World

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Bayrou will regret his plan to scrap French bank holidays

The Prime Minister of France announced his plan on Tuesday to balance the country’s books: his most eye-catching intention is to scrap two public holidays. In addressing the nation, Francois Bayrou warned that France’s out-of-control public spending has left the country in ‘mortal danger’. It was imperative to reduce the public deficit by 43.8 billion euros by 2026, explained Bayrou. ‘It’s the last stop before the cliff, before we are crushed by the debt. It’s late, but there is still time.’ The holidays Bayrou wants to jettison are Easter Monday and 8 May (VE Day), two of the eleven annual public holidays in France. Britain has eight. Bayrou has taken

Eliot Wilson

Are we sure the Afghan data debacle won’t happen again?

‘Afghanistan’ was the heading of Defence Secretary John Healey’s statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday – a word that hardly does justice to a three-year saga involving a catastrophic security breach and loss of data by the Ministry of Defence, a superinjunction and billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Ministers and civil servants cannot be allowed to make policy and spend taxpayers’ money without any kind of oversight. That is not how a democracy works The bare bones of the story are these. In February 2022, the details of nearly 20,000 Afghans who had applied to come to the UK after the Taliban had seized power, as well

Matthew Lynn

Cutting bank holidays for French workers is a bad idea

Banning the baguette, perhaps? Or making it compulsory to eat a sandwich at your desk at lunchtime? If you think hard enough, it is possible to imagine reform that would create more anger in France. Even so, prime minister Francois Bayrou’s plan to scrap two public holidays is right up there. Bayrou wants to reduce France’s 11 public holidays in a bid to kick-start France’s economy. Bayrou said Easter Monday had ‘no religious significance’, and the whole nation had to work and produce more. He said that bank holidays had turned the month of May into a gruyère – a Swiss cheese full of holes. He said that bank holidays had turned

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump – the conventional foreign policy President?

28 min listen

Trump has said he’s “very, very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened severe tariffs against them if there’s no deal on Ukraine within 50 days. He’s also sending more weapons to Ukraine in coordination with NATO. What’s behind his change of heart on foreign policy, and how’s his MAGA base responding? Freddy Gray is joined by deputy US editor Kate Andrews, and Sergey Radchenko, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. You can watch this episode here.

Ukraine

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Trump has given Ukraine a chance to stop Putin in his tracks

It took Donald Trump six months, at least six useless phone calls with Vladimir Putin and more than a thousand Ukrainian civilians killed since the start of his second term for the realisation to finally hit: Russia has no intention of ending the war. Today, the American President took a U-turn from praising Putin and unveiled a new plan to arm Ukraine. Nato allies will purchase ‘billions of dollars’ worth of US military equipment to send to Ukraine, with 17 Patriot air defence systems already being prepared for delivery. Trump will also impose 100 per cent tariffs on Russia and its trade partners if Putin doesn’t make a deal to

Eliot Wilson

Europe must prepare to support Ukraine without America

It is unquestionably the case that people who should have known better were blinded by the Capri-Sun King’s glare when they reassured us that Donald Trump would not abandon Ukraine, that a second Trump administration would not really cut off military aid to Kyiv or effectively offer a free pass to Vladimir Putin. Yet that is what is happening. Last week the US Department of Defense halted a planned delivery of air defence missiles and precision munitions to Ukraine, the third time this year that such a stoppage has been put in place. The weaponry was part of a supply programme agreed under President Biden, but was halted as the

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Russian forces break into yet another Ukrainian region

Vladimir Putin’s summer offensive is fully under way: all day and night, Russian infantrymen run at Ukrainian positions in endless waves. Even when struck, the survivors don’t retreat or take cover but keep running forward, until there are so many of them that no amount of drones or shells can stop them. That’s how Russian troops have broken into yet another Ukrainian region: the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Turning another Ukrainian region into a war zone strengthens Moscow’s hand at the negotiating table The push came near the village of Horikhove, on the border between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, as the Kremlin declared a new phase in its ‘denazification’ campaign. Dmitry

