World

Sunday

Edward Howell

What are Ukrainian children doing in North Korea?

The regime of North Korea has continued to exploit the war in Ukraine to spread its propaganda. This week we learnt that Ukrainian children, abducted by Russia, are being sent to an infamous North Korean summer camp. The children have reportedly been taught to ‘destroy Japanese imperialists’ and heard from North Korean soldiers who destroyed the USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured and sank by North Korea in 1968.  This Ukrainian children have been at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp, located near the port city of Wonsan on the country’s east coast. Well known as a popular tourist hotspot for North Korean elites, Wonsan has recently gained infamy for the newly-opened

Saturday

Andrew Sullivan

Trump has made D.C. safe again

In August, the President of the United States declared a crime ‘emergency’ in my home town of Washington D.C. Donald Trump rules by declaring ‘emergencies’ where they don’t exist, but this was a new one. An emergency compared to what? The year I bought my condo, 1992, saw 443 homicides ina city of around half a million people; last year, there were only 190 out of almost 700,000. I say ‘only’ because we’ve become so used to a murder rate 20 times that of London that we somehow managed to ignore it. That, of course, was an option only for white residents – unless you were dumb enough (as I

James Tidmarsh

Paris is a city afraid

The New Year’s Eve concert on the Champs Élysées has been cancelled for security reasons. Paris was supposed to host its usual spectacle. A free open-air concert at the Arc de Triomphe, video projections on the monument and the midnight festivities that once drew close to a million people. Instead, the concert has been scrapped. It will be replaced on national television with a prerecorded concert filmed weeks ago with a handpicked crowd to mimic a celebration Paris no longer believes it can safely host. A capital once famed for its public life now performs it under studio conditions. It marks the collapse of what used to be one of

Friday

Freddy Gray

Will anyone miss the Boomers?

31 min listen

Christopher Caldwell joins Freddy Gray to discuss why the ‘Boomer generation’ – those born between 1946 and 1964 – became one of the most hated generations in recent history. Chris argues that the Boomers uniquely benefited from the resources of other generations, and were able to enjoy the benefits of leftist politics alongside the political and economic freedoms associated with the right; the apex of their power perhaps being the Clinton/Bush era. To what extent are the Boomers responsible for the decline of America? And what merits are there in judging society through age? Plus, do the digital-millennial generation – those born at the late 1980s and early 1990s –

Angela Epstein

Boycotting Israel could kill Eurovision

What exactly is the point of Eurovision? It can’t be about the music. Britain, the nation that gifted the world the Beatles, David Bowie and the Spice Girls, has been scraping the bottom of the scoreboard for years – thanks to a string of forgettable, frankly embarrassing entries that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a boozy holiday camp open-mic night. The UK hasn’t been alone in putting forward dire entries, but perhaps that then has always been the point. Much to the delight of the millions who watch and feast on Eurovision’s glorious banquet of kitsch and camp – a ding-a-dong smorgasbord where spectacle is compulsory and, for many countries,

Patrick Gibbons

Brexit's back – and so is Truss

16 min listen

There has been a flurry of UK-European activity across Britain this week, with the German state visit in London, the Norwegian Prime Minister signing a defence agreement in Scotland and the British-Irish council meeting in Wales today. Perhaps then it’s inevitable that speculation over closer ties between the UK and the EU has re-emerged. Could Labour seek to rejoin the Customs Union? Would this help or hinder Reform? And would the EU even stomach it? Plus – Liz Truss launches a new show today. Will she say anything new? James Heale and Charles Grant from the Centre for European Reform join Patrick Gibbons to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Mark Brolin

There’s nothing equal about Russia’s relationship with India

Vladimir Putin lands in Delhi, steps off the plane and instantly gets what he came for: the pictures. The handshake with Narendra Modi, the red carpet, the talk of a ‘special and privileged strategic partnership’. For the Kremlin, this week’s summit in India is mainly a PR exercise: proof to Russians that their country is still received as a great power, while the West tries isolation. But don’t be deceived if it appears that two equal giants are meeting. They are not. India, the land of the future, has surged to become the world’s fifth-largest economy and is on course to overtake Germany and Japan. Russia, the land of the

