World

Tuesday

Matthew Lynn

Vance is right, Europe is smothering AI

They won’t have liked the message or the messenger. With characteristic bluntness, the American vice president J. D. Vance tore into the European Union’s smothering regulation of artificial intelligence today.  Still, Europe’s leaders should listen. Vance happens to be absolutely right. When President Macron convened an AI summit in Paris this week, he was probably hoping for the usual platitudes from world leaders about ‘transformative technologies’ and ‘empowering change’ – along with a few billion euros for some data hubs in France. Unfortunately, no one told Vance how these things are meant to work. In his speech he spoke his mind, and tore into his hosts.  ‘We believe that excessive

David Cohen

What does China want with the Cook Islands?

Diplomatic storm clouds are gathering around the Cook Islands, a picturesque tourist destination in the South Pacific known for its creaking palms, pink beaches and deliciously warm nights.  The microscopic island-nation has a long-standing ‘free association’ with New Zealand, which sees Wellington give the islands defence and financial support. Now though the islands are in the middle of striking an agreement with China, and New Zealand says it has been kept in the dark about the nature of the pact.  ‘We can confirm that there are a number of issues on which New Zealand and the Cook Islands government currently do not see eye-to-eye,’ a spokesman for New Zealand’s foreign

Matthew Lynn

Starmer should split from the EU if it hits back at Trump on tariffs

The European Union has hit back against Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25 per cent tariffs on steel imports. “Tariffs are taxes – bad for business, worse for consumers,” the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said, adding that the levy “will not go unanswered”. Yet for all the fire and fury, Europe will not be quite as united as it wishes. The British government has made it quietly clear that it will not be joining the fight. The Daily Mail reports that the Prime Minister is poised to split from the EU by holding off retaliating. The PM right: this is a fight from which Britain has little

Monday

Elisabeth Dampier

Why do so many gay men support the AfD?

‘There are many neighbourhoods we can no longer go to because we are in danger of being injured, attacked or murdered,’ Ali Utlu tells me. As a gay German man of Turkish extraction and an ex-Muslim, he’ll be voting for the hard-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in the German elections later this month. And he’s not alone.  A survey of more than 60,000 gay German men by Europe’s largest gay dating platform Romeo found that almost 28 per cent of its users intend to vote for the AfD, making it the most popular party in Germany for gay men. The poll showed that the AfD did best among 18 to 24-year-olds: 34.7 per cent said they’d vote for the

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Have America’s chips controls backfired?

57 min listen

Beginning in the first Trump presidency and expanded under Joe Biden, the US has taken a strategy of technologically containing China through restricting its access to cutting edge semiconductors. As Chinese Whispers has looked at before, these chips form the backbone of rapid advances in AI, telecoms, smartphones, weaponry and more. Washington’s aim was clear: to widen the technological gap between the two powers But has this strategy worked? Lately this has become a hot topic of debate as Chinese tech companies such as Huawei and DeepSeek have nevertheless made technical strides. Some even argue that the export controls have spurred on Chinese innovation and self-reliance. In this episode of Chinese

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Has Putin picked up the phone to Donald Trump?

So, did they speak? How often? What about? The very coyness around the question of whether Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone – Trump says so, maybe more than once, while the Kremlin is neither confirming nor denying – suggests that pre-discussion discussions on the war in Ukraine are indeed already taking place. General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the war, has stated that no peace plan will be unveiled at next weekend’s Munich Security Conference (the Davos of the security set). But in some ways that is disingenuous. As one Foreign Office staffer suggested, ‘It’s not necessarily the time and place for a public reveal,

Ian O’Doherty

Why won’t Ireland take in Palestinian refugees?

