World

Wednesday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The European elections will test the AfD’s strength

As Olaf Scholz gathers alongside other European leaders on the beaches of Northern France tomorrow to commemorate 80 years since the allied invasion of Normandy, the German Chancellor may have another D-Day in mind. Tomorrow morning, the polls open across the continent for the European parliamentary elections.  Over the coming three days, voters in each EU member state will vote for candidates put forward by their home country’s national parties. The natural result of this model is that voters tend to cast their ballots based on domestic concerns, rather than what those MEPs might necessarily be able to do for them in Brussels. As such, for Scholz and his traffic

Jonathan Spyer

Will Netanyahu declare war on Hezbollah?

The war in Gaza is perceived internationally as a limited affair, pitting Israel against the Islamist Hamas organisation within the confines of a narrow strip of territory on the Mediterranean coast. This view has long been reductive. A number of other fronts are active as a result of the outbreak of war in Gaza. And one of them – Lebanon – is currently showing signs of erupting into full conflict. In November, the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthis) movement commenced their targeting of shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. In the same month, the Iran-allied Shia militias in Iraq began attacks on Israel, and on US and

Mark Nayler

Can Begona Gomez get a fair trial in Spain?

Begona Gomez, the wife of Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, has received a court summons for 5 July, in connection with a corruption probe into her business activities. The summons follows the launch of a preliminary investigation into Gomez back in April, and relates to ‘the alleged offences of corruption in the private sector and influence peddling’, according to the court. Sanchez took several days off when the inquiry was launched at the end of April, apparently to consider resigning – a stunt that disappointingly resulted in him deciding to stay on.  If we look at the evidence in the Gomez case, then it does seem flimsy Coming as it does just before

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What’s the matter with America’s media?

28 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Ben Smith and Nayeema Raza from the Mixed Signals podcast. They discuss the state of American media, whether the US has any appetite for public service broadcasting, and whether America is too cynical about the press.

Geoff Hill

Will South Africa’s unemployed rise up?

Beginning in the year 2000, Robert Mugabe began snatching white-owned farms for ‘redistribution’ and giving them to the black majority in Zimbabwe. The best properties were given to ministers, generals and retired ambassadors. Many used them as weekend retreats from the city. Mugabe’s wife, Grace, took a vast citrus estate east of the capital, Harare. In a short time, a country that for half a century had fed itself and exported the surplus was bankrupt, and hungry. The president’s plan was not so much about agriculture as politics. Young people in the city voted mostly for the opposition. He would put them on five- or ten-acre plots way out of

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The political appropriation of D-Day

If there is one place to avoid this week it is Normandy. The global elite are in town to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Along with as many as 25 world leaders there will be upwards of 12,000 of their security staff invading this normally sleepy part of Northern France. In addition, 43,000 gendarmes, police and military personnel will be deployed on land, sea and in the air. A restricted traffic zone will be place throughout the region, and residents are being advised to stay at home on Thursday and Friday. Some schools will be closed on those days because of the disruption. The Normandy American Cemetery, resting place of

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

The humbling of Narendra Modi

There was never really any serious doubt that India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, would win a historic third term in power. The bigger question in the Indian election was how big his victory would be. There were widespread predictions that Modi would win by a landslide, with the prime minister himself setting an ambitious goal of winning 400 of the total 543 seats up for grabs. It hasn’t quite turned out that way. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is on course to be the largest party, but is falling well short of the 272 required for an absolute majority. This means the BJP will be reliant on other parties

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Egypt has questions to answer over Rafah

Why have all eyes been on Rafah? We have been led to believe that the intense focus on a town the size of Rochdale in southern Gaza derives from purely humanitarian concerns, as if any Israeli operation there would trigger a civilian catastrophe on the scale of Rwanda or Darfur. Take a closer look, though, and this narrative quickly falls apart. The Israeli operation taking place as I write is remarkable. According to Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces who is closely following the conflict in Gaza, the current casualty ratio in Rafah is about one civilian for every ten combatants killed, which is several orders of

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Was Farage inspired by the rise of Le Pen?

The last time Nigel Farage stood for parliament was in 2015. He wasn’t elected, and it was his seventh failure to win a seat, as his many enemies love to point out. What has inspired Farage, the new leader of the Reform party, to have an eighth shot? The state of the domestic opposition, perhaps, and also maybe the rise in the last decade of European politicians who, like him, were once considered freaks, failures and fascists. A decade ago, even Farage considered Marine Le Pen too extreme to form any form of alliance in the European parliament. It was specifically her party’s history of ‘anti-Semitism and general prejudice in its DNA’

Sergey Radchenko

Tiananmen Square remade the modern world

Thirty-five years ago today, China’s leaders ordered tanks into Tiananmen Square to disperse a student encampment. The death toll was never made public; it is likely that several thousand people were killed.  June 4, 1989 planted the seeds of a much darker, more complicated world than we in the West cared to fathom The brutal suppression of the pro-democracy protesters came as a shock and was an aberration. After the fall of the Berlin wall, Communist regimes toppled one after another, mostly peacefully. Only Tiananmen spoiled the celebratory mood.  June 4, 1989 planted the seeds of a much darker, more complicated world than we in the West cared to fathom.

