World

Wednesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Rwanda policy is about sending a message

Is the UK on course to leave the European Convention on Human Rights? This is what some Tory MPs are pushing for after judges in Strasbourg blocked, at the last minute, the first deportation flight scheduled to take asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. After unsuccessful bids in the UK courts, a judgement from the ECtHR halting the deportation of one passenger triggered a series of new legal challenges back in London. This led to the government removing all the passengers from the plane. In response to the judgment, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was ‘disappointed’ but undeterred – insisting work for the next flight was already underway. 

Gus Carter Gus Carter

What’s the alternative to the Rwanda plan?

Last night, a Boeing 767 that was supposed to fly 130 asylum seekers to Rwanda returned to Spain without a single passenger on board. Throughout the day, the number of people planned for that flight had been whittled down by multiple legal challenges. Then, minutes before take-off, the European Court of Human Rights made an injunction stopping an Iraqi man known as KN from being taken to Central Africa because, it said, he faced ‘a real risk of irreversible harm’. The question some are asking is why the Home Secretary didn’t wait. There is supposed to be a broader challenge at the High Court next month which would, perhaps, have

Tuesday

Roderick Crawford

The EU never understood Northern Ireland

At the heart of the crisis over the Protocol is its failure to deliver on its own stated aims. To understand this crisis, it is necessary to know some key aspects of the Protocol’s genesis and history. Exactly a month after Theresa May triggered Article 50, the European Commission was instructed by the member states (the European Council of 27) with ensuring the UK’s orderly withdrawal from the EU, including finding arrangements for the island of Ireland. That meant securing the Good Friday Agreement and avoiding a hard border. This was set out in legal guidelines on 29 April 2017 and elaborated in directives for the negotiations the following month:

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Mythbusting the social credit system

55 min listen

China’s social credit system is notorious. This Black Mirror-esque network supposedly gives citizens a score, based on an opaque algorithm that feeds on data from each person’s digital and physical lives. With one billion Chinese accessing the Internet and the growing prevalence of facial recognition, it means that their every move can be monitored – from whether they cross the road dangerously, to whether they play too many video games and buy too much junk food. Those with low scores have lower socio-economic status, and may not be able to board planes and trains, or send their children to school. It’s all part of a Chinese Communist Party directive to

Steven Barrett

Changing the Northern Ireland Protocol won’t break the law

The UK is about to publish a bill that will override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol. We are doing this unilaterally – the EU doesn’t want us to do it, but we’re going to do it anyway. Surely that means we’re about to breach international law? It’s worth quickly going over why this is happening. The EU wanted to protect its common market, and no one wanted a border down the island of Ireland, so a trade border was placed in the Irish Sea. That has created trade friction between two constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Unionists are unhappy with that arrangement. And unhappy Unionists have led to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s Socialists have been punished for their intolerance

One of the more significant results from the first round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday was in the Corrèze. There, in the rural south of the country, Sandrine Deveaud of the Nouvelle union populaire écologiste et sociale (Nupes) came top with 25.4 per cent of the vote. This is the left-wing alliance assembled by Jean-Luc Melenchon in the wake of April’s presidential election result, bringing together his far-left France insoumise, the Greens, the Communists and the Socialist party. The Socialists were the last to come on board. And even then many within the party refused to submit to Melenchon and declared they would stand against Nupes’ candidates in the parliamentary

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The next Brexit battle is here

The government will today reveal its plans to unilaterally rewrite parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Depending on who you speak to, this is either a necessary step in protecting the Good Friday agreement or a breach of international law set to damage the UK’s standing on the world stage. The details of the bill have been subject to government wrangling over the past week. Liz Truss sided with backbench members of the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteers to toughen up the bill while ministers including Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak argued for a more cautious approach. One of the problems for Johnson is that figures in Brussels look

Daniel DePetris

Why is America bombing Somalia again?