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When Donald Trump made his rather provocative claim that the US would expel all Palestinians from Gaza and turn the region into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’, international condemnation came thick and fast – matched only by the confusion of world leaders. Did the President of the United States really mean that he wanted to create his very own Mar-a-Gaza, complete with luxurious golf courses and tatty tourist shops, or was there a method to his madness?  Egypt has already insisted that it won’t take a single Palestinian refugee, Jordan has warned the United States that it would consider any such plans an

Matthew Lynn

Trump’s tariffs could kill Europe’s steel industry

So, it seems that Donald Trump wasn’t bluffing after all. On his way to the Superbowl, the president made time to impose 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the United States, ramping up a trade war that has been looming ever since he moved into the White House last month. Speaking aboard Air Force One, Trump said he would slap the tariffs on “everybody”. “If they charge us, we charge them,” he said. These measures will hit Australia, Mexico, and East Asian manufacturers hard. But it will deliver a terminal blow to the European steel industry, unless it finally abandons Net Zero targets that were already

Jonathan Sacerdoti

How Hamas used starvation as a weapon of war

We asked for proof of deliberate starvation in Gaza. On Saturday, we received it. The images of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami – three hostages released by Hamas after 491 days in captivity – were haunting. Frail, skeletal, barely able to stand, they bore the unmistakable marks of prolonged deprivation. The sight evoked painful historical echoes: men whose suffering was etched into their hollowed faces and emaciated bodies, a vision chillingly reminiscent of Holocaust survivors. This was not incidental malnutrition. It was something far worse: starvation as a weapon, inflicted with intent. It was a vision chillingly reminiscent of Holocaust survivors For months, famine in Gaza had

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

What happened to William Dalrymple?

At first impression, William Dalrymple is flying high. This patrician historian of British-Indian relations, who celebrates his sixtieth birthday this year, presides over his own literary festival in Jaipur and has amassed more than a million followers on X (many of them hailing from the subcontinent). In recent years, he has grown to become a totem of centrist dads everywhere. This month, he announced that his Empire Podcast – produced by Gary Lineker’s production company – had surpassed 55 million downloads. Dalrymple’s outbursts can be venomous towards those who do not share his repugnance for the Middle East’s only democracy Increasingly, however, questions are being asked both about the Scottish

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is a ‘Trump tornado’ about to tear through Europe?

There is a wind of change blowing through the West. It emanates from Washington DC, where Donald Trump continues to dash off executive orders; more than fifty by the end of last week, the highest number in a president’s first 100 days in four decades. The liberal mainstream media is rattled. The New York Times magazine ran a piece at the weekend in which it described Trump as ‘the leading light of a spate of illiberal leaders and parties flourishing in democracies around the world’. The paper namechecked some of them: Poland, Holland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and Russia. What unites and motivates these ‘illiberal’ parties is their

Sunday

Alexander Larman

Donald Trump is right to pity Prince Harry

Say what you like about President Trump – and people very much do – but there is little doubt that, at the outset of his second term, The Donald has behaved like a man in a hurry. Not a day seems to go past without a blizzard of executive orders closing this and shuttering that, and generally attempting to Make America Great Again. Yet amidst all the threatened deportations of the undesirable, there is one particular high-profile resident alien whom the President has decided to allow to remain in the country: none other than everyone’s favourite Montecito dweller, Prince Harry. Few would disagree with Trump’s comments on Meghan There had

Edward Howell

Does a ‘new golden age’ beckon for the US and Japan?

Perhaps the first thing on everyone’s minds was just how low Ishiba Shigeru, Japan’s Prime Minister (who prefers warships to golf clubs) could go on a round at the Trump International Golf Club. After all, following Trump’s victory last November, Ishiba’s South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk Yeol, was seen sharpening up his golf swing in preparation for 18 holes. But what Ishiba’s speedy one-day sojourn to Washington on Friday makes clear is that no matter how transactional leaders may be, in international relations, alliances matter – particularly during a time of ‘polycrisis’. Relations between Tokyo and Washington have not always been hurdle-free. But this bilateral alliance, enshrined in a security

Saturday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Keir Starmer is caught in a Trump trap

