pete Doherty can just about hold a tune. ‘Glastonbury is the greatest concentration of freedom these days,’ Zelensky told the festival. And

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The truth about the Roe v. Wade abortion ‘ban’

You wait decades for landmark reforms in America and then, like culture-war buses, two come along at once. Earlier this week, the Senate passed a gun control bill – the most significant firearm control legislation in US history. Now, the Supreme Court has voted 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade – as everyone expected since Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was leaked on 2 May. ‘The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,’ a syllabus of the opinion said. Barack Obama has tweeted that the news is ‘devastating’ There

Coffee House

Roe is gone – what happens now?

The US Supreme Court has today officially overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling which gave women the constitutional right to have an abortion. The Court had been examining the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, which was challenging a Mississippi law which banned abortion after 15 weeks. Following the Dobbs decision, some states will now serve as sanctuaries for the unborn, while others will be sanctuaries for women seeking abortions, sometimes right up until the moment of birth. Let’s start with the states that have ‘trigger laws’ to ban abortion if Roe is overturned. They are Arkansas, Kentucky, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming and Utah.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron can no longer be a Covid authoritarian

Covid cases are on the increase in France, as they are in most European countries, and the scientists who have been silent for months have once more found their voice. At the weekend professor Jean-François Delfraissy called for everyone in France this autumn to have a fourth vaccination, while Alain Fischer, president of the Scientific Council, believes that masks should once more be obligatory in public transport, six weeks after the regulations requiring this were dropped. But times have changed. Emmanuel Macron is still president but he no longer has an absolute majority in parliament and the days when the National Assembly rubber-stamped every Covid diktat emanating from the Elysée

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Biden’s racial ‘equity’ plan is bound to backfire

‘America is a nation that can be defined in a single word,’ said the proud Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden, standing outside the White House earlier this year. ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa.’ We shouldn’t laugh. The poor man has a speech impediment. Still, that ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa’ word will strike many Americans as an amusingly apt description of their country in 2022. It sums up Joe Biden’s whole administration: nonsense pretending to be clear leadership. America is, as everyone knows, in an inflationary crisis. The cost of petrol has reached such highs that Biden has called on Congress to suspend gas (petrol) tax for three months. That will do nothing to address the energy supply shortage that

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Putin’s billions: have sanctions backfired?

When Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine on 24 February, he did so under the assumption that the West was too ruptured and disjointed to pull together a unified response. It was the first of many miscalculations. That same day, Boris Johnson promised ‘massive’ economic sanctions that would ‘hobble’ Russia’s economy to the point of shutdown. ‘Putin chose this war,’ said Joe Biden that evening, as the United States announced its own sanctions on Russia’s top banks. ‘Now he and his country will bear the consequences.’ The global economic response to Russia’s aggression has been stronger than anyone predicted. Russia’s most notorious oligarchs have had their assets seized and