World

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The ugly selfishness of France’s politicians

France play Spain this evening in the semi-final of the European football championship, and there may be a smile on the faces of some of the French players. Several have been social media in the last 24 hours, expressing their satisfaction with the success of the left-wing coalition in the election.  ‘Congratulations to all the French people who rallied round so that this beautiful country of France does not find itself governed by the extreme right’, said Jules Koundé. Aurélien Tchouaméni, who, like Koundé, plays his club football in Spain, called the result a ‘victory for the people’. Sunday night’s result was not, as Tchouaméni claims, a victory for the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Real Biden has crashed – but Artificial Biden is just getting started

Everybody knows that Joe Biden isn’t really there. His denials of ill-health are in fact a symptom of it – he clings angrily to his delusions because that is what people do when their minds go. And since he seems so immovable, the question is whether Democrats can somehow buy into Biden’s alternate reality again in time for 2024. Can the party re-delude itself into thinking that he is somehow reversing the ageing process, even if that makes them look and sound ever more ridiculous? What we’re seeing is the increasingly disembodied Artificial Biden who will fight the rest of this campaign And the answer is: yes, they can! We

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

How China’s electric cars dominated the world

34 min listen

The EU and US are turning up the pressure on Chinese made electric cars, as I discussed with my guest Finbarr Bermingham on the last episode.  In this episode, I want to take a closer look at how China has come to dominate the global electric car market. Chinese EVs make up 60 per cent of worldwide sales, and a third of global exports. Its leading brand, BYD, now regularly gives Tesla a run for its money in terms of number of cars sold.  How much of a role do subsidies play, versus other factors like its control of rare earths or lower labour costs? Is there really an overcapacity issue

Daniel Thorpe

Violence surges against Syrian refugees in Turkey

A wave of violence targeting Syrian refugees is spreading through Turkey, triggered by allegations of the sexual harassment of a child by a Syrian man in the city of Kayseri. The child, also Syrian, was related to him, according to the authorities. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, 3.1 million Syrians have been granted temporary protection in Turkey, according to official figures. But now there are growing public demands for them to return to Syria, fuelled by both the governing and opposition parties in Turkey. As reports of the incident in Kayseri snowballed on social media, mobs combed the streets, attacking and burning houses, businesses, and

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Democrats’ greatest fear about Joe Biden

Stick or twist? The gambler’s choice is the Democrats’ awful dilemma as the US presidential election draws ever closer. Do they stick with Joe Biden, their painfully decrepit Commander-in-Chief, who is losing in the polls? Or twist and gamble on replacing him, which could tear the party apart and make Donald Trump’s victory even more likely? The President may already be on borrowed time The news over the weekend showed that the Democrats are already at war with themselves. Biden’s ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos did little to reassure the President’s anxious supporters and Sunday brought more news of House Democrats, and other senior Democratic figures, calling for him to make way. A newly hatched plan for

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Le Pen is still the biggest winner in France’s elections

Ignore most snap verdicts from last night – the big winner in the French parliamentary election was still Marine Le Pen, whose third-place finish was perfectly placed. True, egged on by polls showing it on the verge of an absolute majority, the Rassemblement National (National Rally) over-promised and underdelivered. But, in the topsy-turvy world of French politics in 2024, to lose was to win. Dirty work is about to be done at the Elysée Le Pen fought a competent campaign and her voters aren’t blaming her for failing to take the top of the podium. She’s demonstrated again that she’s highly resilient. Not achieving a majority has done her a

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron has left France in chaos

Over a photo of a pensive Emmanuel Macron, the headline on the front of one French tabloid this morning asks: ‘And now, we do what?’ Good question. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will tender his resignation to the president this morning, although it is by no means certain it will be accepted. Macron could ask him to stay in his post while a government is formed and the Olympics run their course. That may take time given that no party emerged from Sunday’s second round of voting as dominant. In terms of seats won, no single party enjoyed a better night than the National Rally The left-wing coalition of Socialists, Communists,

Sunday

John Keiger John Keiger

Is France heading towards its Sixth Republic?

Against a backdrop of considerable tension – barricaded city centre shop-fronts and 30,000 police on standby – a radically divided France has voted in the second round of the legislative elections. To general amazement, the largest party in the National Assembly is the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) – but none of the major political groupings is able to form a majority government.  So what happens in France now? Who will actually govern? France will probably be ungovernable for some time to come First in line to form a government must be the New Popular Front. But unlike Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) or Macron’s Ensemble, no putative prime minister has

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France stunned as Mélenchon’s Popular Front comes first in election

In a sensational result that not even Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself could have imagined, his New Popular Front looks set to come first in the French elections. Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble party is forecast to be second forcing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which led the first round, into third place. Mass tactical voting to stop the RN seems to have worked far better than anyone expected. Rather than simply deprive the RN of an overall majority, we have a hung parliament with no clear sense of what happens next. Macron must now negotiate with parties to try to form a coalition government. ‘The will of the people must be strictly

Susanne Mundschenk Susanne Mundschenk

The end of Macronism

The second round of French elections this weekend will not mark the end of Macron as president, nor will it be the end of his MPs in the National Assembly. But the radical centrist movement that carried him to power – on a neither left-nor-right mantra – is no more. What happens now? Macron’s potential successors are deeply divided. Edouard Philippe, former prime minister, Bruno Le Maire, a finance minister and Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, all want to rebuild from the centre-right. Gabriel Attal, the prime minister, wants to anchor it on the centre-left. All of them seem to have turned the page on Macron already. All of these

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How Marine Le Pen rebranded herself

