World

Friday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Biden partially lifts ban on strikes within Russia

David Cameron publicly said it was up to Ukraine to decide whether to use British weapons to strike targets on Russian territory earlier this month. But nothing has happened since then: no Storm Shadow missiles have flown over the Ukraine-Russia border. Last night, Volodymyr Zelensky explained why: the UK had not given ‘100 per cent permission’ to do so. ‘We raised this issue twice. We did not get confirmation from him [Cameron].’ In reality, Downing Street is waiting on the Americans, he said. The calls for the US and other allies to allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with western arms have grown louder after Russia launched a second offensive

Lionel Shriver and Freddy Gray

Trump found guilty

23 min listen

Donald Trump has been found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. The Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver joins Freddy Gray to respond to the news. Was it a fair trial? What could it mean for the 2024 presidential election? And what are the wider implications for American democracy? Produced by Megan McElroy, Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.

Jim Lawley

Pedro Sanchez may come to regret passing Spain’s amnesty law

When has any nation’s government amnestied hundreds of people facing criminal charges in return for the votes that allow it to stay in office? That’s what Spain’s government has just done. After last July’s general election, Pedro Sánchez, the incumbent left-wing prime minister, discovered that he needed the 14 votes of two Catalan separatist parties in order to cling onto power. The price of those 14 votes? A general amnesty for several hundred people accused of criminal activities during Catalonia’s secession push, including 2017’s illegal declaration of independence. The amnesty bill, fast-tracked through parliament, was passed yesterday after a spectacularly acrimonious debate: 177 votes in favour and 172 against. The

Lee Cohen

Trump’s conviction is a disaster for American democracy

Donald Trump’s trial and his conviction on 34 felony counts is disgraceful. As the legal expert and former Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, has argued, ‘the judge essentially instructed the jury to convict Trump.’ Biden’s America has shamefully crossed the Rubicon. The rule of law has been supplanted by the whims of elites and the machinery of power. The verdict of the jury in New York City, finding Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a hush-money trial, calls into urgent question the integrity of the American legal system and the sanctity of democratic norms. The perception of selective justice is only going to undermine

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump is a convict, but will it matter?

This is an extremely strange moment for American democracy. Polls suggest that independent voters – the people who decide American elections – will not vote for a man who is a convicted felon. But now Donald Trump, currently the favourite to win re-election in November, has been found guilty, on 34 counts, of falsifying business records – and nobody knows if that verdict will make him more popular or less. On the one hand, a court has decided that, yes, he deliberately altered his financial accounts, possibly for election campaign reasons back in 2016. He is now a convict. Trump has a murky past, and his dodgy history now appears

Amber Duke & Matt McDonald

Donald Trump found guilty

Ajury delivered a guilty verdict Thursday on all thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records in former president Donald Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial. The jury deliberated for just a couple of days before returning its verdict, although they did go back to the judge several times asking for a re-read of the instructions and testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. Trump was in the courtroom when the verdict was returned, as was Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the charges. According to the New York Times’s Jesse McKinley, reporting from the scene, ‘He is largely expressionless, a glum look on his face, as ‘guilty’ has just been heard

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Wannabes: are any of them ready?

36 min listen

On this week’s Edition: Wannabes – are any of them ready? Our cover piece takes a look at the state of the parties a week into the UK general election campaign. The election announcement took everyone by surprise, including Tory MPs, so what’s been the fallout since? To provide the latest analysis, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls joins the podcast (2:00). Then: Angus Colwell reports on how the election is playing out on social media, and the increasing role of the political ‘spinfluencer’. These accounts have millions of likes, but how influential could they be during the election? Alongside Angus, Harry Boeken, aka @thechampagne_socialist on TikTok, joins us to share their

Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

A Musk-Trump White House collaboration will only end badly

He has created a major automobile company. He has built space rockets, taken over X, made himself hundreds of billions, and even found time to father lots of children. Elon Musk has plenty of achievements. And yet he may soon have one more. A cabinet post in the next Trump administration. But hold on: Musk may look an attractive candidate, but it will surely ends badly. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Trump have been discussing an advisory role for the billionaire if he wins the White House in the election in November. Musk apparently might help out on economic policy, as well as border

Geoff Hill

Who will win South Africa’s election?

From the start, it didn’t look good this time round for the African National Congress (ANC), which has ruled South Africa since Nelson Mandela came to power in the first democratic elections 30 years ago. Since mid-2023, polls for the ANC have ranged from 38 per cent to the high-40s, a long way down from the 57 per cent President Cyril Ramaphosa had won five years ago. ANC party faithful have long chanted, ‘We will rule till Jesus comes’ The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) says it will only have the full results by Sunday, given the unexpectedly high turnout. At the first national vote in 1994, a stunning 87 per cent took part,

Edward Howell

North Korea’s dirty protest

North Korea has long been known for its rhetorical braggadocio. Most of the time, the regime’s bluster needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. But on occasion, we should be less quick to dismiss the threats emanating from it and its state-controlled media mouthpieces.  Earlier this week, North Korea launched over 250 balloons carrying bags of faeces, used bottles, and other waste across the inter-Korean border, subsequently dumping them on South Korean territory. In the words of Kim Yo Jong, the vitriolic sister of Kim Jong Un, the balloons were ‘gifts of sincerity’ to the South. The move is a far cry from North Korea’s usual intimidation tactics

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Will South Africa reject the ANC?

