World

Wednesday

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Marine Le Pen has got to go

It’s time for Marine Le Pen to quit and spend more time with her Bengal cats. More importantly, it’s time for the third of French voters who support her to face the reality that her programme is incoherent and unachievable. Her election to the presidency in 2027 would be a disaster for France and a missed opportunity to repair what ails the French republic.  That Marine Le Pen is called ‘far-right’ is a testament to the laziness of journalists This may be a counterintuitive argument at a time when all opinion polls show that Marine Le Pen is the most favoured candidate for the French presidency in 2027. It’s true

Tuesday

Michael Taube

King Charles’s trip to Canada will go down in history

King Charles III and Queen Camilla are in Canada for a two-day visit. It’s their first trip to my country since the coronation. They’ve enjoyed touring parts of the nation’s capital, Ottawa. They’ve met with dignitaries and political leaders, and been greeted by large crowds that, in the words of the Ottawa Citizen, would be described as ‘exuberant.’ The main reason for King Charles’s visit is of historical importance and relevance to both Britain and Canada. His Majesty was invited by Prime Minister Mark Carney to deliver the throne speech for his Liberal government. It’s only the third time in Canadian history this has ever occurred, and the first time in decades. Charles is also the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What does Sam Altman want?

27 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to writer and author Karen Hao, whose new book Empire of AI looks at a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI. On the podcast they discuss the impacts of artificial intelligence on society and democracy and how Open AI founder Sam Altman has become a controversial figure. 

Owen Matthews

Why Putin gets away with humiliating Trump

What happens when you repeatedly defy President Trump’s direct orders? Or lie to his face, again and again? How about when you break promises made to Trump, or slyly mock him publicly?  Not many people on the planet are in a position – or possess the cojones – to put that question to the test. Other than Vladimir Putin, of course, who this week launched his biggest missile strike on Kyiv, even after assuring Trump repeatedly that he was serious about peace. That’s the same Putin whom Trump exhorted just weeks ago to stop bombarding Ukraine’s cities with a hard-to-misinterpret, full-caps instruction: ‘VLADIMIR, STOP!’ Turning fully on Putin and blaming

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Is a mood shift on Ukraine underway in Europe?

Following years of requests, pleas and false starts, Ukraine has, it appears, definitively been given permission to fire missiles deep into Russian territory. Since the start of Moscow’s invasion in 2022, Kyiv had been banned from attacking military targets on Russian soil with western-made weapons. Now, after three years of war, it appears Ukraine’s allies have indeed decided to allow it to retaliate as it sees fit. The news of the change of tack by Ukraine’s allies came yesterday from Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor. Speaking at an event in Berlin, the Chancellor revealed that ‘there are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine. Neither by the

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Are British taxpayers funding Hamas?

British taxpayer funds, earmarked for humanitarian aid in Gaza, may have passed through Hamas-controlled structures, according to a report on Israel’s Channel 12 over the weekend. The core of the allegation is not that the UK sought to support terrorism, but that its aid strategy operated in concert with the very machinery that sustains Hamas’s rule. If that proves accurate, what does it say about the integrity of our government’s foreign assistance and the sincerity of its professed commitment to international law? A British Consulate-General policy plan warned that ‘UK Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Brigitte and Emmanuel – an anatomy of a slap

Some are scandalised that Brigitte Macron was seen to slap her husband in the face as they prepared to disembark from the presidential Airbus, Cotam Unité, in Hanoi this week. Unité? Not so much. The Elysée is asking us to ignore the evidence and pretend it didn’t happen. Still others may say, someone had to.   The slap was seen around the world or was it a shove, a roundhouse punch or just horsing around, disinformation spread by crazy people, as the president himself claims? The detail hardly matters.   Denial notwithstanding, we saw what we saw and lovie-dovey it wasn’t. So what does it tell us about the relationship between the president

