World

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Turkey’s shameful referee attack was waiting to happen

All football matches in Turkey have been suspended after a club president invaded the pitch and punched a referee in the face. The ugly and violent assault took place at the end of a game between Ankaragucu and Caykur Rizespor, which ended in a 1-1 draw. Faruk Koca, the Ankaragucu president ran up to the referee, Halil Umut Meler, and struck him in the face. Meler fell to the ground, only to be kicked by other people while he tried to protect himself. The referee had to be led to safety surrounded by a cordon of police officers. He is now recovering in hospital after sustaining a facial fracture. Koca and two

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron suffers a ‘stunning’ setback over his immigration crackdown

Emmanuel Macron refused to accept the resignation of his interior minister on Monday evening after the government’s immigration bill was thrown out of parliament. It was a crushing humiliation for Gerald Darmanin, as well as Macron, and a moment of exquisite pleasure for their many political opponents.  In an unprecedented show of unity, right and left came together to adopt by just five votes a motion proposed by the Green Party to reject the bill without even debating it. They did so, however, for different reasons. In the eyes of the left, the bill is ‘racist and xenophobic: they particularly object to the proposal to cut welfare benefits and expel

Jawad Iqbal

There’s only one winner in Egypt’s sham election

After three days of voting, the polls close today in Egypt’s presidential elections. The result is expected on 18 December, but voters already know there can be only one winner: president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has been in power for nearly a decade. The other candidates for the presidency (those permitted to stand against him) aren’t really running to win but are simply there to make up the numbers and help create the impression that voters are being offered a choice. This sham of an electoral process reveals much about Sisi’s iron grip on the country and its main organs of state, including the much-feared security services. After seizing power

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Who will be Taiwan’s next President?

43 min listen

Taiwan goes to the polls in just over a month. This is an election that could have wide repercussions, given the island’s status as a potential flashpoint in the coming years. The incumbent President, Tsai Ing-wen, is coming to the end of two elected terms, meaning that she cannot run again. Her party’s chosen successor is William Lai – Lai Ching-te – who is the current vice president. For most of this year, he has been facing off opposition from the Kuomintang, the biggest opposition party in Taiwan, and the Taiwan People’s Party, a third party led by the charismatic Ko Wen-je. Lai remains in the lead with a month

Sam Meadows

Is Javier Milei abandoning his radicalism already?

When Labour’s Liam Byrne left a note for the incoming coalition Treasury team in 2010 which said ‘I’m afraid there is no money’, it was meant as a joke. When Argentine president Javier Milei sent a similar message in his inauguration speech on Sunday, it was far from comedy. It was an honest assessment of the seriousness of the situation faced by South America’s second-largest economy. Milei won last month’s election thanks to an anti-establishment campaign in which he heavily criticised the country’s political classes and promised drastic change. It was his penchant for cloning dogs and bringing a chainsaw to campaign rallies that earned him international headlines, but it was something

Sunday

John Keiger John Keiger

The French elite have realised that Marine Le Pen might win

You can tell that French elections are in the air because legal proceedings are being taken against a leading figure of the French right. So it was with François Fillon of the Républicain party, a key contender in the 2017 presidential elections, whose hopes of winning were dashed during the campaign by legal investigation into alleged misuse of parliamentary funds, subsequently ending his political career. So it is now with Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National, as France gears up for the 9 June 2024 European parliament elections, for which her party is the clear front-runner. This week, French investigating magistrates scheduled a hearing for 27 March 2024 to determine whether Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Does Macron want to make France more multicultural?

