World

Wednesday

Francis Pike

Was Nixon solely to blame for the fall of Saigon?

At 7.53 a.m. on Tuesday 30 April 1975, 50 years ago today, Sergeant Juan Valdez boarded a Sea Knight helicopter sent from aircraft carrier USS Midway that had landed a few minutes earlier on the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. He was the last US soldier to be evacuated from Vietnam. As he scurried to the rooftop, he was aware that some 420 Vietnamese, who had been promised evacuation, were left in the courtyard below. They faced an uncertain fate. The day before it had been reported to Washington that Saigon Airport was under persistent rocket attack. Escape by airplane became impossible. President Gerald Ford explained: ‘The military

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin is terrified Ukraine will sabotage Russia’s Victory Day

Even by the elevated standards of Kremlin cynicism, Vladimir Putin’s invocation of a three-day ceasefire across the span of the Victory Day celebrations commemorating the end of the second world war in Europe takes some beating. Putin is well aware of Kyiv’s capacity to embarrass him on this of all days He has announced that ‘all military actions’ in Ukraine would be suspended between midnight on 8 May to midnight on 11 May, to cover the celebrations on 9 May (Russia celebrates a day later than the rest of Europe) which, because of the span of time zones across this huge country, lasts longer than 24 hours.  Putin claims this

Matthew Lynn

Have the markets stopped caring about Trump’s tariffs?

President Trump’s imposition of huge tariffs on everything America imports on ‘Liberation Day’ at the start of this month has been widely condemned as one of the worst economic policy blunders of all time. There were fears the stock market would collapse. Investors are abandoning the United States for Europe. And the country is about to be plunged into stagflation. But something odd has happened. If you look at a stock market chart, basically nothing happened in April. Could it be that the markets have already decided that Trump’s tariffs don’t matter very much after all? The stock market has got over their shock at the tariffs As April comes

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The hypocrisy of Pakistan’s migrant expulsion plan

This month Pakistan has expelled more than 80,000 Afghans in what the government has labelled its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan. In total, since September 2023 the United Nations estimates that approximately 910,000 Afghans have reluctantly returned to their country. Many of these are holders of Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC), which were given to them when they arrived. The Pakistan government has given Afghans until today to leave. After this, they will be forcibly deported. The Interior Ministry has warned landlords that ‘strict action’ will be taken against them henceforth if they provide accommodation to undocumented Afghans. Pakistan justifies the mass expulsion on security grounds, alleging that many Afghans ‘contribute to

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

Revenge of the centrists: Carney wins in Canada

13 min listen

Mark Carney has won the Canadian election, leading the Liberal Party to a fourth term. Having only been Prime Minister for 6 weeks, succeeding Justin Trudeau, this is an impressive achievement when you consider that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were over 20 percentage points ahead in the polls earlier this year. Trump’s rhetoric against Canada – engaging in a trade war and calling for the country to become the 51st state – is credited as turning around the fortunes of the Liberals. Are there lessons for conservatives across the anglosphere, including Kemi Badenoch? Patrick Gibbons speaks to James Heale and Michael Martins. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Mark Nayler

The mystery of Spain’s blackout

Early yesterday afternoon, I walked home from my local supermarket empty-handed. In the Andalucian town of Antequera, the power and internet had just disappeared, card machines weren’t working and I had no cash. As I tried to remember what I had in the cupboards, I passed a woman on the street shouting up to someone on a balcony, ‘It’s all over Spain, France, Germany and Portugal’. Whatever she was talking about, I thought, it obviously had nothing to do with the power outage. It had been a windy night. A pylon had probably been brought down somewhere nearby. The blackout revealed a fact about our society that we don’t like

Michael Taube

How will Mark Carney govern?

