Columnists

Columns

Katy Balls

Starmer is the unlikely hero of the hour. Can it last?

When Donald Trump addressed Congress this week, he declared he was ‘just getting started’. His words will not have soothed politicians in the UK, who are still playing catch-up with the President’s first 43 days. This week, Trump proved yet again that he is the biggest force in British politics. His blow-up with Volodymyr Zelensky

The weakness of Donald Trump

Forgive the mordant tone, but this article was written in a desolate post-industrial nightmare girdled by diversionary roads going nowhere aside from away from places. It is somewhere in middle England, where the West Country merges into the Midlands and the north into the south: it is essentially delocated, it is nowhere. There are 15

The MAGA movement is wrong on Ukraine

How can the right be so wrong? Or at least portions of the right – especially the American right – when it comes to Ukraine? To begin to grapple with this you have to go way, way back to Donald J. Trump’s first term in office. In that time Ukraine came to the public’s consciousness

I’m a culture war addict

Reading Melissa Lawford’s excellent analysis in the Sunday Telegraph, ‘Putin can’t afford peace – Russia’s economy is hooked on war’, I had a queasy sense of recognition. Lawford claims that Vladimir Putin has no real desire for a peace deal in Ukraine, because both his personal political power and his country’s militarised economy depend on

The Spectator's Notes

The bully-boy tactics of Trump and J.D. Vance

Just before Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced a ‘friendship without limits’. The phrase seems to apply equally well to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Has Trump ever breathed a word of serious criticism of Putin, questioned his democratic mandate, challenged his right to invade an independent country, condemned his

Any other business

Do not be hypnotised by Trump’s America

I’ve been judging a beauty parade, but I hasten to add that no bikinis were involved. Four leading investment firms were competing for the mandate to manage a charitable endowment – and offering insights into the way professional stock-pickers see the world. First, despite (or if you’re a disciple, because of) the madness of Donald