World

Saturday

Gavin Mortimer

Donald Trump was right about Paris

Donald Trump is in Paris today to attend the official reopening of the renovated Notre Dame cathedral. The president-elect has what could be described as a love-hate relationship with the French capital. He loves the place but it – more precisely its mayor and most of its right-on residents – hates him. This contempt first manifested itself days after he defeated Hillary Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Hundreds of protestors took to the streets of Paris, banging pots and pans and chanting ‘No Trump, no hate, no KKK’ and ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go’. The organisers of the rally listed why they believed Trump

Svitlana Morenets

Why is Poland building a barrier with Ukraine?

A ceasefire in Ukraine is far from being agreed, yet Poland is already preparing for its collapse. In recent months, Warsaw has been digging an anti-tank ditch along its border with Russia and Belarus – and has decided to extend it to Ukraine. The 400-mile-long ‘East Shield’ will almost double in size and include minefields and bunkers, anti-drone systems and AI-powered defences to protect Poland from possible invasion. Ukraine’s closest neighbour clearly puts little trust in Donald Trump’s promise of peace with Russia: if Vladimir Putin rearms and comes back for more, Poland must be ready to meet battle-hardened Russian troops at its border. Donald Tusk called the £2.5 billion

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is about to be humiliated – again

Emmanuel Macron addressed the French people on Thursday night and once again ruled out the possibility he will resign before his mandate expires in 2027. As for appointing a new Prime Minister – his fourth this year – Macron said he would nominate Michel Barnier’s successor in ‘the coming days’. The big decisions concerning France are no longer made in Paris, but in Brussels Also on television on Thursday evening were the ‘extremists’ who Macron blames for bringing down Barnier’s government. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon gave lengthy interviews in which they justified their actions and, in the case of the latter, called on Macron to resign. Would it

Thursday

James Snell

What the ‘experts’ got wrong about Syria

Provincial capitals falling before an unexpected advance. Military units allegedly defecting, deserting or switching sides. Talk of a coup in Damascus. The Syria of 2012 is the Syria of 2024. For years this was a so-called ‘frozen conflict’. The front lines did not move, no matter how many artillery and aerial attacks there were on civilians in the country’s north. The maps did not change, though dozens of people at a minimum were killed in fighting every week. But now Syria’s civil conflict has reignited. From their portion of Idlib province, a broad coalition of armed groups led by the Islamists Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have taken over a significant

Robert Tombs

Macron's disastrous legacy of failure

Robert Tombs joined John Keiger and Will Kingston on Spectator TV to discuss the political turmoil in France and what this means for Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. Here is an extract of what Robert had to say. Emmanuel Macron’s legacy is very likely to be disastrous. He’s a very intelligent man, a man of great qualities. I once saw him when he was newly elected when he came to England and he attended a meeting, a sort of reception, with Theresa May at the time. Poor Theresa May was standing in a corner on her own, and Macron was surrounded by admirers. Macron gave a rather brilliant improvised speech in English

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France is no longer fit for purpose

Emmanuel Macron will address the French people this evening, 24 hours after parliament passed a vote of no confidence in the president’s government. Millions of French will likely tune in and the majority – 63 per cent, according to one poll – would love it to be a resignation speech. No chance, according to the man himself. Earlier this week Macron said he would remain in the Elysee Palace ‘until the very last second of my term to serve the country.’ The fact is that France is in unchartered waters and no one knows what will happen in the coming weeks and months Thursday’s newspapers in France pore over the

Lisa Haseldine

Angela Merkel regrets nothing

Last night, nearly three years to the day since she handed over the reins of power to Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel appeared at London’s Royal Festival Hall to promote her newly published memoir, Freiheit, or ‘Freedom’.  The compulsion to write her memoirs first arose in 2015, she said, out of a desire to explain her decision to open Germany’s doors to over one million asylum seekers Merkel’s autobiography comes at an important moment for the country she used to govern. After the collapse of Scholz’s traffic light government, Germany is staring down the barrel of a snap election expected to take place in February. With the country grappling with all-time

Lynne O’Donnell

Will Trump finally stop America funding the Taliban?

