World

Tuesday

Nicholas Farrell

What Labour can learn from Giorgia Meloni

What else can you do but laugh? Former human rights supremo Sir Keir Starmer has done a deal to tackle illegal migrants with Giorgia Meloni – who is called ‘the heir to Mussolini’ by many on the left and in the media. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was in Rome at the weekend with a team of civil servants and police chiefs to put the finishing touches on the deal with Italy’s Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi. The deal will create what the Home Office grandiosely describes as ‘a new taskforce with Mafia-busting style tactics to seize the ill-gotten gains of criminal people smuggling gangs’. Cooper also took part in a half-hour chat

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

What’s the truth about the New Jersey drone sightings?

What is going on with the drones buzzing over New Jersey in the United States? Reportedly ‘the size of cars’, sometimes flying low in formation, these mysterious semi-identified flying objects have been sighted in their thousands every night – and only at night – for weeks. They might not even be drones. Are they alien spaceships? Are they from Russia or China? Are they just planes? Are they even anything at all? I’ve watched a number of videos purporting to show these invaders. ‘What is that thing? It’s freaking huge!’ one awestruck observer can be heard over footage of what looks like a commercial passenger jet.  It’s increasingly hard to

Lee Cohen

Trump, monarchy and the waning power of Hollywood

Donald Trump has yet to comment on the Prince Andrew ‘Chinese spy’ story, and online sleuths are already trying to join the vague dots between Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Duke of York. But the real story about Donald Trump and monarchy is the extent of his admiration for the British crown. At the big reopening of Notre Dame cathedral, other heads of state seemed desperate to make their impression on the President-elect. Yet for Trump, what really mattered was his encounter with the Prince of Wales.   ‘I had a great talk with the prince,’ Trump told the New York Post. ‘He’s a good-looking guy,’ the President-elect went on. ‘He

Eliot Wilson

Keir Starmer has dropped the ball on Ukraine

Has Keir Starmer dropped the ball on Ukraine? Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian former foreign minister, certainly thinks so. Kuleba, who stepped down from his post in September, had few kind words to say this week about how Starmer’s Labour government had dealt with Ukraine in the five months or so since coming to power: The Conservatives were coordinating with the Americans but they did not restrict themselves to just following the Americans. This is the change that came with Labour. They took a position they would follow the Americans. It is stirring and laudable to promise to support Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ The immediate cause of Kuleba’s

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

German politics is a mess

The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in parliament yesterday. It’s almost certain now that Germans will head to the polls for a snap election on 23 February. What is less certain is whether this will bring about the change so many of them crave. Of 717 Bundestag deputies only 207 expressed their ongoing confidence in the German Chancellor, the vast majority who did so being members of Scholz’s own party, the Social Democrats (SPD). This didn’t come as a surprise since he intended to lose the vote: Scholz’s ruling coalition collapsed last month, leaving him to run a minority government. The only way out of this stalemate

Monday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Israel is right to cut ties with Ireland

Everything that has gone wrong in modern Ireland is summed up in the fact that it is winning praise from Hamas and criticism from Israel. Last week Ireland was gushed over by that army of anti-Semites that carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, while being spurned by the Jewish homeland that was the target of that barbarous assault. Listen, if you’re getting love from racist terrorists, and rejection from their victims, it’s time for some self-reflection. Israel cited Ireland’s ‘extreme anti-Israeli policies’ for its decision It was the Irish government’s decision to join South Africa’s ‘genocide’ case against Israel at the International Court of Justice that

James Heale James Heale

Could the local elections be cancelled?