Israel

Alan Kessel

Israel’s Sophie’s Choice

As pressure intensifies on Israel to agree to a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, the country faces a wrenching national dilemma: one that evokes a harrowing moral and strategic reckoning. With approximately 20 live hostages still held by Hamas, Israel must weigh the sacred imperative of bringing its citizens home against the hard-earned gains of a war fought to dismantle a terror regime. Israel stands alone before a terrible choice: pause now and risk preserving Hamas, or press on and risk the hostages’ lives The stakes are no longer theoretical. Hamas’s senior leadership has been decimated, its command structure shattered. Israeli forces now control more than sixty per

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Israel steps up its campaign to destroy the Houthis

Last night, Israeli fighter jets struck multiple military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime in Yemen, marking one of the most expansive and targeted responses to date. Among the sites hit were the ports of Al Hudaydah, Ras Isa, and Salif, as well as the Ras Kanatib power plant. The IDF confirmed that the Galaxy Leader, a commercial vessel seized by the Houthis in November 2023 and repurposed for terrorist use, was also among the targets struck. The Israeli military described the operation as a direct and forceful response to the repeated missile and drone attacks launched by the Houthis against Israeli territory. The Houthis, an Iranian-backed militia operating

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Could Hebron join the Abraham Accords?

You’ve heard of the two-state solution (or delusion, as I call it). But have you heard of the eight-state solution? Or the Palestinian Emirates plan? This is the idea of Professor Mordechai Kedar, who I spoke to in February 2024, just four months into the war started by the Palestinians on 7 October, 2023. If his vision once seemed outlandish or unrealistic to many, it now seems considerably less so in light of the fascinating developments emerging from Hebron. Hebron’s most powerful clan leaders, led by Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari, have issued a public declaration of intent to break away from the Palestinian Authority A Wall Street Journal report explains that

America

Europe

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France doesn’t need Boomers dreaming of political comebacks

If France didn’t have enough to worry about right now with its soaring rates of debt, crime and immigration, now comes news of a political comeback. Dominique de Villepin, prime minister between 2005 and 2007, earlier this month launched his political party called Humanist France. ‘I decided to create a movement of ideas, of citizens, through the creation of a political party,’ he explained. ‘This movement is for everyone. We need to unite all French people to defend social justice and the republican order,’ he said. Given some of his recent statements about Israel, de Villepin will have his work cut out to unite the country. In October, the Jewish

John Keiger John Keiger

How Macron triumphed over Starmer

‘Small boats’ are the big talking point from this week’s Franco-British summit. The consensus is that there are slim pickings for Britain, and the reason why is simple: France negotiates according to its interests, Britain negotiates according to the Chagos template. France’s president Emmanuel Macron had little incentive to agree anything but a symbolic ‘returns’ agreement with Sir Keir Starmer. Most of the French political class, public opinion and ‘humanitarian’ organisations do not support Britain returning migrants to France. Nor for that matter do other EU states. Why would they? What then was Macron seeking from the summit? The French president is still smarting from Brexit The French president is

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Starmer and Macron won’t fix the Channel migrant crisis

There was a sense of déjà vu to today’s announcement by Keir Starmer that he intends to ‘secure’ Britain’s borders. Standing alongside Emmanuel Macron, the Prime Minister pledged ‘hard-headed aggressive action on all fronts’ to crack the migrant crisis but warned that there is ‘no silver bullet’. The sceptic might argue that the real problem in cracking the migrant crisis isn’t the criminal gangs but the human rights industry Rishi Sunak deployed the same phrase in March 2023 when, as Premier, he stood alongside the French president, and promised to take back control of Britain’s borders. He failed, and few have faith in this new ‘one-in one-out’ scheme. ‘Migrants arriving

Yesterday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The BBC Gaza documentary report is a cover-up

