World

Thursday

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

More booze won’t save France’s dying village life

Reach for the pastis, Jacques. A law is making its way through the French parliament to relax alcohol licensing, to make it easier to open bars and cafes in French towns and villages. French politicians are desperate to try anything to stimulate commerce in villages that are dying, the life sucked out of them by shopping centres with everything just five minutes away in the car. That more bars will be helpful is likely to be wishful thinking. The days when the Café de la Paix was at the centre of village life are long passé. It is easy to over-sentimentalise the role of the café in France’s 40,000 small

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland isn’t out of Trump’s firing line just yet

The Taoiseach Micheal Martin’s White House encounter with Donald Trump was controversial even before it was announced. Before any invitation had been extended, Sinn Fein said they were going to boycott the event in a show of solidarity with the people of Ukraine and Gaza and as a sign of their commitment ‘to humanity’. The People Before Profit party said Martin was endorsing America’s role in a genocide and Labour leader Ivana Bacik insisted the Taoiseach take the opportunity to publicly scold Trump on Ukraine, Gaza and his perceived failures to take action on climate change. But Martin is a more experienced politician than that and knew there was only

Matthew Dennison

Norway’s eccentric royals make Britain’s look mundane

It’s not hard to see why the 93-year-old, wheelchair-bound Princess Astrid of Norway might feel that now is the moment to remind Norwegians ‘I can still be useful for something’, as she did in a rare interview last month. The Princess, who is the sister of 88-year-old King Harald, was awarded an honorary pension by the government two decades ago; last year, her official diary shrank to 20 engagements. But 2024 was not kind to Norway’s ruling house. More than once, the royal family was reduced to a single working member: Harald’s heir, Crown Prince Haakon. Norway’s monarchy, once notable for its remarkable popularity, is now beset by crises, including

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Trump wants Putin to win

It is meet, right and our bounden duty to begin any column about Ukraine with a vigorous expression of the columnist’s distaste for the President and Vice-President of the United States. Consider that done. Donald Trump is a slob, a bully and a liar: a person of low character. J.D. Vance is a nasty and morally confused little snake: a thug’s venomous sidekick. It is also an appropriate preliminary courtesy to state without hesitation that Volodymyr Zelensky is a brave and inspirational warrior whose personal qualities set his country firmly on the path of resistance to an unprovoked attack. Done. And, finally, it is necessary if superfluous to repeat that Vladimir

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Spies in Norfolk, rats in Birmingham and Denmark ditches letter deliveries

Home Three Bulgarians were found guilty of spying for Russia as part of a cell that plotted to kidnap and kill targets in Europe, under a fellow Bulgarian who lived in a former guest house in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. The court heard that the spies reported to Austrian-born Jan Marsalek, who sought refuge in Moscow after the collapse in 2020 of Wirecard, the German payments company he helped run. Walgreens Boots Alliance, the US owner of Boots the chemist, was taken over by a private equity firm, Sycamore Partners. The government introduced the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will enable councils to seize land. The cost of a first-class stamp

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Trump has breathed new life into Davos Man

So bad was the debut of this Labour government that many think it has already failed. But now, I suggest, there is at least a chance it will succeed. If it leads industrial recovery based on defence and security, tackles the flawed basis of large areas of welfare spending and sweeps away planning restrictions to build more, it will have confronted problems which the Tories evaded for years. Labour can do this, of course, only if it abjures the beliefs that Sir Keir Starmer has espoused throughout his political career, but that seems to be exactly what his managers, led by Morgan McSweeney, are now (rightly) forcing upon him. Rupert

Paul Wood

Massacre of the innocents: the return of sectarian persecution in Syria

No one covers up their war crimes any more. They film them, celebrate them, post them on X. So we have videos from Syria this week showing Islamist fighters making terrified Alawite men get on their hands and knees and howl like dogs. In one video, the victims crawl along a street spattered with blood and gore as a bearded gunman clubs them with a wooden pole. The camera comes to rest on half a dozen bodies. Then we hear rifle shots. There has been a massacre of Alawites in Syria this past week: hundreds of civilians have been killed. The killings were perpetrated by the armed groups that put

Colin Freeman

Why does the beheading of Christians not make headlines?