Gavin Mortimer

David Lammy is wrong about Brexit and the EU

David Lammy believes Britain should rejoin the EU customs union to boost economic growth. In an interview on Thursday, the Deputy Prime Minister argued that leaving the EU had ‘badly damaged’ Britain’s economy. A reversal of Brexit would be good for business he suggested. It was ‘self-evident’ that other countries had ‘seen growth’ after joining the customs union, Lammy told the News Agents podcast. The deputy PM avoided the question of whether Britain should rejoin the euro, as did Health Secretary Wes Streeting earlier in the week. Having declared that Britain was worse off out of the EU, Streeting was asked if the government was planning to take Britain back

Anastasia Piliavsky

Ukraine's war on the Russian language is a mistake

Kyiv has stripped the Russian language of its protection under Europe’s Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Culture warriors at home and abroad have hailed this as a victory; in truth, the move strikes out at millions of Russophone Ukrainians, divides the country and confirms some of Putin’s claims about Ukraine. In a war of survival, splitting Ukraine and feeding Putin’s propaganda is not a cultural sideshow. It is suicide. With his slight frame and warm, modest face, Pavel Viktor looks more like a parish priest than a political firebrand. In reality he is a physics teacher in Odessa, known to millions of Ukrainian schoolchildren for his experimental YouTube lessons. He remains in Odessa under bombardment and at 71 is

Thursday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is running out of tricks to prop up the American economy

President Donald Trump dozed off during his cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Who could blame him? Listening to Secretary of State Marco Rubio drone on about Russia would prompt souls less hardy than Trump to catch some shuteye. What should be keeping Trump awake, or at least uneasy, is the shaky state of the American economy. The federal government may not be releasing much data, but the payroll processing company ADP is reporting that private employers cut 32,000 jobs last month. The losses were heavily concentrated among small employers who have been slammed by Trump’s capricious tariff policy. The only positive sign has been in the data centre industry, where investments

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Marwan Barghouti isn't the 'Palestinian Mandela'

Some scoffed when Donald Trump thought to tap Tony Blair’s decades of involvement in the Middle East for his future plans in Gaza. Perhaps they were right to. But not to worry: the global search for strategic wisdom has now been resolved. The path to peace lies not through seasoned statesmen or regional experts, but through the collective judgment of Delia Smith, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, and naturally, Gary Lineker. They are joined by Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Simon Pegg and a list of figures known for their contributions to film, fiction, and light entertainment: people with no background or expertise in jihadist Islamic terror movements, counter-extremism, Middle Eastern politics,

Sam Olsen

Putin is warning Britain – but we're not listening

When Vladimir Putin declared this week that Russia was ‘ready’ to fight a war in Europe, the remark barely seems to have rippled the surface of Britain’s political consciousness. It should have sent a shockwave. The US delegation that had flown to Moscow in the hope of reviving a peace plan left empty-handed. Putin’s message was not bluster but a statement of intent: Russia is preparing for possible escalation now. Yet Britain continues to behave as though danger is tidily scheduled for years in the future, safely beyond the horizon of any present responsibility. It is a comforting delusion, but a very dangerous one. Britain cannot lead Europe if it

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: ‘Misleading’ Reeves, trial without jury and Great Yarmouth First

Home What Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told voters about the economy in a special press conference on 4 November was at odds with what the Office for Budget Responsibility had told her, Richard Hughes, its chairman, explained in a letter to the Commons Treasury Committee. Asked directly by Trevor Phillips on Sky if she had lied, Ms Reeves replied: ‘No, of course I didn’t.’ Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘There’s no misleading there.’ Chris Mason, the BBC political editor, concluded: ‘On one specific element of what the Chancellor and the Treasury told us before the Budget, we were misled.’ Mr Hughes then resigned as the