Monday

Limor Simhony Philpott

Joe Biden’s ceasefire proposal could sink Benjamin Netanyahu

Joe Biden’s introduction of the three-stage deal to end the war in Gaza was a clever rout to bypass Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden has lost confidence in Netanyahu’s readiness to present things to the Israeli public, and to his own cabinet, in an honest and truthful way. By presenting the terms of the deal clearly and independently from Netanyahu’s spins, Biden was in full control of the message, in the hope that the Israeli public will back the deal and make it impossible for Netanyahu to back out of it. Netanyahu’s already unstable coalition is on even shakier ground now Netanyahu has spent the past eight months manoeuvring between the demands

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

It feels like the social order is crumbling in Germany

I’ve been in and out of Germany a lot in recent months, and it’s hard not to gain the impression that its society is falling apart at the seams. Wherever you go, there seem to be angry political rallies and street protests. The news is full of violent attacks on politicians and activists. The fear is of a resurgence of far-right sentiments nearly eight decades after the fall of the Nazi regime. The concept of irrational German angst has become a bit of a cliche over the years, but this time the threats to social cohesion feel very real.  The sheer brutality of the attack is enough to appal people,

Geoff Hill

Jacob Zuma remains a problem for South Africa

More than 30 years after the Berlin Wall came down, leaders of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s long-time ruling party, still refer to each other as ‘comrade’. Unless, that is, you’re seen as a problem. ‘Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa will be here,’ ANC secretary general Fikile Mbabula told journalists on Sunday morning as he explained how, around 5 p.m., the President would receive the final election results at the main counting centre between Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria. ‘There’s nothing to celebrate in terms of performance of the ANC,’ he said.  Zuma has come away with 14.6 per cent of the vote but still claims it was rigged against

Sunday

Andrew Kenny

What the end of sole ANC rule means for South Africa

Election day on 29 May was a tumultuous, wonderful day for South Africa. 30 years of corruption and ruin under the sole rule of the African National Congress (ANC) party came to an end. The ANC, which won 63 per cent of the vote in the first democratic election in 1994, and 70 per cent in 2004, now only won 40 per cent. When the ANC took power in April 1994, South Africa had the strongest economy and the best infrastructure in Africa. We had a plentiful supply of the world’s cheapest electricity and the world’s greatest mineral treasure. The horrible apartheid laws had been scrapped by the last white

Carson Becker

The airport dividing Poland’s politicians

In 2017, the Polish government set out to build one of the largest airports in Europe on the outskirts of Warsaw. The project, known as the Central Communication Port, or CPK, was meant to combine a new international airport with a high speed railway network, connecting the Polish capital and the country’s peripheral regions. With the austerity of the communist era fading from memory, the CPK has come to symbolise the rapid development of Poland, a nation which has risen from political obscurity to become the EU’s sixth largest economy and one of Nato’s strongest military powers. Following last year’s parliamentary elections, and the subsequent change of government, conflicting visions

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron is to blame for France’s dismal economy

Standard & Poor’s downgrading of France’s credit rating on Friday is a hammer blow to President Macron’s reputation. The ratings agency has reduced France from AA to AA-, putting it on a par with the Czech Republic and Estonia and one notch below the UK. It is the first time S&P has downgraded France’s debt since 2013, although the firm Fitch did so in April 2023. This is comeuppance for years of ‘as much as it takes’ spending by a president haunted by the gilets jaunes movement. The credit rating downgrade comes just a week before the European elections, where Macron’s Renaissance party is trailing the Rassemblement National (RN) by over 16

Saturday

Rohit Kachroo

Why South Africans lost faith in the ANC

A red dawn had just broken when Stephanie Sathege joined the queue to vote at her local polling station in the Johannesburg township of Alexander on Wednesday. The voting booths hadn’t yet opened, but she and dozens of other people were enthusiastic enough to be there ahead of time. A 62-old black South African, this was the seventh time she had been allowed to vote in a general election, having lived under democracy only half her life.  Today, just as she did 30 years ago, Stephanie is contributing to an historic outcome. But this election day would be different to all the previous ones.  ‘Since 1994, I have been voting for the

Nicholas Lezard

Peter Parker, Wayne Hunt, Nicholas Lezard, Mark Mason and Nicholas Farrell

33 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Peter Parker takes us through the history of guardsmen and homosexuality (1:12); Prof. Wayne Hunt explains what the Conservatives could learn from the 1993 Canadian election (9:10); Nicholas Lezard reflects on the diaries of Franz Kafka, on the eve of his centenary (16:06); Mark Mason provides his notes on Horse Guards (22:52); and, Nicholas Farrell ponders his wife’s potential suitors, once he’s died (26:01). Presented and produced by Patrick Gibbons.  

Niko Vorobyov

Mexico’s narcos election

17 October 2019 will forever be etched in the memory of Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa in northwest Mexico, as Black Thursday. That afternoon, two convoys of soldiers knocked on the door of a safehouse hiding Ovidio Guzmán López, son of drug baron ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and scion of the Sinaloa Cartel, to execute an arrest warrant. ‘The boss has fallen! The boss has fallen!’ crackled the walkie-talkies. Within minutes, heavy gunfire erupted as mobsters arrived with machine gun turrets mounted on the back of their pick-up trucks. They took over the neighbouring streets and then the rest of the city, seizing roads and bridges and setting buses alight to act as burning

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Bashing Brexit won’t help Macron defeat Le Pen

The Prime Minister of France has warned his people that any form of Frexit would leave them weeping into their pastis. ‘Don’t be like the British who cried after Brexit,’ said Gabriel Attal, in a radio interview on Thursday.  ‘A large majority of British people regret Brexit and sometimes regret not turning out to vote, or voting for something that was negative for their country.’ Attal then cited a couple of examples of this negativity; what he described as ‘massive economic difficulties’ and more ‘illegal immigration than ever’. Attal’s Brexit bashing is an indication of the panic spreading through the ruling party The man described as a ‘mini-Macron’ has clearly