World

Friday

Jonathan Spyer

What al-Jolani’s past can reveal about Syria’s future

In late February 2012 I was travelling through Syria’s Idleb province. I stayed for a few days in a town called Binnish, not far from the province’s capital. It was, at that time, under the tentative control of the newly hatched insurgency against the regime of Bashar Assad.   The young host of the place I was staying – I’ll call him ‘D’ – was connected to the fledgling structures of what at that time was widely known as the ‘Free Syrian Army’. But through a cousin of his he also had links to another group of fighters just getting organised in the town. These men were a little older than the FSA members,

Thursday

William Moore William Moore

Christmas Special 2024 with Rod Liddle, Lionel Shriver, Matthew Parris and Mary Wakefield

71 min listen

Welcome to a special festive episode of The Edition podcast, where we will be taking you through the pages of The Spectator’s Christmas triple issue. Up first: our review of the year – and what a year it has been. At the start of 2024, the outcome of the US election looked very different, the UK had a different Prime Minister, and The Spectator had a different editor! Luckily, The Spectator’s regular columnists are on hand to declare what they got right – and wrong – throughout the year, and whether they’re optimistic for 2025. Rod Liddle, Matthew Parris, Mary Wakefield and Lionel Shriver take us through everything from Trump to trans (03:24). Next: ‘Good riddance

Edward Howell

Pyongyang is keeping strangely silent on South Korea’s turmoil

North Korea has long been infamous for its hyperbolic rhetoric. While there are some subjects – such as the locations of its nuclear facilities – that it has so far managed to keep quiet on, the ongoing calls to oust South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, following his botched attempt to impose martial law last week has proved too irresistible for Pyongyang to hold back on for long. After all, in North Korea’s eyes, any attempt to delegitimise South Korea is one worth taking. North Korea’s week-long silence following Yoon’s bizarre invocation and revocation of martial law in the South last week was unusual. Pyongyang did not even conduct any missile

Nigel Jones

Have Syria’s rebels really reformed?

There were two scenes from Syria last night screened by the BBC and Channel 4 News that should give the Panglossian optimists hailing the birth of a ‘new Syria’ a pause for thought. In one, filmed at the Assad family mausoleum in Qardaha, near the port of Latakia, armed members of the Islamist HTS who now control most of the country were joyfully burning the coffins of Hafez al-Assad, the ruthless dictator who ruled Syria from 1970 until his death in 2000, and that of his elder son and heir apparent Bassil, whose death in a car crash in 1994 opened the way for the second Assad son Bashar’s rise

Ali Kefford

Christmas on patrol with the Royal Navy’s submariners

This Christmas, a Royal Navy Trident submarine will be quietly prowling the seas as part of the Continuous At Sea Deterrent mission. She will have slipped out of HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland in late August. Her location is a secret, known only to a handful of officers aboard. Even the highest ranks of the navy, such as the Chief of Defence Staff and the First Sea Lord, remain unaware of where their ‘bomber’ is. For the rest of the crew, the submarine’s whereabouts are a mystery, with only the temperature of the water against the hull offering them a vague sense of geography. One captain opened a present

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Negroni inflation is out of control

Forty years ago this Christmas I visited Hong Kong for the first time – a few days after the signing in Beijing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that sealed the former colony’s transfer to mainland rule in 1997. It was a moment of apprehension, but at least the timetable had been set. And how lucky I was to have experienced that extraordinary outpost as it was then, in such contrast to what China’s masters have made it now. The Christmas Day service in St John’s Cathedral, overhead fans stirring the turbid air, was a poignant glimpse of Hong Kong’s past. Norman Foster’s Hongkong Bank building, the most expensive in the

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Why did South Korea’s President Yoon declare martial law?