The mood of Keir Starmer’s foreign policy advisers was funereal as they contemplated the return of Donald Trump. The weeks since Trump’s inauguration have shown that the government doesn’t know what to do with an American president who is hostile, capricious and, let’s face it, more than a little mad, except humour him as one might humour a screaming toddler. Labour cannot attack Farage’s Trump worship for fear of alienating Washington Who knows? Maybe that will work. Maybe all Starmer needs to do is flatter Trump, toss in a visit to Buckingham Palace and a banquet with the King, and the rheumy Eye of Sauron will move away from Britain

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Russia’s quest to woo Africa is paying off

The West may like to convince itself that it is, in the words of one American diplomat, ‘strangling the Russian foreign ministry’, but it ought to look south for a rather different perspective. On Tuesday, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was in expansive mood as he announced the formation of a brand-new Department of Partnership with Africa. Recognising that for years Moscow had neglected Africa, Lavrov blamed in part the bankruptcy of the late USSR and Russia in the 1990s, when embassies had to be shut down and sold off. I remember one polyglot diplomat who, while serving in Nigeria, had taken to spending his mornings giving English, French and Russian

Friday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Can a second Kursk offensive give Ukraine bargaining power?

In theory, the Kursk salient is one of the most militarily insignificant fronts of Putin’s war on Ukraine. However, war is ultimately all about politics, and the presence of Ukrainian troops on Russian soil is sufficiently problematic for President Vladimir Putin that Kyiv has decided to deploy more troops in a bid to reverse the slow recapture of the occupied territory. Having originally seized some 400 square miles in its lightning attack in August 2024, by last month, steady Russian pressure had shrunk Ukraine’s grasp on territory to some 180 square miles. Although Ukraine still held the town of Sudzha – about the only significant settlement in this area –

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Can Ukraine stop the bombings at its draft offices?

On 1 February, a young man walked into a military enlistment office in Rivne with a bomb in his backpack. Moments later, it detonated, killing him instantly and injuring eight Ukrainian service members. He was just 21, recruited online by Russian intelligence operatives who offered quick cash for sneaking the bomb inside. This attack was not an isolated incident – it was the beginning of a wave of deadly bombings targeting draft offices across the country. Two more attacks followed this week. In Kamianets-Podilskyi, in the Khmelnytskyi region, a man walked into a recruitment centre, bag in hand, claiming he had personal items to hand over. The bomb went off

Raymond Wacks

Trump’s sanctions will hit the ICC hard

Donald Trump’s decision to impose sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) could sound the death knell of this important judicial body. The US president condemned the Court’s ‘illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.’ Trump’s response came after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu last November over alleged war crimes in Gaza, as well as a warrant for a Hamas commander. As a supporter of the ICC, I regret that its credibility has – at a stroke – been grievously diminished by this exercise of prejudice The ICC, despite its obvious bias in this case, performs a crucial role as the legitimate forum in

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Can Hamas ever be defeated?

No matter how many times it is vanquished or decisively discredited, ‘Palestinianism’ persists as an ideology unwilling to die. Rooted in Muslim Arab nationalism, it remains fundamentally opposed to the very existence of Israel – a Jewish, liberal, and free state. Hamas, one of its most notorious champions, has in recent weeks orchestrated a carefully staged spectacle as it releases Israeli hostages from Gaza. Masked gunmen stood triumphantly, their performance captured in high resolution by cameras that had somehow survived the supposed genocide. The message was clear: this was a moment of victory, a display of strength. Never mind that Hamas had suffered catastrophic losses – its military infrastructure shattered,

Thursday

Michael Gove

Labour’s Irish insurgent, Germany’s ‘firewall’ falls & finding joy in obituaries

48 min listen

As a man with the instincts of an insurgent, Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, has found Labour’s first six months in office a frustrating time, writes The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove. ‘Many of his insights – those that made Labour electable – appeared to have been overlooked by the very ministers he propelled into power.’ McSweeney is trying to wrench the government away from complacent incumbency: there is a new emphasis on growth, a tougher line on borders, an impatience with establishment excuses for inertia. Will McSweeney win his battle? And what does this mean for figures in Starmer’s government, like Richard Hermer and Ed Miliband? Michael joined the