World

Thursday

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Why I was almost thrown out of South Africa

On my 2 p.m. arrival for a week-long work trip to South Africa a fortnight ago, an immigration agent flapped my passport while inquiring as to the purpose of my visit. ‘To appear in the Franschhoek Literary Festival’ clearly meant nothing to this woman, but hey, lit fests aren’t exactly Glastonbury. I only grew, shall we say, concerned when she announced that because my passport lacked two sequential completely clean pages, she was denying me entry to the country. ‘You’re kidding me,’ I said – quietly; I didn’t shout. Yet this reflex expression of disbelief was all it would take for the entire team of Cape Town’s gatekeepers to blackball

Jay Elwes

Could Putin be toppled? An interview with Richard Dearlove

‘One of the things about being in Moscow as the guest of the Russian government,’ says Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, ‘is this real attempt to make you feel like an outsider.’ It comes, he says, ‘from a fundamental Russian suspicion of foreigners’: ‘The Kremlin is designed to intimidate you. It’s designed to make you feel as if you are at the centre of a great empire.’ Dearlove joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1966, and though spies are always a little cagey about their past, it seems he served as an intelligence officer behind the Iron Curtain. After a stint as head of station in Washington, in

Katy Balls Katy Balls

‘China is all-out against us’: an interview with Lithuania’s foreign minister

On the 16th floor of a tower block in Vilnius, Lithuania, is an office with a nameplate so incendiary that it has started a trade war. The ‘Taiwanese Representative Office’ violates a rule that China imposes upon its trade partners: never allow Taiwan to open official offices. Call it ‘Taipei’, or anything, just not ‘Taiwan’. Lithuania recently decided that an important principle is at stake: should small countries be bullied by big ones? It thought not – and has allowed Taiwan to use its own name at what is regarded as a de facto embassy. This was Vilnius going out on a limb, saying it was time to defend democracies

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Sue Gray reports, ScotRail slashes trains and monkeypox spreads

Home Sue Gray starched and ironed her report for publication after the Metropolitan Police wound up its own enquiries into breaches of coronavirus laws in and around Downing Street, with 126 fixed penalty notices being issued, only one to Boris Johnson. Meanwhile the nation contemplated photographs published by ITV News of the Prime Minister raising a glass at Downing Street on 13 November 2020. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said in an interview: ‘I would want to see Moldova equipped to Nato standard. This is a discussion we’re having with our allies.’ A ballot of 40,000 members prepared the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union for a national strike. ScotRail

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The EU and US are playing Ireland like a fiddle

There’s a meme that goes: ‘I, for one, welcome our new overlords.’ It’s a paraphrase of a comment made by Kent Brockman, the newsreader on The Simpsons, and it’s intended to signify submission to some crazy powerful force. I couldn’t help but think of that line when I saw the photo of Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald giddily welcoming representatives of the American Empire to Dublin this week. There she was, the leader of a party that was once devoted to liberating Ireland from external meddling, smiling widely as she greeted representatives of the most powerful military nation on Earth. Sinn Fein translates as ‘We Ourselves’. It was set

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Texas school shooting won’t change a thing

Joe Biden gave one of his more eloquent speeches yesterday in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. He didn’t sound doddery, possibly because it’s pretty much the same speech that he and/or Barack Obama have given after almost every school shooting for over a decade. He’s passionate about this issue. He’s also well-rehearsed. ‘To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,’ he said, speaking as someone who has lost two of his own children: There’s a hollowness in your chest you feel like you’re being sucked into it. And never going to be able to get out. Suffocating.