The Congolese chapter of Islamic State has a ruthless way of stopping outsiders reporting their presence to the authorities. Under the edicts of their founder, Jamil Mukulu, who once lived as a cleric in London, anyone who strays across them in their forest hideouts should be killed on sight. ‘Slaughter him or her, behead them immediately,’ Mukulu once commanded. ‘Never give it a second thought, do not hesitate.’ His acolytes take him at his word, even when it’s not just one hapless villager who runs into them, but dozens. Last month, they beheaded 70 Christians in Mayba in the eastern Congo, according to the Catholic charity Aid to the Church

The Spectator

The West must not look away from what’s happening in Syria

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has many talents. But his understanding of Middle Eastern politics leaves much to be desired. Last month he welcomed Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on to the podcast he hosts with the former Conservative minister Rory Stewart. Reflecting on the encounter afterwards in a newspaper column, Campbell was anxious to give the ‘gently smiling President’ the benefit of the doubt. He was ‘definitely saying a lot of the right things’. There was, Campbell acknowledged – ‘one big blot on the Syrian landscape’ – the ubiquity of men smoking. But otherwise everything seemed in order. It was the case, he said, that ‘virtually everyone

Wednesday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Losing Kursk is a big blow to Zelensky

After eight months of fighting on Russian soil, Ukrainian troops are pulling back from the Kursk region. This morning, Russian forces raised their flag over Sudzha and are now closing in on the last 50 square miles of Ukrainian holdouts. The retreat couldn’t come at a worse time for Kyiv – just as a ceasefire and potential peace deal are on the table. Zelensky had hoped to trade the Kursk salient for Ukrainian land in negotiations. Now, that leverage is almost gone. Russian troops, reinforced by North Koreans, have been steadily clawing back the 500 square miles of Russian territory seized by Ukraine last August. But the real breakthrough came

Owen Matthews

Why Russia should agree to a ceasefire – and five reasons Putin might not

The main achievement of the US-Ukrainian talks in Jeddah was to produce a ceasefire document that Russia might actually want to sign. A long list of Ukrainian red lines – such as a partial ceasefire in the air and sea only, and security guarantees before any ceasefire was implemented – were swept aside. What’s on the table is essentially an unconditional ceasefire on all fronts, initially limited to thirty days. Putin now needs to decide whether it’s in Russia’s interests to accept. There are six reasons why he should sign the Jeddah deal – and five reasons he may not: Why Putin should agree to the deal:  Relations with Washington

Sergey Radchenko

Putin can still defeat Ukraine

After Ukraine accepted America’s 30-day ceasefire proposal, all eyes are on Russia’s reaction. Will Vladimir Putin – who, as President Trump has incredulously claimed, has all the cards, and at the same time no cards at all – go along with the US proposal, or choose to snub it? To answer this question, it is important to understand what Putin is trying to do. On the one hand, he did not spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this war, sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, and put Russia’s entire economy on a war footing in order to claim a devastated strip of territory in eastern Donbas. Putin wants to reassert effective

Niko Vorobyov

Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is catching up with him

I saw my first murder scene in Manila. On the evening of the 22 January 2018, a pair of assassins on motorbikes rode up to the scrap metal dealer Manny ‘Buddy’ Wagan and blasted him twice in the head. I didn’t witness the killing itself but arrived with my fixer just in time to see a passerby lighting a candle in honour of the deceased, the flickering flame reflected in the pool of blood, brain and skull spread across the pavement.  Manny’s death was one of up to 30,000 such slayings over the course of President Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year rule of the Philippines between 2016 and 2022. Duterte had declared a war against drugs

Jane Stannus

Is Canada doing enough to stop the US trade war?

