World

Thursday

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

America’s last undecided voter

This is the last column I’ll file before the American presidential election, and I’ve dreaded writing it for months. (The next one, filed on election day itself, may prove impossible. Perhaps that’s when I’ll choose to share my recipe for parsley as a side vegetable.) Meanwhile, I’ve watched fellow ‘double haters’ squirm in print. There are two models for wrestling with this dilemma, one exemplified by Andrew Sullivan. The conservative commentator ‘came out’ in a September Substack newsletter – no, not in that dated sense: everyone knows he’s gay – in support of Kamala Harris, only to lavish the overwhelming majority of that column on what a ghastly candidate she

Ian Thomson

Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow

Albanians are descended from the most ancient of European peoples, the Illyrians. The country came into existence only after 1912 with the demise of Ottoman power in Europe. Its first ruler, the glorified Muslim chieftain King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when fascist Italy invaded in 1939. (Zog was put up in London for a while at the Ritz.) Five years later the Nazi Germans were expelled by the Albanian resistance fighter Enver Hoxha. Outwardly a Stalinist, the artful Hoxha was a Muslim-born Ottoman dandy figure who terrorised his Balkan fiefdom through retaliatory murders, purges and the trap-door disappearance of class enemies. Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Trump makes America laugh again

‘Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening,’ said Donald Trump in his speech at the Al Smith Dinner in New York on Friday night. ‘So here it goes.’ He paused. ‘Nope. I’ve got nothing… There’s nothing to say. I guess I just don’t see the point at taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me.’ The crowd roared. Many of the jokes were close to the bone: ‘We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child. It’s a person that has nothing going,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Budget leaks, prisoners released and Israel kills Hamas leader

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was expected to freeze tax thresholds in the Budget on 30 October, to swell government income as more working people were brought into higher tax bands. Before Labour formed a government, she had said that the Conservatives, by freezing tax thresholds, were ‘picking the pockets of working people’. Weeks of speculation on the Budget were encouraged by leaks and by constant questioning of ministers about how Labour would keep to its manifesto undertaking not to raise taxes on ‘working people’ by increasing income tax, national insurance or VAT. The International Monetary Fund raised its growth forecast for the United Kingdom to 1.1

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Labour interfering in the US election?

16 min listen

Keir Starmer can’t even fly to Samoa without another international British embarrassment breaking out. The latest is an angry accusation from Donald Trump’s campaign that Labour is committing the crime of ‘election interference’ in the United States. ‘The British are coming!’ screamed a typically camp Trump-Vance official press release last night. The campaign denounced Britain’s ‘far-left’ governing party for attempting to subvert democracy by sending almost 100 of its activists across the pond to sway American voters. But are the British actually coming? Freddy Gray speaks to James Heale, The Spectator’s political correspondent.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Edward Howell

David Lammy can’t afford to let down South Korea

Labour’s first 100 days in power have been nothing short of a disaster. Whether the beneath contemptible decision to shelve the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act, or the disgrace that was the handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the stage has already been set for five long years for domestic and foreign policy blunders. David Lammy’s first few months as Foreign Secretary have faired little better. For Lammy, risible speeches to the United Nations have been combined with absurd claims from his boss, calling for the expansion of the institution’s sclerotic Security Council. Quantity does not equal quality. Lammy’s laissez-faire approach has also extended to his apathy towards

Jonathan Spyer

Israel won’t be distracted by ceasefire talks

Two senior US officials are in the Middle East this week, with the joint mission of negotiating an end to the current war between Israel and a number of Iran-backed Islamist militias. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday. US Special Envoy on Lebanon Amos Hochstein was in Beirut on Monday. Are the two faced with a mission impossible, or is there a chance that their efforts may forge a pathway to bring the year-long conflict to an end? At the start of this week, Israeli aircraft carried out a series of attacks on Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon. These included the headquarters of the organisation’s aerial

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

French farmers are on the verge of revolting again

A French MP was apprehended by police in Paris last week as he bought 1.35 grams of the designer drug ‘3-MMC’ from a teenager dealer. Andy Kerbrat, who is a member of the far-left La France Insoumise, admitted this on Tuesday and confessed to being addicted. The reaction from most MPs was largely sympathetic. He’s not the first parliamentarian to have admitted his use of narcotics. Last year Emmanuel Pellerin, a member of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, confessed to cocaine use and a senator was arrested by police after he was accused of drugging a female MP as part of a plan to carry out a sexual assault (he has denied any wrongdoing). In the wake of

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The British are coming! Labour’s comedy of errors in the US election

Our hapless Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, can’t even fly to Samoa without another international British embarrassment breaking out. The latest is an angry accusation from Donald Trump’s campaign that Labour is committing the crime of ‘election interference’ in the United States.  ‘The British are coming!’ screamed a typically camp Trump-Vance official press release last night. The campaign denounced Britain’s ‘far-left’ governing party for attempting to subvert democracy by sending almost 100 of its activists across the pond to sway American voters.  ‘The flailing Harris-Walz campaign is seeking foreign influence to boost its radical message – because they know they can’t win the American people,’ said Trump’s campaign manager Susie Wiles. ‘The Harris

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The gratuitous trade in images of Palestinian pain

It is getting to the point where I am dreading going online. For I know the minute I open my laptop I will be exposed to the grimmest images of human suffering. The internet is awash with dead Palestinians. Their broken bodies clog up social media. Their ashen remains get thousands of shares. ‘Look at this’, cry the death-sharers, as they post another photo of something that was once a human being. The grisly trade in images of Palestinian pain is starting to feel more exploitative than insightful. It is less about raising awareness than about stoking a gut feeling. Its impact is visceral, not political. It is a pornography