14 min listen

Labour will reveal plans today to re-design local government, with district councils set to be abolished, and more elected mayors introduced across England. The plans could be the biggest reforms of their type since the 1970s, but with the May 2025 local elections set to be Labour’s first big electoral test since the general election, how will they be impacted? Local government minister Jim McMahon didn’t deny that the elections could be affected, or some even cancelled. Reform UK have called foul – what’s going on? James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls. Also on the podcast: rumours abound that a Chinese spy could be named in Parliament

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron is powerless against his enemies

So farewell Michel Barnier, the man who will now be best remembered not as the suave face of the EU in the Brexit negotiations, but as the most hapless prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic. That is assuming his successor, Francois Bayrou, isn’t ousted in under three months. The French media has been full of stories over the weekend as to how Bayrou pressurised Macron into making him premier. The President’s first choice was his defence minister, Sébastien Lecornu, a loyalist from top to toe, who was informed of his elevation shortly after Barnier’s government had fallen. Having worked his way through three prime ministers this year,

Sunday

Kevin Toolis

The impossibility of escaping from Assad

‘The mullahs are moody,’ said Aisha, a female university student, explaining her daily nail varnish run in with the aging female crones who guard the entrance to Tehran’s University of Arts.  All female students had to pass through a daily ‘modesty’ check to reach their classes. But the line on what was acceptable – nail varnish colour, make-up, a tuft of exposed hair peaking beyond the compulsory scarf and hijab – varied daily on the whim of the mullahs fighting for power in Iran’s closed theocracy. Some days red nail varnish was okay and other days the same colour was forbidden and Aisha was barred from attending her classes. The only

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China is getting ready to take on Trump

By one estimate, Chinese military exercises close to Taiwan this week were the largest since 1996, when Beijing attempted unsuccessfully to disrupt the island’s first fully democratic presidential election. Up to 100 warships were estimated to have taken part in what Taiwanese officials described as a ‘significant security challenge’, while Russian warships were also spotted close to Japan and South Korea. The danger for the CCP is that it stands to lose more than the US from any intensified trade war The drills were far more ambitious than those held earlier this year, which were focused on blockading Taiwan. They covered a vast swathe of sea north of the island

Robin Ashenden

Only another Bill Clinton can save the Democrats now

In the weeks since Donald Trump won the US election, Democrat supporters, amidst much gnashing of teeth, have offered up a range of post-mortems. While The View host Sunny Hostin and MSNBC presenter Joy Reid have blamed Kamala’ Harris’s defeat, predictably enough, on American ‘racism’ and ‘misogyny’, others have been more constructive. Last week, onetime Obama strategist Steve Schale said in an op-ed that the party – ‘a shell of itself’ – had turned off groups like Hispanics with ‘socialism talk’ and special-interest issues irrelevant to their lives. Democrat veteran Bernie Sanders echoed him, calling out his party for becoming one of ‘identity politics’ rather than trying to appeal to

David Christopher Kaufman

Will Vogue apologise for calling Asma al-Assad ‘A Rose in the Desert’?

Back in 2020, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour issued a rare public mea culpa in which she apologised for the magazine not finding ‘enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators’. The magazine, Wintour added, had ‘made mistakes…publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for those mistakes’. More than four years on, the question must now be asked – will Wintour expressly apologise for the mistakes she made against the people of Syria, as well? In 2011, Vogue breathlessly celebrated the country’s former First Lady Asma al-Assad in a glossy profile. After all, while Black staffers were distinctly disadvantaged

Saturday

Edward Howell

Yoon’s impeachment won’t end South Korea’s political chaos

For those who loathed him, it was second time lucky – but only just. With South Korea’s national assembly passing the motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol today (with 204 votes in favour and 85 against), the stage is set for the country’s constitutional court to determine the president’s fate: whether to oust him from office or restore his powers. The streets of Seoul are filled with scenes of jubilation accompanied by fireworks and K-pop songs. But these same streets are also occupied by pro-Yoon protesters, outraged at his impeachment. The road ahead is long. And whilst in the wake of the result, Yoon announced that he would be

James Heale James Heale

Would Brexit voters really accept the return of freedom of movement?