Emmanuel Macron will address France in the coming weeks in what is being billed as a ‘Message of Unity’ speech. According to Le Monde, the president is aware that the country is in turmoil but he believes he can make France great again. ‘The role I have assigned myself is to hold the country together,’ Macron is quoted as saying. ‘Between denial and over-dramatisation, there is room for lucidity that involves examining the country’s problems but also not letting it fall apart.’ Those problems are many, from a cost of living crisis to violent crime and much in between. The French have a reputation for not looking on the bright

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

An election campaign is still dangerous for Putin

It was elaborately staged precisely to try and look unstaged. After a medals ceremony at the Kremlin for Heroes of the Fatherland day, Vladimir Putin joined an oh-so-unchoreographed gaggle of participants. One, Lt Colonel Artem Zhoga, appealed for him to stand for re-election. Although Putin admitted he had had second thoughts, he accepted ‘that there is no other way,’ and would indeed be running. This is, it is fair to say, not much of a surprise. Nor will it be a surprise if Putin wins in March. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be upsets along the way. Rig an election too much and too obviously and this defeats the

Sean Rayment

Could killing Yahya Sinwar end the Gaza war?

Somewhere beneath the rambling town of Khan Yunis, Yahya Sinwar, the murderous leader of Hamas in Gaza, is awaiting his fate. The terrorist leader, who orchestrated the October 7th atrocity and the deaths of 1,200 innocent Israelis, knows that his days are numbered. Either the 61-year-old Palestinian will die from the impact of a 500 lb satellite guided Joint Direct Attack Munition bomb exploding above the fetid hole in which he is hiding or his life will end in a hail of bullets fired by Israeli commandos, with orders to kill and not capture the Hamas leader. While his death should be rightly celebrated, it will also give the Israelis

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Net zero has doomed Europe’s car industry

The decision of the European Commission to delay, for three years, tariffs on car exports between Britain and the EU is the harbinger of a more constructive relationship between the two. But is it going to save the European car industry? Probably not. It is net zero targets, not Brexit, which are condemning mass-market car production in Europe to possible extinction. Until this week’s decision, car manufacturers faced a cliff edge. Unless they could show that at least 45 per cent of a vehicle, by value, had been made in Europe, that vehicle would face a 10 per cent tariff if exported from Britain to the EU or vice versa. What might have

Saturday

Jawad Iqbal

Joe Biden is all at sea on Israel’s war in Gaza

No amount of presidential bluster or White House spin can disguise the fact that the Biden administration appears increasingly clueless about what to do about the war in Gaza. Having tied US policy to Israel’s war aims – specifically the destruction of Hamas – US president Joe Biden now finds himself in a tight spot as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise. It is not entirely his fault: backing Israel – both militarily and  politically – is  a longstanding pillar of US Middle East policy, regardless of which political party is in power. Biden was merely reaffirming this when he stood behind Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ in the wake

Edward Howell

Why Kim Jong-un keeps crying

Crying in public is something we tend to associate with the North Korean people rather than their rulers ­– who are often described as having a near god-like status. Who can forget, following the death of Kim Jong-il in 2011, how the streets of Pyongyang were lined with weeping mourners? So perhaps it was surprising to see Kim Jong-un crying in public this week, in a televised announcement to the mothers of North Korea. But while this may seem perplexing, the Supreme Leader’s message was as clear as ever: that loyalty to the Kim regime is paramount. Kim was speaking at North Korea’s National Conference of Mothers. As this week’s meeting

Daniel Rey

What Hugo Chávez failed to understand about Karl Marx

It’s 25 years this week since Hugo Chávez – an inspiration for leftwingers like Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn – was elected president of Venezuela. Chávez may not be the person primarily responsible for his country’s descent into dictatorship, anarchy and humanitarian disaster (that would be his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro) but the foundation was laid by his unrestrained populism.  That populism had two pillars: socialism and nationalism. Chávez claimed inspiration from Karl Marx and, particularly, from the Venezuelan independence hero Simón Bolívar. During his 14 years in power, Chávez tried to combine these two influences to create a socially equal and sovereign Venezuela. He called his project ‘Bolivarian Socialism’.

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is terrorism really a mental health problem?