Tuesday

Gabriel Gavin Gabriel Gavin

Life in an age of hyperinflation

Istanbul, Turkey On Saturday mornings, Istanbul’s markets and greengrocers are packed with housewives in search of a bargain. Anxious women compare cabbages while chefs haggle over bunches of parsley, passing across thick wads of ten Lira notes – equivalent to about £5 a decade ago, now worth just 50 pence. The rising cost of food has become a national obsession in Turkey. Menemen, a staple breakfast dish of scrambled eggs with tomato, onion and fried green peppers, has seen the cost of its basic ingredients shoot up by 132 per cent in a year. Some shops in the big cities have invested in digital price tags – those little grey electronic

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Ukraine and a short history of dogs in war

In his own inimitable way, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has unleashed his dogs of war on Vladimir Putin and once again he’s pulled off a propaganda coup. The Russian President has in the past not been averse to using animals to his advantage; he posed topless on horseback, making the pulse race of every red-blooded Russian woman, and in 2007 he famously brought his pet labrador, Konni, to a meeting with Angela Merkel, fully aware that the then German chancellor had a fear of dogs. Zelensky is more a Jack Russell guy and earlier this month he decorated one of Ukraine’s bravest of the breed – Patron, which means ‘ammo’

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Are the Australian election results a bad sign for the Tories?

Scott Morrison’s Liberals were absolutely thrashed in the Australian elections this weekend. The party’s vote collapsed, and there were big-name defeats, with the man touted as Morrison’s successor – Josh Frydenberg – ousted in Kooyong, a suburb which had been in the party’s hands for 121 years. Whatever went wrong for the Morrison government, Saturday’s results might have relevance closer to home, even if teasing out domestic lessons from elections on the other side of the world is problematic. Australia is a different country, with a different political culture and a different electoral system. Scott Morrison was also an unloveable figure — stolid, gaffe-prone and not outwardly empathetic. When women marched

Ericka Andersen

Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard is a trial without a winner

War, partygate and inflation may dominate the headlines, but many Brits are fixated on something else: the defamation trial of Johnny Depp. Depp is suing his ex-wife, Amber Heard, for insinuating in a Washington Post article that he abused her. In the weeks since the trial began, endless clips with commentary, analyses and minute-by-minute breakdowns of witness testimonies and legal team interactions with both Depp and Heard have surfaced. On social media, people declare themselves ‘Team Johnny’ or ‘Team Amber,’ fawning over his charming, witty responses on the stand, or despairing over her sad tale of alleged abuse. The proceedings may offer an entertaining break from reality for viewers — but for

Monday

Boris Bondarev

Why I quit as a Russian diplomat to the United Nations

My name is Boris Bondarev, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Russia since 2002, since 2019 until now — Counsellor of the Russian Mission to the UN Office at Geneva.  For twenty years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24 of this year. The aggressive war unleashed by Putin against Ukraine, and in fact against the entire western world, is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people, but also, perhaps, the most serious crime against the people of Russia, with a bold letter Z crossing out all

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

No, monkeypox didn’t leak from Wuhan

It’s a familiar story. Close contacts of individuals infected by a dangerous illness are being asked by UK officials to isolate as government concern about the outbreak grows. Just 57 cases have been reported in Britain so far – 168 globally – but already questions are being asked about the virus’s origins. One theory involves the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab, which is considered by a growing number of scientists to be the origin of the original Covid pandemic, specialises in so-called ‘gain of function experiments’. These experiments aim to genetically enhance viruses (like Covid) so they are more likely to jump species to humans. Reports emerged last year that

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

Does Twitter believe in free speech?

Would Donald Trump still be president if Twitter and Facebook had not prevented people from sharing the now-infamous New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop? It’s a question that can legitimately be revisited thanks to covertly recorded videos released last week by conservative activist media organisation Project Veritas. The videos appear to show senior Twitter employees admitting political bias and the suppression of right-wing views. Back in October 2020, the social media companies said the decision to block the laptop story – which seemed to expose Biden Jnr using his father’s name for nefarious financial gain – was taken in good faith, on the basis that the computer’s files

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s Renaissance rocked by sex abuse claims

Emmanuel Macron recently changed the name of his party from En Marche to Renaissance but so far all that has been revived are sordid accusations concerning some of his party members. Last week, Jérôme Peyrat withdrew his candidature in the fourth district of the Dordogne from next month’s legislative elections after the media had made much of his conviction in 2020 for domestic violence against his wife. That Peyrat was nominated in the first place could be considered a stunning misjudgement, particularly from a president who famously declared in 2016 that he is ‘profoundly feminist’. Peyrat resigned as one of Macron’s advisors in January 2020 after a preliminary investigation was launched into