Monica Porter

Hungary’s most important day

The 23 October is Hungary’s most important annual public holiday, as it marks the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. It is called Nemzeti ünnep, or National Day. Each year when the date comes around, I quietly salute it. The revolution, after all, was the world event that determined the course of my life. Its crushing by the Soviet Union was the reason my family fled Hungary and why I became, in time, a British citizen and British writer. The date date is full of meaning for me, but this year its significance is greater than usual. I’ve recently returned from Hungary, where my children’s novel – set in Budapest

Tuesday

Michael Evans

Joe Biden wants Bibi to be careful

On 20 June 2019, President Donald Trump rescinded an order he had given for a military attack on Iran in retaliation for the shooting down of a long-range Global Hawk surveillance drone. He decided that a missile strike on Iranian military bases (which might cause casualties) would have been disproportionate. Global Hawk was unmanned. No American had died. The bombers, already en route, were summoned back to base. No one could suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu is facing the same decision. The circumstances are entirely different. There is no moral equivalence. On 1 October Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles on Israel, and Netanyahu has vowed to respond with a significant retaliatory

Francis Pike

India will never join China’s anti-western alliance

On the 15 November Xi Jinping will mark the 12th anniversary of his becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party – the sixth paramount leader in China since Mao Zedong established communist rule in 1949. One of the consistent features of Xi’s rule has been China’s hostility to India. People’s Liberation Army incursions across Indian borders became a given. So, the announcement yesterday that India and China have reached a Himalayan border agreement comes as something of a surprise. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar announced:  We reached an agreement on patrolling [the border], and with that, we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020, and we can say…

Marcus Ray

Britain cannot leave the South Pacific to Xi Jinping

Samoa is a land of sunburnt shorelines and majestic waterfalls. It is a Pacific paradise that, in a perfect world, should be left unsullied by the geopolitical machinations of larger states. But despite its small population and remote location, it is playing host – alongside other island nations scattered across the South Pacific – to an intensifying tussle for power and influence. China has entered the fray with force, forging strong ties with local governments. Britain ought to view its ascension in the region with concern. It must now return to a corner of the world it has long neglected and do more to support its regional allies. The Commonwealth

Ezekiel T. Reynolds

Why did Kamala Harris do a ‘media blitz’?

While Donald Trump has been serving fries at McDonald’s, Kamala Harris is licking her wounds after spending the past week or so engaged in what some have dubbed a ‘media blitz’. After taking heat for a lack of media presence (or a policy section on her campaign website for that matter), the VP made several appearances across both ‘legacy’ and ‘new’ media. She’s appeared on the TV shows like 60 Minutes and The Late Show, as well as radio shows and podcasts like The Breakfast Club and Call Her Daddy. The stop that has garnered the most attention was her sit down with Bret Baier of Fox News. While I

Monday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Should the US get rid of the Electoral College?

30 min listen

To discuss whether the Electoral College is out of date and in need of reform, Freddy Gray is join by Michael Kazin – a professor of history at Georgetown University and emeritus coeditor of Dissent. His most recent book, What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party, has just been released in paperback. Join Freddy Gray a special live recording of Americano on Thursday 24 October. You can buy tickets at www.spectator.co.uk/electionspecial. 

Eliot Wilson

Why do Britain and Germany need their own defence pact?

It is a standard feature of modern politics that government announcements are preceded by announcements of announcements. The ground must always be prepared. Accordingly, the media has been briefed that this week the United Kingdom and Germany will sign a defence cooperation agreement, part of the government’s stated desire to strengthen its relationship on security with the European Union. We should not expect a revolution so much as an eager scattering of glitter on what is actually relatively humdrum. John Healey, the defence secretary, visited Berlin in July and agreed a joint declaration on defence with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius. While it was breathlessly billed as ‘the first step

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Battle of Ideas – Who will win the 2024 American election?

80 min listen

Two weeks to go until the American election and politics is ever more divisive. Freddy Gray is joined by The Spectator’s Kate Andrews and lecturer at Queen Mary’s University Dr Richard Johnson about the latino vote, class politics, abortion and both guests make predictions for the 2024 election. Join Freddy Gray a special live recording of Americano on Thursday 24 October. You can buy tickets at www.spectator.co.uk/electionspecial. 

Jawad Iqbal

What is the point of the Commonwealth? 

The Commonwealth is outdated, pointless and increasingly irrelevant. What better time to point this out than on the day when this historical oddity – born out of the ashes of the British empire – begins its biennial shindig? The 27th meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government summit gets underway in the Pacific island of Samoa today – with a plentiful dose of  pomp and ceremony – under the official theme, ‘One Resilient Common Future: Transforming our Common Wealth’. Who dreams up this stuff? It is the first time the event is being hosted by a Pacific island nation and the first time King Charles will deliver the opening address

Sunday

Limor Simhony Philpott

Iran is playing a dangerous game

A drone exploded in a sleepy Israeli seaside town yesterday. The target of the attack was Benjamin Netanyahu. By luck, the drone missed its target – Netanyahu’s home – and no one was hurt in the explosion. Hezbollah launched three drones from Lebanon toward Caesarea. Two were shot down by the Israel Defense Forces but, worryingly, the third arrived undetected. Sirens, which are supposed to warn civilians of an impending attack, did not sound, meaning no one knew they should seek refuge in a bomb shelter. The Israeli Prime Minister claimed he was not at home when the drone hit. An Iranian – or Iranian-backed – assassination of the Israeli Prime