You may not have caught it amidst other international developments, but the United States bombed Somalia last Friday. No, that isn’t a misprint. On June 3, the Somali government announced that the US had conducted an airstrike against al-Shabaab militants west of the southern port city of Kismayo, killing approximately five fighters. The Pentagon has yet to release any information about the strike, a concerning (but not surprising) display of nonchalance. The latest strike came as President Biden reversed his predecessor’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Somalia. Approximately 500 Americans will now return to train Somali counterterrorism forces and aid Mogadishu in its counterinsurgency campaign against al-Shabaab, a

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s Plan B

Emmanuel Macron is about to activate his Plan B.  If he cannot control the National Assembly, after the current round of legislative elections, he will simply bypass it,  creating a new ‘people’s assembly’ with which he might appear to consult the French. This would obviate the need to refer or defer to the elected members of the National Assembly, for which he’s never had much respect. On Sunday night’s talk shows, Macron’s team were already explaining how such a body would keep him ‘in touch’ with voters should the actual elected politicians in the actual Assemblée decline to co-operate with the president. There was, perhaps surprisingly, no pushback against such

Sunday

Francis Pike

How long will Xi Jinping rule China?

For some time now it has been assumed that in November the National Congress will rubber stamp Xi Jinping’s continued role as China’s supreme leader for a third five-year term, which would make Xi the first Chinese leader for a generation to serve more than two terms. Just a year ago his position as one of China’s three pre-eminent leaders was confirmed when the 400 members of the Central Committee passed the third ‘Historical Resolution’ in the Chinese Communist Party’s 100-year history. The previous two were organised by Mao in 1945 and Deng Xiaoping in 1981. The resolution highlighted the concept of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ as a historical equivalent to

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The ironic reincarnation of McDonald’s on Russia Day

Today is Russia Day. A muted affair compared to the pompous and bellicose displays seen on Victory Day, today is the day Russia commemorates no longer being a part of the Soviet Union and becoming the Russian Federation instead. Unlike other patriotic holidays in the country, most ordinary Russians pay little attention to its significance. The end of the Soviet Union and the ensuing ‘Perestroika’ period was filled with economic hardship and upheaval, and is therefore a time many would prefer to forget. Today, for most Russians, is just a nice day off, filled with wholesome family activities, the odd bit of cultural indulgence in museums and the like, and

Andreas Campomar

How Uruguay held out against South American socialism

Of all the epithets for Latin America, the most frustrating and demoralising must be the ‘forgotten continent’. Latin America is not so much forgotten as overlooked. Part of the reason for this may lie in its cultural proximity but geographical distance to the West: what Alain Rouquié, the French political scientist, called ‘far-western’. Familiarity, even on these fringes, has bred indifference. Last month, however, Britain remembered its historical ties to Latin America when Boris Johnson welcomed the President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, to Downing Street. The invitation had been extended and not sought, which the President was quick to point out to the Uruguayan press. This was a meeting

Saturday

Rana Mitter

China is becoming a hermit kingdom

There is an unprecedented experiment under way in China as it reshapes its economy to accommodate its zero-Covid strategy. There are two elements to the policy. The more visible one is the harsh lockdowns, enacted most recently in Shanghai – where for the past two months 25 million people were confined to their homes or forced into quarantine holding centres. Though restrictions were officially eased last week, already 2.7 million residents are back under lockdown and confined to their homes following an outbreak in the city. Anyone who catches Covid faces quarantine or hospital. The second element of China’s zero-Covid policy is the continued closure of its borders. This has

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin is no Peter the Great

Putin has a penchant for history, but only insofar it flatters him and his views. Last year, he gifted the world a 5,000 essay that essentially pre-justified his invasion of Ukraine with amateurish fantasy history, and now he is comparing himself with Tsar Peter the Great. It is not a comparison that fits or flatters. Peter the Great is one of the, well, greats of the Russian historical pantheon. He ruled from the late 17th to the early 18th century, and in that time became the first tsar to travel in Europe, built a new capital at St Petersburg, and was both founder of the Russian navy and victor, on

