Politics

I listened to a fascinating debate on the BBC’s The World This Weekend about the ideological origins of that thing, populism. The agreeably thuggish Javier Milei had just taken the reins of Argentina and, perhaps a little late in the day, the TW2 (as it is known in BBC circles) production team had noticed that almost every election held anywhere these days – except perhaps Australia and here – tends to result in a win for a party which is either overtly populist, as in Argentina, or is called populist by its opponents and the BBC. What the hell is going on, they wondered, only ten years too late. Who

Home Net migration reached a record 745,000 last year, the Office for National Statistics said, 139,000 higher than the 606,000 it had previously given. Robert Jenrick, the minister for immigration, was reported to be ‘pressuring’ No. 10 with ideas for cutting immigration, such as by making a minimum salary of £35,000 a requirement for a work visa. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, had agreed with Suella Braverman, when she was home secretary, to raise the salary requirement to £40,000, according to a copy of their agreement seen by the Telegraph. Eight small boats carried 364 migrants to England on 26 November. Caolan Gormley, 26, from Co. Tyrone, was found guilty at the

In the months before Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Volodymyr Zelensky was fighting for his political life. The former comedian was elected in 2019 on a pledge to end the war in Donbas by an electorate exasperated with its political class. Zelensky initially set out to negotiate with Vladimir Putin – but achieved nothing. He appeared naive and out of his depth. However, Zelensky’s transformation into a wartime leader captured the world’s imagination and rallied his allies. Yet some of those allies are beginning to ask whether, if this war is really about the free world versus autocracy, as Zelensky claims, Ukraine should hold a general election next year. Many

It is eight years now since The Spectator sent me to Lampedusa to see the boats coming in. That was at the start of the 2015 migrant crisis. The island, which is home to just 6,000 locals, had just buckled under the weight of another 1,300 arrivals. I followed them to Sicily and then on up and across the continent. If I may be self-referential for a moment, it was on Lampedusa that I realised the scale of the problem and got the opening lines of my resulting book, The Strange Death of Europe: ‘Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether the

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, proposed reaching net zero in 2050 ‘in a better, more proportionate way’ such as by delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and delaying the phasing out of gas boilers. Ford the car makers told him it would undermine the three things it needed from the government: ‘ambition, commitment and consistency’. Inflation decreased from 6.8 per cent annually in July to 6.7 per cent in August despite a rise in oil prices. Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, appointed commissioners to run Birmingham, which had run out of money. A man was killed by two dogs, said to