Wednesday

Lisa Haseldine

We are no closer to peace in Ukraine

Steve Witkoff’s sixth visit of the year to Moscow seems to have ended again with very little to show for it. The US special envoy was in the Russian capital with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, to meet President Vladimir Putin and present the latest version of a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. Little is currently known about the contents of the peace plan itself. Witkoff and Kushner spent five hours with Putin in the Kremlin. Speaking after the meeting, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov called the summit ‘very useful, constructive and substantive’ but said that ‘a compromise hasn’t been found yet’. Asked whether peace was closer

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

Why Putin thinks destiny is on his side

The Kremlin pulled out all the stops for the visit of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow today. Accompanied by Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Witkoff and Kushner strolled through crowds on Red Square with minimal security after lunching at a fancy restaurant on Petrovka street. Not coincidentally, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi was also in town for a meeting with Russian Security Council head Sergei Shoigu, where Russia affirmed its support for Beijing’s One China policy.  It was a sophisticated piece of great power signalling intended to send a multi-part message to Donald Trump. First and foremost, the Kremlin was showing off its new

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Tulip Siddiq can’t turn her back on Bangladeshi politics now

A Bangladeshi court sentenced the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in prison in absentia on Monday. Siddiq, who stepped down as anti-corruption minister earlier this year, has been found guilty of ‘influencing’ her aunt, the former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, to secure a plot of valuable piece of land for her family outside Dhaka. Hasina was pushed out of power following massive demonstrators last year and has since been sentenced to death by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal. She is currently living in exile in India. It does appear that Siddiq is now complaining about the very forces in Bangladesh that propelled her to power in the first place Siddiq

Edmund Fitton-Brown

Trump is right to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood

Donald Trump has begun the process of banning the Muslim Brotherhood. The US President asked his officials last week to investigate whether certain chapters of the group should be classed as foreign terrorist organisations, which would result in economic and travel sanctions. Some are portrayed this as a reckless lurch into Islamophobia. In fact, it is overdue by at least a decade. The Muslim Brotherhood is not a benign religious association. It is a disciplined ideological movement with a century-long record of exploiting political systems.Its explicit objective is to work towards the establishment of a global caliphate – only by gradualist means, rather than the reckless confrontation and brutality favoured by its distant offshoot,

Monday

Freddy Gray

Why did Jeffrey Epstein hate me?

45 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined once again by the University of Chicago’s Professor John Mearsheimer to discuss why Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan won’t work, how the war will ultimately be decided on the battlefield, and what happened when Jeffrey Epstein and Alan Dershowitz ran a smear campaign against him over his essay on the Israel lobby.

Gavin Mortimer

Why the prospect of peace in Ukraine is troubling Macron

Emmanuel Macron welcomed Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky to Paris this morning to discuss ‘the conditions for a just and lasting peace’. But is the French leader nervous about what peace in Ukraine might mean for Europe – and for France? There may be another reason why Macron is concerned at what peace in Ukraine might bring. It is an anxiety shared by others in Europe In an interview with a Sunday newspaper, France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, declared that ‘peace is within reach, if Vladimir Putin abandons his delusional hope of reconstituting the Soviet Empire by first subjugating Ukraine’. Macron showed little enthusiasm initially for the 28-point peace plan put

James Tidmarsh

Violence is being normalised against the National Rally

Jordan Bardella has been physically attacked twice over the past five days. Flour was thrown over him at an agricultural fair in Burgundy, then this weekend an egg was crushed on his head at a book signing in Moissac in the Tarn-et-Garonne. He walked away unharmed, but the incidents could easily have been more serious. They come at a moment when Bardella leads the polls to become France’s next president, with Marine Le Pen increasingly sidelined after she was barred from running by the courts. Right-wing officials and politicians are facing a steady rise in insults, threats and physical aggression. France is edging towards a hierarchy of victims in which