The aftershocks of last Tuesday’s declaration, and then cancellation, of martial law by President Yoon Suk Yeol continue to be felt by South Korea’s ruling elite. Every day brings a new development and fresh revelations in this shocking and somewhat bizarre episode, along with evidence of the deep fissures in what had seemed a stable and relatively harmonious society. Yoon survived an impeachment vote on 7 December, but will likely face another on Saturday. He is under police investigation and two attempts have reportedly been made to raid his parliamentary office. There have been protests and strikes (by metalworkers at Kia plants) in a push for his exit. He has

Neve Gordon

Israel must leave Syria

As I walked through Vienna last weekend, I happened upon several protests organised by Syrian refugees celebrating the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, the butcher from Damascus. People were singing, some even crying, as they rejoiced the end of the father-and-son al-Assad dictatorship, which had lasted 53 years.   The protestors had not yet seen the images of tens of thousands of released political prisoners, the slaughterhouses, or the underground torture chambers, but they had already seen enough. They were among the 12 million people who were displaced during the Syrian civil war and many of them undoubtedly had family members or close friends who had been among the over half million

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The joy of our village Christmas play

We are just recovering from the village play. This annual Christmas event was taken over last year by our son William, who writes it and acts in it, and his wife Hannah, who directs. Last year, it subverted the genre (as critics like to put it) of ghost stories. This year, it did a similar trick with whodunnits. It was entitled Death on the Dudwell, a reference to the trickle of a tributary which runs beside our fields. The play, set in 1935, opens with the idle would-be heir Arthur Prince (William) reading a contemporaneous Spectator on a sofa. It concerns the murder of his father, the unsavoury Lord Haremere (played

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Subpostmasters scandal, Rishi in the rain and Syrian rebels topple regime

January After an ITV drama, the government suddenly proposed to do something about the unjust prosecution of sub-postmasters. Junior doctors went on strike. There was a surge in scabies. The King went to hospital and was later found to have cancer. The Princess of Wales was in hospital with what turned out to be cancer. Five migrants died boarding a boat for England off Wimereux. In Beirut, Israel killed the deputy head of Hamas. Israel said that it expected war in Gaza to continue throughout the year. The United States, with token British support, struck sites in Yemen to deter Houthi attacks on shipping. Russia mounted the biggest missile bombardment

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

‘The public sector is the illness’: Javier Milei on his first year in office

Buenos Aires ‘I never wind down,’ says Argentina’s President Javier Milei when we meet in his Presidential Office at the Casa Rosada. ‘I work all day, practically… I get up at 6 a.m., I take a shower and at 7 a.m. I am already at my desk working. And I work all the way until 11 p.m. I enjoy my job. I enjoy cutting public spending. I love the chainsaw.’ It was a photo of Milei with a chainsaw – who was then the insurgent candidate – that propelled him to international fame last year. He waved it on the campaign trail as a symbol of what he would do

Wednesday

Charles Hecker

Why Carlsberg left Russia

Carlsberg, the brewing giant whose presence in Russia transformed that country’s beverage market, has left. What remains is the lingering residue of a boozy party that peaked too soon, ended in a brawl and left many questions dangling. As it heads for the exit of Russia’s brutal, wartime asset reallocation process, Carlsberg – a flagship Danish company – takes with it something close to $322 million. This is the price reportedly struck for the sale of Carlsberg’s presence in Russia to a company called VG Invest that, according to the Financial Times, looks like a management buy-out.  It is not certain precisely how much cash Carlsberg will take home as it surrenders

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

How Putin will make Assad pay for his exile

‘Brave Assad fled to Putin. Where will Putin flee?’ asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after the Syrian dictator escaped embattled Damascus for Moscow at the weekend. Assad was granted asylum in the Russia capital on the ‘humanitarian grounds’ he had denied his own subjects for so long. But what kind of life is Putin offering him? On the face of it, the answer is a rather opulent one, even if in practice it means becoming part of one of the most rarified zoos of all: Putin’s collection of ex-dictators. West of Moscow, a little way beyond the city’s MKAD orbital motorway along the A-106 Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, lies the village of

