World

Thursday

Nicholas Farrell

How Musk, Meloni and Trump are set to define European politics

Few have noticed yet but Giorgia Meloni looks set to become Donald Trump’s key point of contact in Europe – above all thanks to her close friendship with Elon Musk. The relationship between Trump and Meloni, via Musk, could become very special indeed. In particular, it may prove crucial for what happens in Ukraine. They may not be in love with each other but Musk and Meloni are in love with each other’s ideas The tech tycoon backed Trump’s election campaign with an estimated £100 million, plus his vital vocal support on X. He’s now become a top consigliere to the President-elect and has been appointed as the head of a Department of Government

William Moore William Moore

After Welby: what’s next for the Church of England?

It’s taken him more than a decade, but Justin Welby has finally united the Church of England. The petition calling for him to resign over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth was set up by three clergymen who would normally disagree: Dr Ian Paul, Robert Thompson and Marcus Walker, the spirit animals of the C of E’s evangelical, liberal and High Church wings. ‘Over any other issue Ian Paul and Robert Thompson would practically be suggesting pistols at dawn across the Synod chamber,’ says one member of the General Synod. Yet they were united in their anger against the Archbishop of Canterbury and in their conviction

Douglas Murray

Welcome to life on Planet Elon

On 13 July this year, an assassin’s bullet grazed the ear of Donald Trump as he turned his head on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. The whole world saw it and his response: ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ For Elon Musk, this was not just a news event but a galvanising and clarifying moment. He immediately posted a video of the shooting to X and wrote: ‘I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.’ Musk is different from most people. For him, going all-in really means going all-in. When Trump returned to Butler last month, he was joined on stage by the billionaire. Musk is now one of the most

Wednesday

John O'Neill

Fact check: How much will Trump’s tariffs hurt the UK? 

Last week the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said Britain ‘would be one of the countries most affected’ by Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, with growth cut by 0.7 percentage points in year one, 0.5 percentage points in year two, and inflation 3-4 points higher. But research from Oxford Economics today suggests the impact would be ‘limited’, even in the worst-case scenario.  During the election campaign, Trump suggested putting tariffs of 10 or 20 per cent on all imported goods – except those from China and Mexico, which would be stung with 60 or even 100 per cent rates. At the moment, average UK tariffs on goods from the US

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Why did China censor reports of a deadly hit-and-run?

In many respects, the Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) response to one of the deadliest mass killings in recent Chinese history is drearily familiar. The authorities now say that at least 35 people were killed and dozens injured on Monday evening when the 62-year-old driver of an SUV rammed his vehicle into crowds at a local sports stadium. But it took the authorities more than a day to release details and initial online searches were heavily censored. Videos from the scene in the southern city of Zhuhai posted to social media were deleted – even state media reports were removed from the internet. BBC journalists were told to stop filming when

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour vs Elon Musk

14 min listen

As Trump announces the appointment of Elon Musk to tackle US government efficiency, James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and editor Michael Gove about the dynamics of Labour’s relationship with the tech billionaire. Musk had a public spat with Labour figures over the UK summer riots, the Center for Countering Digital Hate – co-founded by Starmer’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney – is facing a congressional investigation, and some Labour figures are even calling on the party to quit X/Twitter. Should Musk’s closeness to president-elect Trump worry the Labour government? But first, the team discuss Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s proposed NHS changes, and Liberal Democrat attacks on Labour’s National Insurance

Eliot Wilson

What can we expect from Trump’s defence pick?

As President-elect Donald Trump’s nominations to executive positions gradually emerge, it is difficult to know what to expect next. Elon Musk is set to run the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who organised a drugs awareness campaign under the slogan, ‘Meth. We’re on it’ and wrote in her autobiography of shooting dead her badly behaved wire-haired pointer puppy, is tapped for Secretary of Homeland Security. Trump’s choice for the critical role of Secretary of Defence is typically atypical. Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old Minnesotan educated at Princeton and Harvard, is a presenter and commentator for Fox News. He has also worked for two conservative political advocacy

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The world isn’t listening to Keir Starmer’s climate preaching

Keir Starmer said he was travelling to Cop 29 in Baku intending to “lead the world on climate change”. But it must surely be obvious that he is, instead, barking at a world that is heading in the opposite direction. Last year’s grand talk about “phasing down” fossil fuels at Cop 28 notwithstanding, today’s Global Carbon Budget Report forecasts that global carbon emissions will hit another record high in 2024, reaching 41.6 billion tonnes, up from 40.6 billion tonnes in 2023. The report calls this “marginal”, but it’s actually a 2.5 per cent increase, including all carbon emissions from industry and land use, as well as fossil fuel burning. How

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

How to process your Trump trauma (with orange soup)

It’s amazing how many people have responded to what they think of as the shattering catastrophe of Donald Trump’s victory by crafting: making rag rugs, ceramic pots, knitting scarves. A woman I know from long ago is so traumatised that she has started quilting. I’m not sure what sort of quilt she’s making – a patchwork of Harris/Walz ballot papers, maybe – but I know better than to make a light-hearted enquiry because this is not an ordinary quilt. It is a recovery quilt and part of the healing process. The most popular flavour of post-Trump soup seems to be spiced pumpkin Many unhappy Democrat women have announced that they

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why hasn’t Marco Rubio been announced as Trump’s Secretary of State yet? 