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Biden’s vow to defend Taiwan marks the end of Obama-era neutrality

Joe Biden will be flying back from his trip to Asia having made a big promise: that the US will defend Taiwan if it is ever invaded by China. ‘It would dislocate the entire region,’ he said, ‘and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.’  Until now, America’s policy has been one of strategic ambiguity: this meant not saying whether or not it would come to Taiwan’s aid. Biden’s remarks go further than that policy and suggest a new dividing line: that the democracies punishing Russia for Ukraine also stand ready to confront China over Taiwan. Biden’s comments in Tokyo were unscripted Biden’s Asia trip underlines one of his

Charles Lipson

Is Ukraine going to win?

The climactic battle for Ukraine is being fought in the east, on the dangerous, open terrain of the Donbas. Since it will be won with heavy, long-range firepower, Russia ought to have a huge advantage. After all, it has spent decades building a military meant to overwhelm its enemies with vast numbers of tanks, troops and artillery, fighting on terrain just like this. But even in these favourable conditions, Moscow’s plans aren’t working out. The Ukrainians may lack superior numbers, but they could very well win back most of the territory Russia has occupied since 2014. The Ukrainian edge? Their mobile forces, determined fighters, smart leadership, superior intelligence and targeting,

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

How the West is helping Putin’s propagandists

One might not think that J. R. R. Tolkien has much to do with the bitter war in Ukraine, but one would be wrong. A particular epithet, once used by Ukrainians specifically for the Russian soldiers who have shelled, looted and raped their way into their country has begun to be applied also to the Russians who support the war and, increasingly, all Russians. That epithet is orc, the brutal and brutish foot soldiers of the dark lord Sauron, who spill in their countless numbers from the land of Mordor to kill and to despoil. Tolkien’s works are very popular in both Russia and Ukraine, and there as elsewhere have

Sunday

Terry Barnes

How Scott Morrison was defeated in Australia

‘Scott Morrison is empathetic – without the “em”.’ Those words, spoken on Friday by the Labor party frontbencher Jason Clare, on a national breakfast programme, perfectly encapsulated how Scott Morrison was defeated in the Australian election on Saturday. Morrison wasn’t saved by his economic management (this Friday Australia’s unemployment rate was confirmed as 3.9 per cent, the lowest in 50 years). Nor by the fact that Australia’s post-Covid economic bounce-back was one of the biggest and quickest in the OECD. He wasn’t saved by his government’s management of the Covid pandemic either, which contained the threat, kept Covid-related death rates exceptionally low and achieved a national double vaccination rate of

Saturday

John Alexander

The rise of Australia’s teal climate warriors

Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is fighting a war on two fronts. Polling suggests his Liberal-National Coalition is set to lose to the Australian Labor party in the federal election today. But the PM is also being outflanked by independent candidates running in his party’s blue-ribbon, right-leaning heartland – but on a climate change ticket. More than 20 so-called ‘teal’ independent seats are challenging sitting Liberal and National party members of Australia’s lower-house on a common platform of greater action on climate change and restoring integrity to politics. In at least six seats, teals are either the favourite or have a credible shot at knocking off Coalition incumbents. The betting

Justin Bronk

Inside Russia’s military collapse in Ukraine

The Russian military has performed far worse in Ukraine than anyone could ever have predicted. After failing to take Kyiv, Russian troops have now been forced to focus on the Donbas region. Despite this greater concentration of forces, they are still struggling to make any major gains beyond the final capture of Mariupol, which had been under siege since the first days of the invasion without resupply or relief. For Vladimir Putin this represents a grand humiliation. But for the West, Russia’s struggling campaign offers an unrivalled opportunity to understand Russia’s capacity to pose a future military threat. Key to this will be working out how many of Russia’s current