Michael Evans

Jolani has learnt from history

The victorious Syrian rebel leader now in control of Damascus has already learned a key lesson in history. After his forces swept into the capital, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, head of the Islamic militant group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), might have been expected to lay waste to all the institutions which had helped to keep the repressive Assad dynasty in power for 53 years, but instead he chose pragmatism. He announced he would do business with the Syrian government and wanted civil service staff to stay in their jobs to keep the country functioning. This doesn’t make al-Jolani or Ahmed al-Sharaa as he now wants to be called (his real name

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Stop idolising Luigi Mangione

So according to the modern left, killing the fascists of Hamas is ‘genocide’, but killing a CEO and father of two is ‘justice’? How else are we to make sense of the creepy idolisation of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting dead of Brian Thompson, chief executive of the American health-insurance firm UnitedHealthcare? Seriously, the swooning over Mangione is a new low for the ‘very online’ left. This was just desserts for America’s unfair system of health insurance, they insisted Thompson was slain on the streets of Manhattan last Wednesday. He was 50 years old, a dad and he’d been boss of UnitedHealthcare for three years. Almost instantly, even

Nicholas Hopton

Syria’s future is uncertain

A momentous fortnight in the Levant. Following a negotiated ceasefire agreed in between Israel and Hezbollah bringing a fragile possibility of peace to Lebanon, opposition forces in Syria drove the dictator Bashar al Assad into exile. They ended 54 years of autocratic rule by the Assad family and 14 years of acute suffering for the Syrian people since the uprising of the so–called ‘Arab spring’. Syrian Army soldiers not only abandoned their posts but also dumped their uniforms – though apparently not their guns – and thousands fled across the border to Iraq to avoid retribution. Around the world in countries that have given refuge to Syrian refugees in recent

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron governs only for himself

Emmanuel Macron will this afternoon host the leaders of France’s political parties as he searches for his fourth prime minister of the year. The last one, Michel Barnier, fell last week after just three months in office. Not everyone, however, has received an invitation to the Elysée Palace. Marine Le Pen is persona non grata after her National Rally party joined the left-wing coalition in last Wednesday’s vote of no confidence in Barnier’s government. Macron hasn’t forgiven Le Pen, although he is more conciliatory towards the left-wing parties that conspired to bring down his government. The Communists, the Greens and the Socialists will all enjoy the president’s hospitality this afternoon.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The one way Labour can end the era of mass migration

Fresh from heralding the arrest of a Turkish suspected rubber dinghy salesman last month, Keir Starmer’s government is today touting a new advance in its quest to ‘smash the gangs’. At the apparent behest of the Prime Minister, the German government has committed to changing its law to make facilitating people-smuggling a clear criminal offence. This should allow German police to raid warehouses full of dinghies and other equipment later used to help migrants set off to cross the English Channel. According to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper the agreement is ‘ground-breaking’. From the hoo-ha around this modest measure we may discern that Labour is for now sticking to its single-track

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Assad’s fall is also a blow to Beijing

Russia and Iran kept Bashar al-Assad in power and are the biggest strategic losers from the toppling of his brutal regime. But also spare a thought for Xi Jinping, who used the dubious ‘stability’ imposed on Syria by Tehran and Moscow to embrace the butcher of Damascus in a bid to extend Beijing’s influence in the region. ‘The future and destiny of Syria should be decided by the Syrian people, and we hope that all the relevant parties will find a political solution to restore stability and order as soon as possible,’ said Mao Ning, spokesperson at the Chinese foreign ministry, on Monday, in one of those deliciously vacuous statements

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Iran’s axis is dying

From the hilltop viewpoint at Misgav Am, Israel’s northernmost kibbutz in the Upper Galilee, the view into southern Lebanon is a panorama of uncertainty. Less than a full day after Assad was finally defeated in Syria, I stand at and look down at the rubble of the Lebanese buildings destroyed in the recent fighting, as close to the Syrian border as the IDF will allow. Beside my feet, spent bullet casings remind me that less than two weeks ago this peaceful spot was a frontline position. The shell of a bombed-out nearby community viewpoint serves as a silent witness to the RPG attacks Hezbollah regularly launched on civilian homes and