James Tidmarsh

Why France’s taxi drivers are on strike

A taxi drivers’ strike has plunged Paris, Marseille, and other big cities into chaos. Approximately 5,000 taxi drivers have taken to the streets, blocking motorways, torching pallets, and clashing violently with police. On Boulevard Raspail in Paris, police repeatedly confronted protestors with clouds of tear gas. Airports and train stations have been blockaded by angry taxi drivers. At Marseille-Provence airport, thousands of tourists were stranded, including Brits forced to walk along motorways dragging their suitcases behind them just to get to or from the terminal. Convoys of taxis have been crawling along major roads to deliberately snarl up traffic and maximise disruption, in an operation dubbed by the unions as

Monday

Michael Murphy

George Simion: the football ultra who nearly took Romania

Bucharest, Romania Surely it’s only a matter of time before someone writes Children of the Deal: a portrait gallery of populists, showmen and media-savvy impresarios moulded in Donald Trump’s image. When that book appears, George Simion may well warrant the opening chapter. In the basement of a Lebanese restaurant in central Bucharest, he holds court, poised to become Romania’s next president. ‘This is Romanian,’ he says, waving a hand over the mezze. ‘Like the Gulf of America… I’ll have an executive order to declare it Romanian.’ The room laughed. So did Simion. He was joking. Probably. Simion is not, by any conventional measure, a traditional politician. A former football ultra and

Michael Gove

Why is antisemitism so pervasive? Irving v Lipstadt 25 years on

31 min listen

This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark judgment in the infamous Irving v Lipstadt Holocaust denial case. David Irving sued American academic Deborah Lipstadt after she had described him as a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book, for his claims that Jews had not been systematically exterminated by the Nazis. Given the burden of proof in English libel law being on the defence, it was up to Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin to prove her claims were true that Irving had deliberately misrepresented evidence. In 2000, the Judge found in her favour. Deborah Lipstadt and the lawyers that represented her, Anthony Julius and James Libson, join Michael Gove

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Could France’s next president come from the Yellow Hats?

When Donald Trump first burst onto the political scene in 2016, comparisons were drawn with a 1950s Frenchman called Pierre Poujade. The BBC called him the ‘grandfather of populism’, the first post-war politician to lead a revolt against ‘being told what it is acceptable to think about issues like globalisation, migration and Europe’. Poujade was a provincial shopkeeper who was so fed up with what he saw as the corrupt and degenerate Paris elite that in 1953 he formed his own party, the Union de Defense des Commercants et Artisans. In the legislative elections in 1956, they won 2.4 million votes, enough to send 52 MPs to sit in the

James Lewisohn

Danes are baffled by Britain’s hatred of second-home owners

Spring has arrived on the North Coast of Zealand, and my fellow Danes are busily scrubbing down their summerhouses for the season. Villages which were nearly deserted during the winter – Danes can generally only occupy their summerhouses for 180 days a year – are gradually filling up. Sadiq Khan said London’s second homeowners ought to pay “much, much more” than a 100 per cent council tax premium Yet I rather doubt Sir Sadiq Khan, who earlier this month said London’s second homeowners ought to pay “much, much more” than a 100 per cent council tax premium, will be on anyone’s prospective guest list. The current war of expropriation on British second

Saturday

Jason M. Brodsky

Why Iran wants a deal with Trump

For Iran, the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024 was its worst nightmare. Waking up the morning after the US election, Tehran feared President Trump’s unpredictability – and remembered the hard line he’d taken on Iran in the past and his killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds force commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020. With Iran already reeling from losing a chunk of its proxy network in 2024, and with its air defences and missiles degraded by Israel, it was in a uniquely vulnerable position. All of this forced a recalibration. Iran’s tactic changed from rebuffing to killing President Trump with kindness. Tehran decided to weaponise diplomacy