After many years in power, a corrupt and inept government is finally close to being removed. There is no great confidence in the opposition — but the people have had enough of seeing their country ruined and are finally having their say. No, I’m not talking about Britain and the Conservative party but South Africa, where the ANC looks as if it might be close to losing power after almost three decades of one-party rule. Very high turnout for other parties is understood to have perhaps caused the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, to fall below 50 per cent of the vote for the first time. It’s

Jonathan Spyer

Pressure is piling on Netanyahu over Rafah

On Sunday, 45 Palestinians were killed after an Israeli airstrike on two Hamas commanders in the Rafah area set off a secondary explosion of ammunition, triggering a fire. Nevertheless, the IDF’s Rafah operation is continuing apace. A number of Merkava 4 tanks of the 401st armoured brigade were sighted near the al-Awda mosque close to the centre of Rafah city on Tuesday. The presence of the tanks has not been confirmed by the IDF but if accurate, it represents the furthest penetration by Israel into the heart of Rafah’s urban area to date. Israeli infantry and armoured forces of the 162nd division, meanwhile, continue to push along the Philadelphi Corridor adjoining the border with

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Bury the Canaletto, now

I’m not on the guest list for the Duke of Westminster’s wedding, but I wish him luck anyway. Mind you, the young seventh duke – Hughie to his friends – hardly needs more luck than has already come his way in the form of the £10 billion Grosvenor property empire in London and elsewhere. When the playboy second duke known as ‘Bend’Or’ died in 1953, Pimlico had to be sold to pay record death duties. But the Grosvenor family has taken a firmer grip on tax planning since then, their fortune multiplying despite the dukedom passing through three cousins to reach the father of today’s incumbent, who inherited via reportedly

David Whitehouse

The moon matters to China

China’s Chang’e-6 moon mission was launched on 3 May. It reached lunar orbit a few days later and began waiting for sunrise over its landing site on the moon’s far side. Chang’e-6 is named after the Chinese goddess of the moon and it will land on Sunday in a crater called Apollo – an ancient double-ringed walled plain caused by an asteroid smashing into the young moon. Apollo has been heavily damaged by subsequent impacts and in many places covered with lava flows and sprinkled with particles from newer impacts. It is as Buzz Aldrin said, a magnificent desolation. It is a region of great geological significance, since it contains

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Sunak’s downpour, national service and the ‘triple lock plus’

Home Parliament was dissolved, leaving no MPs until the general election on 4 July. With hours to go, Diane Abbott had the Labour whip restored to her, and Lucy Allan MP was suspended from the Conservative party for endorsing the Reform UK candidate for Telford. Among bills that were lost was one prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 31 December 2008. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, had provided an abiding memory by announcing the election standing in heavy rain in Downing Street and making a speech as though it weren’t raining. The Conservatives suddenly said that everyone should do a form of national service at the age of 18.

Owen Matthews

Putin’s purge of his top generals

In the past month, Vladimir Putin has had five top generals arrested on corruption charges. More are likely to follow in what looks like a gathering purge by the Federal Security Service (FSB). ‘There is a fierce clean-up under way,’ a source close to the Kremlin told the Moscow Times last week. ‘There is still a long way to go before the purges are finished. More arrests await us.’ Without doubt, the FSB will find plenty of the corruption it’s looking for. Timur Ivanov, Russia’s deputy defence minister – the first senior general arrested – was hardly shy about flaunting his wealth. If embezzlement and bribery are suddenly impermissible, no

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why are French politicians obsessed with world war two?

War talk is all the rage in France. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are often cited, but the war that has come to increasingly obsess the political class in recent weeks is the one that began in 1939. Almost every day brings another reference to a period that barely anyone in the Republic experienced first-hand. The latest example was a radio interview on Tuesday morning between Marion Maréchal, Vice President of Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest party, and a journalist from France Inter, a radio station that describes itself as ‘progressive’. ‘What difference is there,’ the journalist asked Maréchal, ‘between the defence of the family that you propose and that proposed by Marshal

Terry Barnes

Victoria’s absurd new minister for men’s behaviour

Australian states like to advertise themselves on car number plates with a catchy slogan capturing what they see as their self-image. My home state of Victoria’s slogan is ‘The Place to Be’. When it comes to identity politics and the state government’s obsession with progressive causes – to the point of being extremist – Victoria is very much Australia’s place to be. To assume, as Allan has, that all men are toxic perpetrators-in-waiting is an insult to the overwhelming majority of men who deplore family violence of any sort  Cursed with a conservative opposition that can’t organise a knees-up in a brewery, Victoria is all but permanently governed by an Australian Labor party that, even

Arieh Kovler

Netanyahu’s strategy in Rafah isn’t working

On 7 April, six months after the October massacres in southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the public that the country was just ‘one step away from victory’ in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Nearly two months later, Israel hasn’t taken that step yet. The war continues. No more hostages have been released alive. Hamas rockets still fall inside Israel, including a barrage earlier this week that rained down on the suburbs of Tel Aviv. The two leaders of Israel’s war effort haven’t spoken to each other for a fortnight In the meantime, international public opinion has hardened against Israel. Some countries, like Colombia, have broken diplomatic relations.