19 min listen

New research this week suggested that a majority of Brexit voters would accept the return of freedom of movement in exchange for access to the EU single market. The poll, conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), found that 54% of Brexit voters – and 68% of all respondents – would accept this. Facing their own changing domestic concerns, how close can the UK and EU governments really get? Could Defence hold the key for collaboration? And how much is this driven by a more volatile geopolitical landscape ahead of Trump’s return as US president? James Heale speaks to Anand Menon, director of the think-tank UK in a

James Bessant Davies

The Syrians who can’t go home

In a waiting room in Beirut’s Adlieh district, with harsh fluorescent lighting glaring down on us, the handcuffed prisoners, we took turns to rotate between the floor and the splintered wood of a short bench. On the wall, someone had scrawled a life-sized drawing of an AK-47, its muzzle inscribed with the words ‘Pew! Pew!’ Royal blue fingerprints, remnants of the admission process, smudged the plasterboard. Names and dates were scratched into the walls, a record of how long people had been held – days, weeks or months. This was my introduction to Lebanon’s detention centres. In August, I was bundled into the back of a pickup while working with a charity supporting Syrian

Friday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Why there will be no Christmas truce in Ukraine

On Christmas Eve 1914, British and German soldiers laid down their arms and crossed trenches to exchange gifts, bury the fallen and even play football – a brief, poignant truce amid the horrors of the first world war. This week, Hungary’s Viktor Orban has tried to emulate that spirit of goodwill by proposing a symbolic Christmas ceasefire and a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. He called Vladimir Putin, talked to him for an hour, and then teamed up with the Kremlin to pin the blame on Volodymyr Zelensky for rejecting a Christmas truce. So, what really happened? A ceasefire is the last thing Putin wants right now A heated

Michael Evans

Bombing Syria in 2013 would not have toppled Assad

In hindsight, did the US, UK and France fail to seize the chance to topple President Bashar al-Assad in 2013? This is the question that convinced Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to attack his colleague, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary and former Labour leader. Miliband orchestrated the vote that threw out the proposal by David Cameron’s government to join the US and France in airstrikes against Damascus in retaliation for chemical atrocities on the Syrian people. Streeting concluded that if Labour in opposition had supported the vote for airstrikes, Assad’s regime would have fallen, thus bringing relief and liberation for the Syrian population. Speaking on BBC’s Question Time on Thursday,

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

What Ed Miliband got right on Syria

It’s not every day I spring to the defence of Ed Miliband, Secretary for Environment, Net Zero and all the rest of it. But for him to be taken to task for not backing the bombing of Syria back in 2013, as Wes Streeting cautiously does today, is actually to criticise him for his most statesmanlike act during his entire period as Leader of the Opposition. Miliband was given a rough ride by Nick Robinson on the BBC Today programme about it: would he be able to look the relatives of the unfortunate people murdered in the dictator’s prison in the eye and say that he does not regret not bombing

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Is the end of Christendom nigh? with A.N. Wilson

25 min listen

Thousands of Brits will be attending Christmas and carol services throughout December. Yet festive attendance masks the reality that church congregations just aren’t holding up. The most optimistic of estimates suggest that regular church attendance has almost halved in the UK since 2009. This is just one of the factors that has led the historian and writer A.N. Wilson, in the Christmas edition of The Spectator this week, to declare that the end of Christendom is nigh. On this episode of Holy Smoke, A.N. Wilson joins Damian Thompson to discuss his thesis. Like Platonism, is Christianity doomed to become extinct in practice? When was the last time England was truly, and fervently,

Eliot Wilson

France’s defence spending debacle will infuriate Donald Trump

Donald Trump is right that some of Nato’s European members are essentially freeloaders. That these countries are holding talks about increasing the alliance’s target for defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP at its annual summit next June comes too little, too late. Countries like Germany and France have consistently underspent on defence, leaving Europe reliant on the United States as an ultimate guarantor of the continent’s security. When he takes office in January, Trump won’t stand for this. The political chaos in France is unlikely to reassure the president elect that Europe has got its act together when it comes to defence spending. The fall of Michel Barnier’s