There’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the tariff war between Canada and the US is beginning to look like a case in point. On Monday, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford announced a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, with 1.5 million households and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota likely to be impacted. Trump responded with all-caps outrage, raising the March 12 tariff on steel and aluminium coming into the United States from Canada from 25 to 50 per cent — a threat that would mean curtains for Ontario’s auto sector. How, asked the US president,

Matthew Lynn

Trump’s Tesla stunt won’t help Musk

Tesla’s share price has halved, sales have slumped, boycotts are being organised and Chinese rivals are ready to steal the market. It has been a rough few weeks for the electric vehicle manufacturer, but Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has been handed a lifeline by Donald Trump: the US president gave his full-backing to the company by buying one of its cars. Heck, he might even have used his own money. There is just one snag: Trump’s high-profile support will make things worse for Tesla, not better. Outside the White House yesterday, Trump chose from five shiny new Teslas. A day earlier, Trump had posted on his Truth Social feed that

Vazha Tavberidze

Oleksii Reznikov: ‘Trump and Zelensky fall-out was a clash of emotions’

‘What just happened – the suspension of military aid – was predictable. I expected it. It wasn’t too hard to predict,’ the former Ukrainian defence minister tells me. Oleksii Reznikov, speaking to me from Kyiv and wearing a ‘Saint Himars’ T-shirt, remains as upbeat as ever, chuckling as he recalls how, back in 2022, Ukraine was supposed to fall in three days. ‘We knew we wouldn’t. It was a matter of survival – three days became three weeks, three months, and now three years. These current events? Just another phase. We have tough negotiations ahead. This isn’t a two-player game – it’s multilateral, with competing interests and big personalities.’ Back

Michael Evans

Why Putin could reject a ceasefire

With all the good news coming out of the Jeddah talks about a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, there is only one question that needs to be answered: will President Putin be interested in any sort of deal right now? President Trump is convinced that Putin wants peace. But if the Russian leader really wants to bring his war to an end, will he do so on America’s terms, or wait until he has fulfilled one of his main objectives: the total subjugation of the four provinces in eastern Ukraine that he claimed he had annexed in the first seven months of the invasion? At a ceremony in St George’s Hall

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Christianity, culture wars and J.D. Vance: a conversation with James Orr

62 min listen

James Orr was living the life of a young, high-flying lawyer when, after a few drinks at a New Year’s Eve party, he asked for signs that God existed. The signs came; among other things, he narrowly avoided a fatal skiing accident. Now he is a passionate Christian and a conservative culture warrior who helped defeat an attempt to impose the tyranny of critical race theory on Cambridge University, where he is an associate professor of the philosophy of religion. He’s also an intellectual mentor to the vice president of the United States; Politico describes him as ‘J.D. Vance’s English philosopher king’. Dr Orr says Vance is ‘extremely articulate, but he takes

Tuesday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Has Ukraine called Putin’s bluff?

Has Vladimir Putin’s bluff just been called? It certainly looks like it. So long as the Ukrainians were refusing to countenance a ceasefire, then Moscow could portray them as being the obstacle to the kind of quick deal Donald Trump appears eager to conclude. Kyiv had previously floated the idea – after another unhelpful intervention from French President Emmanuel Macron – of a limited ceasefire extending just to long-range drone attacks on each others’ cities and critical infrastructure and operations on the Black Sea. But this was a non-starter that was too transparently a trap for Putin, hoping to make him look like the intransigent party if he turned it

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Ukraine agrees to US plan for 30-day ceasefire with Russia

Ukraine has agreed to an American proposal for an immediate 30-day truce in the war against Russia. Kyiv’s decision to accept a month-long ceasefire follows nine hours of talks with members of US President Donald Trump’s administration in Saudi Arabia today.  Making a statement this evening following the conclusion of the talks, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the ‘ball is now in Russia’s court’ to agree to the ceasefire. It would be ‘the best goodwill gesture’ Moscow could provide, Rubio added. Confirming Rubio’s announcement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr  Zelensky – who didn’t take part in today’s discussion – declared that ‘Ukraine accepts this proposal, we consider it positive,