The BBC’s long-awaited editorial review of its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was published today. It reads not like a rigorous investigation into serious journalistic failures, but like a desperate institutional whitewash. The report bends over backwards to defend the indefensible, trying to sanitise a catastrophic editorial misjudgment as little more than ‘a significant oversight by the Production Company.’ At the heart of the scandal lies the BBC’s failure to disclose that the documentary’s narrator, a Palestinian boy named Abdullah Al-Yazouri, is the son of Ayman Al-Yazouri, a senior official in the Hamas-run government in Gaza. This, the report acknowledges, was ‘wrong’ and constituted a breach of guideline 3.3.17 on

Monday

Daniel DePetris

Trump is turning ‘Biden’s war’ into his own

It’s official: President Trump is tired of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody shenanigans. While he won’t admit it, it’s likely Trump feels strung along and publicly humiliated. Every time he ends a conversation with Putin that he’s relatively pleased with, he learns a few hours later that another batch of Russian drones and missiles have slammed into Kyiv and killed more civilians. Today’s meeting at the White House with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, during which Trump said yet again that he was ‘very unhappy’ with Russia over the war in Ukraine, came after weeks in which the US president was increasingly expressing his frustration, even anger, with how Putin

Friday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Is Britain an ally or an enemy of Israel?

Even as the British parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) published its stark warning yesterday that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Quds Force orchestrates spy rings on British soil, the UK continues its public ostracisation of Israel, the very country on the frontline of seeing down that exact threat. Britain must choose. Not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between honesty and hypocrisy Earlier this week, an Afghan-Danish spy working for Iran was arrested for photographing Jewish and Israeli targets in Berlin. The intelligence trail ran through Israel, Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK. Israel’s cooperation helped foil an operation with chilling echoes of the Iranian regime’s 1980s and 90s terror

Edward Howell

South Korea’s pensioner time bomb is about to go off

Think of South Korea and K-pop, Korean cuisine, films, and perhaps even skincare products spring to mind. The fact that anything preceded by a ‘K’ immediately invokes something Korean is testament to the success of South Korea’s global soft power. But behind the sentimental love stories and bright lights, Asia’s fourth-largest economy is at a precarious juncture. As well as the ongoing geopolitical tensions on the Korean peninsula, the country known as the ‘land of the morning calm’ is facing acute demographic crises. Beyond the low birth rate, its ageing population and age-based employment policies only highlight how for South Korea to become a truly global state, change must also

Andrew Tettenborn

Francesca Albanese is insufferable, but don’t sanction her

Among the many peripheral hangers-on at the UN, are members of a curious class of functionary known as special rapporteurs. Numbering about 80, these are in theory independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council to oversee either particular countries or particular issues. In practice, however, they tend to be drawn from the ranks of activists and academics who share the UN’s general leftist worldview. In many cases they hold distinctly partisan views and make little secret of them. (The UK itself has felt the rough side of their tongue on two occasions: when Philip Alston demanded wholesale changes to our taxation and social security laws in the name of

Eliot Wilson

Britain must wake up to the threat of Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a ‘wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable’ threat to the United Kingdom. That was the sobering conclusion this week of the intelligence and security committee, which has spent several years examining Iranian policy and activity, taking evidence and analysing a huge amount of classified information. The committee’s chairman, Lord Beamish (former Labour MP Kevan Jones), warned that the government had not developed a comprehensive or in-depth approach to the threat posed by Iran but had instead focused on short-term crisis management. The intelligence and security committee (ISC) of parliament is a unique body. Despite its name, it is not a select committee, but established by statute

Thursday

Mark Nayler

Keep Palestine out of Pamplona

At this time of year, I’m usually immersed in Pamplona’s San Fermin festival, which burst into life on Sunday and runs until next Monday. The fiesta is famous for its daily bull runs through the narrow streets of the old town – an anarchic, life-affirming tradition in which I have participated six times. Unable to attend this year, I watched Sunday afternoon’s opening celebration on TV from southern Spain, feeling envious of each and every one of the 13,000 people present. But I was angered and saddened by what I saw. One of their members yelled: ‘Stop genocide, free Palestine!’ before lighting the rocket. Pamplona’s mayor chooses who lights the