Canada went to the polls on Monday. The election campaign only ran for 37 days, but it was a wild ride with shifts in political momentum that few could have predicted.   Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, who replaced Justin Trudeau on March 14, won last night. It’s the fourth consecutive Liberal win, but it will be its third straight minority government. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had the best result for the Conservatives since 1988 but ended up losing his seat. Left-leaning parties like the Bloc Quebecois (BQ), Greens and New Democrats (NDP) all lost seats and popular support, too. This could lead to an unusual series of political scenarios

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Poilievre concedes defeat before Portillo moment

Dear oh dear. Canada’s election results came in early this morning, revealing that – despite only being leader of the Liberal party for two months – ex-Bank of England governor Mark Carney wiped the floor with Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre. And not only did Poilievre’s party lose the election, he even lost his parliamentary seat. Talk about a double whammy… In the early hours of Tuesday morning, excitement heightened among Canada’s Liberals as Carney’s party was projected to soar to victory in the election. As James Heale wrote for Coffee House this morning, what the economist has pulled off is nothing short of exceptional. At the start of the year,

Matthew Lynn

Why Merz’s free US-EU trade idea is a non-starter

Ever since President Trump started his tariff war earlier this month, the European Union’s response has been surprisingly clear. It should retaliate with tariffs of its own. It should focus on its own economic sovereignty. And it should make sure that targeted American industries feel the consequences. In other words, it should hit back, and hit back hard. And yet the incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed a very different response: a grand Atlantic free trade pact. But can he convince Brussels to get on board? It is certainly a break from the past for the man who next week will take over as Europe’s most significant politician. As

Yuan Yi Zhu

Donald Trump was Mark Carney’s greatest asset

This election could have been a lot worse for Canada’s Conservatives. As I write, they have taken 41.7 per cent of the popular vote, their highest share since 1988, and are on track to pick up two dozen seats. They have also managed to make inroads with young people and unionised workers – groups that are famously hard for right-wing parties to win over. Yet the victor of the night was Mark Carney, who will have a thin but real minority to work with as prime minister of Canada, and now the Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is expected to lose his seat. Ill-informed pundits will say that the Tories threw away

Jim Lawley

What caused Spain’s blackout?

By six o’clock this morning, electricity had been restored to 99 per cent of Spain. Restoring people’s sense of security and a full return to normality, however, will take much longer. Portugal has been similarly affected as, briefly, were parts of southern France. The sudden outage occurred at 12.33 p.m. yesterday, leaving Madrid without electricity for hours. Where I am in Ávila, seventy miles from the capital, the lights didn’t come on again until 1.30 in the morning. Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez said that an investigation was being carried out into the ‘sudden’ loss of electricity generation. ‘It has never happened before,’ he said yesterday evening. ‘All state resources have

Jane Stannus

Mark Carney won’t change Canada for the better

Apparently Canada hasn’t taken enough punishment yet. After a close, hard-fought race that extended into the wee hours of the morning, Mark Carney and the Liberals came away with enough seats to form a minority government. They will form Canada’s fourth consecutive Liberal government since 2015. The Liberals maintained their edge, in part, thanks to the collapse of the New Democratic party, whose leader Jagmeet Singh resigned. An election day message from Donald Trump on Truth Social, calling for Canadians to join the US, may also have pushed undecided voters towards Carney, whose entire campaign was founded on the idea that he was the best candidate to protect Canada from Trump.  

Monday

James Snell

The Vancouver car attack is all too familiar

A man named Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder after 11 people were killed and many more were injured in a car ramming in Vancouver, Canada. He allegedly drove his SUV into a crowd gathered for a festival celebrating Filipino culture. The police say the suspect has no connections to international terror groups such as Isis or al-Qaeda. The suspect’s motive is so far unknown. More dangerous these days, it seems, is the lone attacker Ramming attacks are common because most adults have a car parked outside their home. The 22 March 2017 terror attack on Westminster involved a van striking a crowd

Edward Howell

What has Putin given North Korea for its help in Ukraine?