Friday

Matthew Lynn

Why Biden’s inflation plan will fail

It sounded impressive at the time. On the last day of May, a whole ten days ago, president Biden laid out a three-part plan for bringing inflation back under control. It consisted of making sure the Federal Reserve was allowed to do whatever it took to control prices, releasing oil and gas reserves to try to bring down the soaring costs of energy, and fixing supply chains to try to make industry and retailing more competitive. ‘I have made tackling inflation my top economic priority,’ he announced grandly. To listen to the rhetoric from the White House, you might think that this was an issue that could be fixed with a

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Capitol riot hearings are farcically partisan

Let’s get the boringly obvious out of the way. What happened in Washington on 6 January, 2021 was bad. Very bad. America, the world’s most powerful democracy, looked a horrible mess. Rioting is always wrong. Rioting on Capitol Hill on the day when power is meant to be peaceably transferred is anti-democratic and anti-conservative. Even if you believe the presidential election of 2020 election was rigged, as many ardent Trump supporters do, it is never acceptable to smash up federal property. To target America’s most important building is especially egregious. It doesn’t matter how angry you are. Obvious point two: from the election in November to January, Donald Trump behaved

Gabriel Gavin Gabriel Gavin

The death of Russian diplomacy

‘It’s like being part of a cult,’ explains one student of Russia’s elite diplomatic academy. ‘They expect us to learn about diplomacy and the international order like nothing has changed, but everything has.’ Since it was founded by Joseph Stalin in 1944, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations has been a training ground for Russian ambassadors, Kremlin advisors and KGB spies. Now, though, discontent is stirring among the students. In the weeks following the invasion of Ukraine, Russia passed a series of laws that made discrediting the armed forces an offence, punishable with fines and even jail time. While these future civil servants were always expected to ingest an

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Ben & Jerry’s is wrong about Britain’s ‘racist’ Rwanda plan

Why is an ice cream brand lecturing Britain on the morality of its immigration policy? Ben and Jerry’s, otherwise known for flogging overpriced junk food, has weighed in on the government’s new policy of sending mostly single men dodging Britain’s border control to Rwanda. The plan is ‘cruel and morally bankrupt’, ‘racist and abhorrent’, according to the ice cream company, which says sending people ‘to a country they’ve never been to, and have no connection with’ could ‘put people’s lives at risk’. Setting aside the source of these allegations, let’s evaluate these statements. Despite being depicted by some as a rainy hellhole, Britain remains an attractive country where a large segment of the world’s

Thursday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

How Russia’s press covered the death sentence of two British fighters

Two Brits and a Moroccan national captured while fighting for Ukraine have been sentenced to death by a court in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine. Accused of being ‘mercenaries’ committed to ‘carrying out acts of terrorism’ and ‘seizing power by force’, Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Brahim Saadoun have a month to appeal the sentence handed down by the Supreme Court of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). Widely considered a show trial by the West, the Russian media covered the fighters’ court case with earnest gravity. Now their sentence has been handed down, Russia’s coverage has only expanded, capitalising on the propaganda opportunities it has brought them. The Russian press coverage has

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Why Jeremy Corbyn is being feted by the French left

Into the three-ring circus of the French legislative election campaign has stepped Jeremy Corbyn. The papi magique arrived on the Eurostar last weekend to campaign for candidates of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose insurrectionary ultra-left campaign is threatening to deny the recently re-elected Emmanuel Macron a presidential majority in the parliament. First round voting is on Sunday. A runoff will be a week later. Those tempted to overlook the continuing appeal of Mr Corbyn and dismiss him as a political has-been or even an unreconstructed Marxist clown, would perhaps have been startled to see him mobbed by adoring fans in Paris. Corbyn was feted as a red prince from over the water.