Sam Olsen

France can’t solve Britain’s reliance on America and China

When President Emmanuel Macron of France addressed the British parliament this week, he emphasised the need for both countries to reduce the risk from their ‘excessive dependencies on both the US and China’. This reliance on the Great Powers, Macron suggested, was a threat for Europe to be able ‘to invest in key technologies of the future’ and ‘avoid strategic dependencies and disengagement that would put us at risk of a slow death’. In many ways President Macron is right. The UK and Europe are absolutely dependent on America and China for critical technologies and industrial inputs. As noted by the EU in various recent reports, China dominates in rare

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Can Ursula von der Leyen survive ‘Pfizergate’?

Ursula von der Leyen faces the biggest test of her European Commission leadership as MEPs gather to vote on a motion of no-confidence. Today’s vote, the first of its kind in 11 years, has been brought by right-wing MEPs in relation to von der Leyen’s secretive negotiations with a pharmaceuticals boss during the pandemic. But while the European Commission president has tried to spin the no-confidence motion in her as ‘fuelled by conspiracy theorists’ – and seems set to win the vote – make no mistake: her leadership is badly damaged by this debacle, perhaps irreparably so. Economically, militarily and diplomatically, the bloc is floundering The chief complaint against von der Leyen

Rafael BardajI

The man who’s destroying Spain

Madrid In the mid-1990s, Spain’s socialist prime minister Felipe Gonzalez saw his political career collapse under the weight of a corruption scandal. A Supreme Court investigation revealed a fraudulent contracting scheme that illegally funded the Socialist party’s (PSOE) election campaigns. Despite intense media pressure from government-aligned outlets, two brave judges upheld the rule of law. Three decades later, another socialist Prime Minister – Pedro Sanchez – faces a similar reckoning. But this time, the scandal combines political manipulation, personal ambition and institutional degradation. Corruption is as old as power itself, yet in Sanchez’s case it takes on a uniquely modern and dangerous form. His rise began with his 2014 appointment

Wednesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Grok’s praise for Hitler wasn’t a ‘glitch’

We are deep into the AI boom – an age in which large language models have moved from novelty to necessity at a pace that has outstripped our capacity to reflect or adapt. There is breathless enthusiasm, endless hype and a sense that caution is for the timid and delay for the doomed. But sometimes, something happens to make people look up from the dashboard and realise they’re hurtling down the motorway with no map, no brakes and a robot at the wheel. Grok’s behaviour is a mirror held up to its creators, its users and the polluted ecosystem from which it learns So it is with Grok, Elon Musk’s AI

Anne-Elisabeth Moutet

Jonathan Miller truly understood France

The last time I talked with The Spectator columnist Jonathan Miller was perhaps ten days ago, just before his unexpected death this week. He had a pre-digital habit, very 1980s, of ringing you up to chat, moan, laugh, explain, badmouth and joke for over an hour at a time. When he rang it always took me a couple of minutes to get reaccustomed to the colder waters of analogue conversation; but then we would have these long rambling discussions that don’t much happen anymore. He’d sent me successive manuscripts of his book, Shock of the News: Confessions of Troublemaker, which he polished and repolished into the version coming out in three weeks’

Matthew Lynn

Will Trump’s pharma tariffs destroy the Irish economy?