When news first broke of the terrorist attack last Saturday in Paris, the French government rushed out a statement describing the suspect in custody as a French citizen born in France. His name was given as Armand R.   More details gradually emerged and the picture painted of the man accused of stabbing to death a German tourist was what every western government dreads – that of a man who bit the hand that fed him. It is a story not too dissimilar to that of Salman Abedi, who detonated a bomb at the Manchester Arena in 2017, killing himself and 22 others. Abedi was born in Manchester to Libyan parents who

Charles Lipson

Hunter’s latest indictment is bad news for Joe Biden

Surprise! Surprise! Hunter Biden faced new charges on Thursday, after the Department of Justice accused him of failing to pay $1.4 million (£1.1 million) in taxes between 2016 and 2019, while living an extravagant lifestyle. According to the indictment, filed in California, Hunter faces three new felony and six misdemeanour tax offences which could see him face 17 years in jail if convicted.  Meanwhile, Hunter’s ‘stonewall strategy’ continues. He told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that he won’t to comply with their subpoena for a closed-door deposition. Hunter’s refusal was delivered by his formidable attorney, Abbe Lowell. Lowell is smart, tough and relentless. He’s a ‘let’s fight’ litigator, replacing

Thursday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Russia’s curious reaction to Britain’s hacking allegations

That Russia’s security services have been targeting British politicians and other high-profile figures won’t come as a surprise. But the scale of the accusations levelled today at the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) by the British government is still shocking. GCHQ has said that, since 2015, Russia has carried out hundreds of hacks against MPs, journalists and civil servants. Former trade secretary Liam Fox and the ex head of MI6 Richard Dearlove are among the victims. British intelligence revealed a surprising amount of detail about the FSB unit responsible for this hacking activity. The group allegedly goes by the name ‘Star Blizzard’ and belongs to the FSB’s Centre 18. This

Dalibor Rohac

The EU has become paralysed by its own bad decisions

In 2019, France’s president Emmanuel Macron famously called Nato ‘braindead’. Think what you will about the health of the defence alliance, but it is increasingly the European Union, not Nato, that seems paralysed, unable to think more than just a step ahead.  The EU has been trundling along in this state for some time now. On the European Commission’s recommendation, EU leaders are due to make a decision next week about opening accession negotiations with Ukraine. Yet, little groundwork has been laid to turn even this initial step into a success. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has already fired his opening salvo, refusing to even discuss the issue and threatening to derail

Wednesday

Andrew Roberts

The myth of the Boston Tea Party

At 6.30 p.m. on Thursday 16 December 1773, a group of between 100 and 150 Americans raided three East India Company merchantmen moored in Boston and threw 92,000lb of tea (worth $1.7 million in today’s terms) into the harbour. A central part of the American founding story, the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is being commemorated this month as a key moment when patriotic Americans fought back against the greedy British and their oppressive taxation policies that forced up prices on commodities such as tea, which in turn led to the American Revolution. The ‘Sons of Liberty’ were essentially the henchmen of the rich smuggler-barons who were faced

Owen Matthews

The Ukrainian war can only end in a peace deal

Kyiv In Ukraine, the political mood has become sombre and fractious. As the front lines settle into stalemate, Russia ramps up for a new season of missile and drone attacks, and vital US support for Ukraine’s war effort crumbles under partisan attack in Congress, one existential question looms large. Should Volodymyr Zelensky continue to fight endlessly in pursuit of a comprehensive defeat of Russia which may be unattainable – or should he consider cutting his losses and reaching a compromise? At the war’s outset, the Ukrainian President had a clear answer. ‘I am sure there are people who won’t be satisfied with any kind of peace [with Russia] under any

Douglas Murray

The UN vs Israel

There’s an old joke about the United Nations having a football team. ‘But who would they play?’ it goes. ‘Why, Israel of course.’ There may not be much humour in it, but there’s plenty of truth. Despite Israel being set up by UN vote, it has been the world’s premier forum for Israel-bashing, particularly since the country won wars of self-defence in 1967 and 1973. Perhaps the most notorious moment was the ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution in 1975, when the foundations of the Jewish state were suddenly under assault. On that occasion the late great Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave one of the best counter-blast speeches ever given on the