Marine Le Pen was called a ‘bitch’ this week and threatened with sexual violence. It’s what passes for rap music these days in France. The threats won’t unduly concern Le Pen. She’s experienced worse. When she was eight, far-left extremists tried to kill her and her family with five kilos of dynamite. The Le Pens survived, but their Paris apartment didn’t. Say what you like about the leader of the National Rally, and many do, but Marine Le Pen is a tough cookie. She was assaulted on the campaign trail during the 2017 presidential election, a minor setback compared to her subsequent disastrous performance in the television debate with Emmanuel

Sean Thomas

My day in Le Pen land

At first glance, for the visitor driving by, Guingamp in northwest Brittany looks idyllic. It is a typically lovely stone-built French small town, it has a sweet river running through the middle, it has pretty ramparts and a ducal chateau and riverbank gardens, with agreeable new fountains in the centre. It even has a decent-sized supermarket open on Sunday. In Guingamp, on a dead Sunday afternoon, I somehow felt more uneasy than I did in war-torn Ukraine At least it did last Sunday, the first French election day, when I paid a visit. The difference for me is that – unlike most trippers – I didn’t breeze on after a

Mark Nayler

The thrill of the Pamplona bull run

The first time my friend Rob and I experienced Pamplona’s San Fermin festival was in 2017. Held every year from 6-14 July in the northern Spanish city, it’s most famous for its bull runs, or encierros: at 8 a.m., on eight consecutive mornings, the six bulls destined for that evening’s bullfight, as well as six docile oxen to guide them, run for almost a kilometre through Pamplona’s oldest quarters, accompanied by thousands of thrill-seeking human participants known as mozos.  Rob and I have now run with the bulls of Pamplona four times – once that first year, once in 2018 and twice at last year’s festival (it was cancelled in 2020 and

Saturday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Elbridge Colby on why America must pivot from Ukraine to Taiwan

29 min listen

The war in Ukraine is only bogging America down, says Elbridge Colby, a former national security adviser to the Trump administration. On this episode of Americano, Colby tells host Freddy Gray why the US should – and likely will – reduce its support to Ukraine and Europe, to focus on the increasing threat China poses over Taiwan. Europe, he says, can pick up the slack on its own continent. Colby has been tipped to become Trump’s national security adviser should he win in November this year. Produced by Cindy Yu and Joe Bedell-Brill.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Joe Biden’s ABC interview won’t help his doomed campaign

Like a father confessor, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos tried everything to jolt President Joe Biden out of his complacency. He pleaded with him. He queried him. He exhorted him. Nothing worked. Throughout the interview, if that’s what it was, Biden rebuffed his entreaties as though they couldn’t be more outlandish.   Down in the polls? Not a bit of it. Democratic lawmakers preparing to ask him to step down? Never happening. And so on. He clearly couldn’t grasp that his presidency isn’t in trouble; it’s cratering.  Even the Almighty that Biden regularly invoked wouldn’t be able to resurrect his shambles of a presidency Whether Biden is suffering from cognitive issues may

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Angus Colwell, Matthew Parris, Flora Watkins and Rory Sutherland

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: after President Biden’s debate disaster, Freddy Gray profiles the one woman who could persuade him to step down, his wife Jill (1:05); Angus Colwell reports from Israel, where escalation of war seems a very real possibility (9:02); Matthew Parris attempts to reappraise the past 14 years of Conservative government (14:16); Flora Watkins reveals the reasons why canned gin and tonics are so popular (21:24); and, Rory Sutherland asks who could possibly make a better Bond villain than Elon Musk? (25:00).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France has much to learn from Britain’s peaceful election

The left-wing French newspaper Le Monde last month sent its London correspondent across Great Britain to gauge the mood before the general election. He reported that Britain was ‘a broken nation’, and its people ‘glum and divided’. Britain is not in the best of shape, a point on which the people and its politicians are agreed. So the Tories have been booted out and it’s Keir Starmer’s responsibility to try and reinvigorate the country. The transition was achieved calmly, peacefully, democratically, with the only dramatic incident of note the day a silly young woman desperate for attention threw a milkshake at Nigel Farage. If Britain is ‘broken’, then what is

Thursday

John Keiger John Keiger

The plot to stop Marine Le Pen’s National Rally

This week France has drifted from surprise to confusion and panic as Sunday’s second round vote approaches. The bien-pensant centre-left weekly Nouvel Obs’ cover says it all. Black lettering on a red background menacingly warns: ‘Avoiding the Worst’; ‘The National Rally at the gates of power’. Yet the National Rally is an officially recognised legitimate mainstream party. France is not staring into the abyss. But if we were to indulge in such gloom-ridden musings what would be France’s post-electoral worst case scenarios. Let us begin gently. Marine Le Pen called this ‘an administrative coup d’etat’ In the event the National Rally cannot form a government on Monday, moves are already afoot by Macronist

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The reckoning: it’s payback time for voters

39 min listen

This week: the reckoning. Our cover piece brings together the political turmoil facing the West this week: Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, and Joe Biden all face tough tests with their voters. But what’s driving this instability? The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews argues it is less to do with left and right, and more a problem of incumbency, but how did this situation arise? Kate joined the podcast to discuss her argument, alongside former Cambridge Professor, John Keiger, who writes in the magazine about the consequences that France’s election could have on geopolitics (2:32).  Next: what role does faith play in politics? Senior editor at the religious journal First Things Dan Hitchens explores

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why German carmakers don’t want EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles

I recant. On a number of occasions I have asserted that the European Union is run by lobbyists acting on behalf of French farmers and the German car industry. It seems I was wrong – or perhaps that I have become wrong as the politics of global trade has shifted. A more accurate way of putting it would be to say that the EU is run by people who think they are acting in the interests of French farmers and the German car industry, but who are not quite plugged in to what those industries really want. It is a typical case of EU protectionism. However, this time, there is a twist At