Rubio, Rubio, wherefore art thou Rubio? How Little Marco, as Donald Trump dubbed him in 2016, must be squirming. It was reported on Monday, with great confidence, that Trump had chosen Rubio as his Secretary of State, along with Congressman Mike Waltz as his National Security Adviser.  The news came as a relief to national security establishments across the West. There had been grave concerns in the foreign policy world that Trump would choose somebody antithetical to the interests of Nato. The elevation of Rubio and Waltz also served as further evidence of the growing power of Florida in Trump’s America – Waltz and Rubio are both politicians from the

Matthew Lynn

If anyone can fix America’s bloated state, it’s Elon Musk

Perhaps he will walk through the lobby of the Pentagon with a kitchen sink. Or fire the entire IT department at the Fed, shift the IRS to Mars, while replacing traffic police with fully autonomous Tesla robo-cops. No one has any real idea yet what Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, might come up with now he has been appointed by Donald Trump to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency (or ‘Doge’). One point is certain, however. There will be some spectacular fireworks. And it will throw down a challenge to bloated governments everywhere.  Nobody gets to amass a $300 billion fortune, working in manufacturing and

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland’s suicidal Trump Derangement Syndrome

Ireland has a problem with America. Irish politicians and the country’s establishment would, of course, deny this. They would point to the fact that 35 million Americans claim Irish descent, and that the Irish and American governments enjoy their own version of a ‘special relationship’, involving an annual presentation of a shamrock at the White House every St Patrick’s day. They would highlight the close cultural and economic ties between the two countries, particularly in the tech sector, which has seen 18 of the largest American tech giants, from Apple to Microsoft, make Ireland their European home, which has been a lifeline to the Irish economy. Ireland is under the new

Eugene Finkel

How Ukraine can survive Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s triumph in the US presidential election is seen as a tragedy for Ukraine. Trump and Ukraine certainly have a troubled history. During Trump’s first term, when he pressured president Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, this effort led to Trump’s first impeachment. Trump’s sympathy for, indeed admiration of, Vladimir Putin is well-known. Trump and vice president-elect JD Vance claim to have a plan to swiftly end the Russian–Ukrainian war, presumably by strong arming Kyiv to cede territory to Russia and abandon its bid for Nato membership. Is Ukraine doomed and headed toward defeat and subjugation by Russia? Putin prefers fighting to a ceasefire and will likely reject any Trump

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

How will progressives explain Amsterdam’s latest anti-semitic violence?

Since the scenes of Jews being hunted, beaten and kicked as they lay on the ground pleading for mercy in Amsterdam, antisemites have sought excuse, or that weaselly insinuator ‘context’, in the reported behaviour of a number of Maccabi Tel Aviv football hooligans, who are said to have attacked a taxi, tore down a Palestinian flag and sang anti-Arab chants. Video footage reportedly shows rioters chanting ‘kankerjoden’, Dutch for ‘Jewish cancer’ I wrote in the wake of those events that any Israeli fan who engaged in such yobbery is to be condemned but that their actions did not justify a modern-day pogrom that plunged Israelis and other Jews into a

Leon Mangasarian

Germany has a bleak future thanks to Olaf Scholz

The demise of chancellor Olaf Scholz’s lacklustre coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats is unsurprising. The ideological blend fits Germany, as Stalin might have said, ‘like a saddle fits a cow.’ The election that may truly define Germany’s future will be held in 2029 Scholz seems almost to have modelled himself on Liz Truss; though it took him longer to damage the world’s third-largest economy, he has done a thorough job. Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, is expected to contract for a second consecutive year in 2024. Ludwig Erhard, the architect of the West German economic miracle, must be spinning in his grave. The Bundestag is likely

Eliot Wilson

RAF chief puts pressure on Starmer over Storm Shadows

I don’t know what the Ukrainian for ‘Well, duh’ is, but it might well have been heard in Kyiv yesterday. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute, the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, observed that Ukrainian forces resisting the Russian invaders needed to be able to strike at their enemies well behind the border. ‘Ukraine cannot put up a shield to protect themselves against the 30,000 glide bombs lobbed into the Kursk oblast. Instead, what they need – and what we would need – is the ability to strike the aircraft launching these bombs on the ground.’  When he was asked to respond, the prime minister was

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The Marsh family and the sad spectacle of Trump-bashing Brits

There is something slightly uncanny about the musical Marsh family of Faversham in Kent, who recently gathered millions of YouTube views with ‘Gimme Hope Kamala’, their rewrite of Eddy Grant’s ‘Gimme Hope Jo’Anna’. They are a combination of two big fads of the 70s, The Partridge Family and Jonestown. Mad Ma Marsh in particular has the shining eyes of someone appearing in a slightly different kind of video, containing the words ‘My captors are treating me very well and I now fully support their valiant armed struggle’. If you really did believe fascism was returning, dropping a comic song on the internet would probably not be your first action The musical endeavours

John Keiger John Keiger

The irony of Starmer’s Armistice Day visit to France

Yesterday morning, the British Prime Minister travelled to Paris at the invitation of the French President to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. Sir Keir Starmer was the first UK leader to attend an Armistice Day ceremony in Paris since Winston Churchill did so alongside General de Gaulle in 1944. Yet there is a degree of irony in these displays of Franco-British unity marking the war’s end. Despite having fought side-by-side for the conflict’s duration, and notwithstanding the integration of their economies to an unprecedented degree, at the war’s end the two countries reverted to traditional rivalry. One of the areas where

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Why Beijing is wary of a Russo-North Korean alliance

56 min listen

There have been reports that some 11,000 North Korean troops are present in Russia and preparing to take part in the Russian invasion. While not acknowledged by either country, if true, this would mark a historic milestone: the first East Asian state to send troops to Europe since the Mongol Empire.  And yet, both countries’ most powerful neighbour and ally – China – has remained suspiciously quiet about this new development. Beijing’s silence may well express a deep distrust and unease that actually characterises China’s relationship with its so-called allies. To get into the recent developments and what we can learn from the history of the relationship between these three countries, the