Yossi Melman

Israel is at risk of becoming a global pariah

For years, Israel has been compared – sometimes unjustly – to South Africa. This comparison stems from the concept of apartheid. In South Africa, racial segregation was between whites and blacks; in Israel, it’s the discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Today, however, the validity of the comparison between Israel and South Africa is even more relevant in another aspect: the international isolation and economic sanctions that were imposed on the white minority regime in Pretoria, which ultimately brought about its downfall, are a warning of the future Israel could face. A mix of stubbornness, rigidity, and dogmatism is at the root of Trump’s fatigue with Netanyahu

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is waking up to the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood

Emmanuel Macron assembled some of his top ministers at the Élysée on Wednesday. Their purpose was to devise a strategy to counter the growing expansion in France of the Muslim Brotherhood. The nebulous organisation, formed in Egypt in 1928, has as its aim a global caliphate and it is in Europe where it is enjoying its greatest success. In many Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is proscribed. The French report describes Britain as an ‘outpost’ for the Middle Eastern branch of the Muslim Brotherhood The Brotherhood’s influence in France was detailed in a 73-page report that was declassified this week by

James Tidmarsh

Brussels is dropping a bureaucratic bombshell on Europe

Brussels makes one thing better than anywhere else: regulation. Reporting duties, due diligence checks, ESG disclosures, and endless frameworks for climate and labour compliance – if it can be mandated, Brussels has a directive for it. Now Brussels has outdone itself with a directive that makes companies legally liable for the behaviour of every entity in their global supply chain. It’s due to come into force in 2027. The law has triggered a rare backlash. This week, Emmanuel Macron has called for it to be taken ‘off the table’. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz has also demanded its repeal. But it seems even the bloc’s two most powerful governments can’t stop this

Sam Meadows

Illegal gold mining is blighting Peru

It was gold that brought the Spanish conquistadors to Peru in the 1500s. More than 500 years on and the precious metal is still causing problems. Gold mining came into sharp focus at the end of April when 13 miners were found, naked, bound and gagged, at the bottom of a mine in Pataz which had been taken by an armed gang. Some bore signs of torture and there was evidence they had been executed. The main suspect behind the attacks was arrested last week. Peru’s illegal gold rush has become increasingly bloody in recent years. Some 39 workers at the Pataz mine have been killed in the past three years,

Friday

Edward Howell

Kim Jong Un is mad about a boat

Kim Jong Un is not a happy man. Only a month after he unveiled North Korea’s first 5,000-ton destroyer, another similar warship was seriously damaged as it was launched yesterday. North Korean state media issued an unusually lengthy report following the destroyer’s failed launch, mentioning how the ship’s hull had been damaged, the ‘launch slide of the stern detached’, and damage to the warship’s bottom had ‘destroyed the [vessel’s] balance’. The exact causes of the accident remain unknown, but the warship would have required expertise to launch successfully. Some of the engineers and scientists involved in the crash will – at the bare minimum – be out of work soon In his response,

Matthew Lynn

The EU could pay a high price for not settling with Trump

The deals have been settled. The exceptions have been made. And supply chains have started to return to normal, while the stock market has recovered its losses. We may have thought the ‘tariff wars’ were over. But President Trump has today resumed hostilities, threatening a fresh round of levies on the European Union. It seems the bloc is about to pay a very high price for not settling with Trump earlier.  The EU is paying the price for failing to get a deal across the line while it still could The President was typically blunt. On his social media channel, he laid into the EU’s obstinacy over trade. ‘The European

Geoff Hill

What Trump gets wrong about South Africa’s white ‘genocide’

There’s a joke in South Africa that it’s so easy to claim asylum here, even the Swiss could do so. It’s easy to believe. At our local shopping centre in Johannesburg, the security guards hail from various safe African countries – Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi. All are on refugee permits that are renewed every few months, often with a bribe. If there’s murderous intent among South Africa’s poorest, it’s not directed at white people There are countless illegal migrants and refugees from as far away as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ironic then that president Cyril Ramaphosa is making such a fuss about the 49 Afrikaners who have been granted asylum in