We knew it was happening all along, but it was only a matter of time before both Russia and North Korea confirmed to the world the inevitable fact that their relationship is more than rhetoric. Six months after the first North Korean soldiers were deployed to the Kursk region, the Kim regime has finally admitted that the country’s armed forces have ‘participated in the operations for liberating’ the area, in what marked ‘a new chapter of history’ in relation to the ‘firm militant friendship between the two countries of the DPRK and Russia’. Only days earlier, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, lauded

Matthew Lynn

Has Rachel Reeves blown her shot at a US trade deal?

The pictures of a triumphant Rachel Reeves holding aloft a US trade deal as she boards a plane home from Washington should have been all over the front pages this morning. After spending the weekend in Washington, and with a personal meeting with the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the advance briefings were that a deal with the US was very close. Instead, there are now warnings from Pat McFadden that it may take longer than expected. Has Labour blown the chance to sign the first trade accord with the Trump White House? A chance like this is unlikely to come again.  A trade deal with America was never completely

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron has let an epidemic of violence grip France

These have been terrible days in France. On Thursday, a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death and several of her classmates wounded at a private school in Nantes. It was an attack of singular ferocity. The victim, who was stabbed 57 times, was killed by a fellow pupil, a boy her own age. According to police, he had no ‘clear motive’ for his crime. On Friday a 20-year-old, named by police as Olivier H, walked into a mosque in southern France and told Aboubakar, a 24-year-old of Malian origin, that he would like to pray. Aboubakar, who performed odd jobs in the mosque, led Olivier into the prayer room and

Sunday

Jane Stannus

Canadians need saving from Mark Carney, not Donald Trump

Tomorrow’s election will be one of the most important in Canadian history. The results hang on one crucial question: what’s the biggest threat to Canada right now? The Liberals, under the guidance of Mark Carney, have used every tool at their disposal to frighten, persuade, and cajole voters into believing the biggest threat to Canada is American tariffs and America’s president. But while relations with America are indeed something Canadians should care about, let’s hope that they’re not quite gullible enough to fall for that one. Let’s hope they recognise what Liberals have spent ten years proving over and over: the greatest threat to Canada as we know it isn’t

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

What can we expect from the papal conclave?

54 min listen

Earlier this year Dr Kurt Martens, Professor of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America, joined Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to unpack what happens during a papal conclave. There was heightened interest in the process due to the film Conclave, which swept the awards season, but also because Pope Francis was hospitalised at the time.  Despite showing some signs of recovery – including being able to meet world leaders such as King Charles III and J.D. Vance – Pope Francis died on Easter Monday. Here we reissue the episode with Dr Martens, looking at what happens when a pope dies, with a new introduction from Damian. Writing the cover article for

Michael Jackson

Jacinda Ardern and the empty politics of ‘kindness’

Just over two years on from stepping down as Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern is awaiting the imminent release of her memoir titled Jacinda Ardern, A Different Kind of Power. The launch will be supported by a 9-night US and UK book tour. The marketing around both employs the ‘kind and empathic’ messaging now firmly cemented as her international brand. Eventbrite, for example, asks us to imagine ‘what if kindness came first?’. Today, if you ask Meta AI or ChatGPT ‘what one word best describes Jacinda Ardern’s leadership style’ they will both respond with ‘empathetic.’ These words do not, however, encapsulate her brand in New Zealand – despite

Charles Parton

Why the new pope won’t be welcome in China

Choosing a new pope has more in common than you might expect with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress’s system for picking a new general secretary. Both processes are autocratic, secret, and rigid; they focus on the leader’s infallibility, and involve a lack of succession planning. And women don’t get a look in. China’s president Xi Jinping commands over 1.3 billion souls; so, too, will the new pope. He will also own the allegiance of an estimated 12 million Chinese. But how will he exercise his pastoral care and oversight? Pope Francis, who was laid to rest yesterday following his death on Monday, had a ‘thing’ about China. He was