For more than three years, democratic governments have been trying to pretend that Afghanistan does not exist. The embarrassed silence has given the Taliban drugs and terror cartel a free hand to transform Afghanistan into the world centre of jihad, while locking up women, and robbing western taxpayers of billions of dollars in aid and cash. After President Joe Biden’s disastrous 2021 withdrawal, following President Donald Trump’s 2020 surrender deal with the Taliban, Afghanistan became the country no one wanted to talk about. Rather than coming up with a policy for dealing with Afghanistan, the Biden administration has thrown money at it Rather than coming up with a policy for

Owen Matthews

The deepening unpopularity of Zelensky

Perhaps all political careers must end, inevitably, in failure. But few politicians have had careers as meteoric, as surprising, as consequential or as heroic as that of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. In just five years he has gone from TV comedian to victor of the biggest presidential landslide in his country’s history to inspiring wartime leader who impressed the world with his resolve and personal bravery. But now with the war entering its third (and probably last) winter, Zelensky’s extraordinary story as Ukraine’s leader has reached its final chapter. Voters blame Zelensky for the war’s failures – and do not wish him to play any part in their country’s future

Sean Thomas

Is Ukraine heading towards a Korean-style demilitarised zone?

It is the strangest place, the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that separates South Korea from North Korea. It is simultaneously a historic battlefield, a sombre graveyard, a tourist honeypot full of coach parties from Seoul, and a Cold War frontier, hotly defended on either side. One minute you are looking at a kiddies’ funfair, or a shop that sells ‘souvenir North Korean money’, the next you are staring at endless barbed wire and monuments to failed North Korean defectors, shot dead as they attempted to cross the two-and-a-half-mile strip of landmines. Which itself has turned into an Edenic eco-haven, full of deer and eagles, as the humans have vanished. In the

Toby Young

Why Elon Musk shouldn’t be kicked out of the Royal Society

Bishop did not wish to be associated with ‘someone who appears to be modelling himself on a Bond villain’ In a notorious interview in the Sunday Times in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson said, among other things, that aborting babies with gay genes was ‘common sense’ and that ‘all our social policies are based on the fact that their [blacks] intelligence is the same as ours [whites] – whereas all the testing says not really’. He also defended the explanation offered by Larry Summers of why there are fewer female professors in Stem subjects than male – there are more men at the right-hand tail of the IQ

Matt Ridley

Wuhan wager: the $400 ‘bio bet’ that predicted the pandemic

At the end of this month, one of the world’s most renowned scientists will send $400 to a charity to settle a wager with another of the world’s most renowned scientists. We don’t yet know who will win, but it is likely to be the wrong person, in my view. The money will probably come from Cambridge, England, not Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rees thinks if the tragedy of Covid has an identified ‘villain’ it would aggravate tense US-China relations The two scientists involved are Lord (Martin) Rees, the Astronomer Royal and former president of the Royal Society, of Cambridge University, and Steven Pinker, the Harvard linguist, neuroscientist and author of many

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Labour’s ‘plan for change’, falling productivity and 20,000 wolves in the EU

Home The Labour government announced a ‘Plan for Change’ that it refused to call a reset. Sir Chris Wormald was named Cabinet Secretary. In his Guildhall speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said that ‘the idea that we must choose between our allies, that somehow we’re with either America or Europe, is plain wrong’. He said ‘we must continue to back Ukraine’ against Vladimir Putin as something ‘deeply in our self-interest’. With the arrival of another 122 people on 1 December, more than 20,000 had crossed the Channel in small boats since Labour entered office. A group of about 60 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers

Jonathan Miller

Macron is the author of his own despair

‘Notre-Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so,’ said the President-elect Donald J. Trump this week, as he confirmed that he would be honouring Emmanuel Macron with his presence for the big reopening of France’s most famous cathedral on Saturday. ‘It will be a very special day for all!’ Just like Trump, Macron relishes such stately occasions, and it would be churlish to deny him credit for Notre-Dame’s impressive reconstruction following the devastating fire that shocked the world in 2019. Paul McCartney has reportedly been given an ‘exceptional authorisation’ to sing ‘Imagine’ within the sacred walls, while the rapper Pharrell Williams will perform outside. Victor

Wednesday

Edward Howell

South Korea's political chaos is far from over

Had you have taken a direct flight from London to Seoul yesterday afternoon, by the time you would have landed you might have been none the wiser that anything had happened at all. At near midnight South Korean time, President Yoon Suk Yeol imposed martial law across the so-called ‘land of the morning calm’. Only six hours later it was subsequently, and pointedly, revoked. As South Korean citizens continue with their daily lives, the political establishment has once again entered a period of precarity. Yoon has scored a significant own goal; its implications do not end there. It is no understatement to say that the decision by President Yoon to impose

Philip Patrick

South Korea's President Yoon will be lucky to escape jail

Six hours. That was the duration of the profoundly disturbing and simultaneously farcical version of martial law invoked by South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday night – the country’s first experience of military rule for 40 years. It was so brief in duration that if you weren’t plugged in to social media or watching TV you may not have been aware it had even occurred. What this brief but extraordinary episode amounted to was a deployment of troops to the parliament building to bar the entrance of lawmakers. That operation failed utterly, as protesters were quickly on the scene to take on the military, in some cases with fire

Tuesday

Eliot Wilson

Starmer will struggle to keep both the EU and US happy

We do not have to make a choice between our alliance with the United States and closer relations with the European Union: that was the message of the Prime Minister’s traditional annual speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall. Sir Keir Starmer called the supposed binary ‘plain wrong’, and prayed in aid some of his most illustrious predecessors. I reject it utterly. Attlee did not choose between allies. Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both. He described the ‘special relationship’ with the United States in profound terms, written ‘in the ink of shared sacrifice… in Normandy, Flanders and around the world’, and

Gavin Mortimer

Is this the end for Barnier – and Macron?

Emmanuel Macron arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday for trade talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Having signed a strategic partnership deal in Riyadh, the pair pledged to work for peace in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon. An Élysée spokesman said Macron wants ‘presidential elections to be held in Lebanon, with the aim of bringing the Lebanese together and carrying out the reforms necessary for the country’s stability and security.’ No one wants to be seen trying to save Emmanuel Macron The irony won’t have been lost on the French. A recent poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of the country think their president should resign in the event that

Matthew Lynn

Marine Le Pen's reckless game with the French economy

The power probably feels good. And it may help her win the presidency eventually. Even so, there is a catch to Marine Le Pen’s decision to bring down Michel Barnier’s government in France, potentially as soon as tomorrow afternoon. If the government goes, the eurozone ay well go down with it. The financial plans of Le Pen’s National Rally’s (NR) party are completely reckless. And even if the chaos that will follow the vote does help win the Élysée Palace for Le Pen, she will inherit a ruined economy – for which she will only have herself to blame.  The NR’s only answer to excessive spending is to spend even

Damien Phillips

Why Britain is rolling out the red carpet for Qatar

This week’s state visit by the Emir of Qatar is the first of any Arab leader since King Charles ascended the throne. This is no coincidence: while its role is often misunderstood, Qatar has skilfully positioned itself as one of the West’s most important allies in the Middle East. Doha’s role as the world’s mediator-in-chief is only going to become more important With the current conflict in the Levant showing no signs of slowing, the Russo-Ukrainian War entering a critical phase, and events in Syria and Yemen increasing the risk of a wider conflict, Doha’s role as the world’s mediator-in-chief is only going to become more important. Yet the polarisation