Japan will take it in its stride, even if its automakers might be hit. China will absorb the extra costs, and the UK has already managed to secure its own trade deal. President Trump’s tariffs have largely been shrugged off by the US’s major trading partners. We may, however, soon see one exception. His imposition of huge levies on pharmaceutical manufacturing may kill the Irish economy. Ireland has been running what amounts to a clever tax wheeze Amid the latest round of tariffs, there is one of genuine significance. President Trump is planning to impose a 200 per cent tariff on imports of drugs, and possibly semi-conductors as well. In

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron won’t fix the migrant crisis

The French have so far been underwhelmed by Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Britain. The late Queen was universally admired on the other side of the Channel. Less so Charles, who in the eyes of the French lacks Elizabeth’s grandeur and wisdom. There are also more pressing issues, such as the spreading wildfire that has covered the city of Marseille in a cloud of smoke and ash. Then there is the news, splashed across this morning’s Le Monde, that the poverty rate in France has reached 15.4 per cent, the highest level since records began in 1996. Furthermore, the gap between the wealthiest and poorest 20 per cent has increased

Alexander Larman

King Charles’s bromance with Macron is true soft power

As the once-promising bromance between King Charles and Keir Starmer appears to be fading, the monarch has found another leader on the world stage with whom he has a greater amount in common. As the state visit of the French President Emmanuel Macron gets underway with much earnest discussion about what this particular cross-Channel ‘special relationship’ involves (and a great deal of relief that Macron, unlike Donald Trump, can be trusted to behave himself and conduct himself with dignity and restraint on the world stage), the most important personal relationship is not that between Starmer and Macron, but between the Frenchman and the British king. When Charles made his speech

Lara Brown

Museums like the V&A shouldn’t be allowed to return ‘looted’ treasures

Henry Cole, the first director of what would become the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), could never have imagined that in his place would follow a man who seems determined to rail against the safeguards that have helped keep the museum’s collection intact. But this, sadly, appears to be the task Tristram Hunt is committed to. Hunt knew the law before he took the job Hunt, director of the V&A since 2017, has declared the 1983 National Heritage Act which prevents him from returning artefacts to their country of origin, to be ‘outdated and infantilising’. In fact, it is a key reason why collections, including the V&A’s, have been maintained. Britain is

Tuesday

Madeline Grant

Emmanuel Macron would love to be King

When Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito visited Windsor Castle in the early years of the 21st century, the Queen Mother gave orders that, over where he would give his speech, should be positioned the sword with which the Japanese forces had formally surrendered to Lord Mountbatten in 1945. Only an intervention from her daughter prevented this plot from becoming a reality. If I were the King I’d be counting the spoons this evening This afternoon, President Macron gave his speech underneath a statue of an old Queen. The verb in French cuisine for such unnecessary but beautiful touches like this is ‘historier’. True, Elizabeth I was more francophone than most of

James Tidmarsh

Remembering Jonathan Miller

The long-time Spectator contributor Jonathan Miller has died. James Tidmarsh remembers him here: Jonathan Miller liked to say that Emmanuel Macron was the gift that never stops giving. ‘The Spectator can’t get enough of him,’ he told me. ‘Macron serves up fresh spin, scandals and missteps, an endless supply of stories for any journalist willing to look behind the official line.’ When we first crossed paths on X, we’d swap messages about ministers, café gossip, and the small absurdities that make French politics so irresistible. Jonathan was usually in his village in the Languedoc sunshine. He loved it there and seemed content when describing the rhythm of village life. Jonathan Miller

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why Putin’s elites keep dying

Although I suspect few readers’ hearts will bleed for them, it’s been a bad week for Russian elites. There has been a spate of real or apparent suicides and the arrest of a gold magnate as he prepared to leave the country. On Friday, Andrei Badalov, vice president of Transneft, Russia’s largest state-controlled pipeline transport company, fatally fell from the window of his apartment in Moscow. This makes him the eighth senior Russian figure to die in this way since 2022. Although the police say he left a suicide note, by now the suggestion that foul play is at work has become something of a tasteless meme. This is a

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The Dubai influencer craze can’t end soon enough

Marcus Fakana, a British 18-year-old, has been in prison in the United Arab Emirates since December. His crime? Having consensual sex with a 17-year-old British girl on a trip to Dubai. Now, thanks to the granting of a royal pardon by Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Marcus has been freed and is back home in London. The merciful monarch did this as part of a tradition of releasing lesser miscreants during Eid, the feast that marks the end of Ramadan. Dubai comes with considerable risks – fun, fun, fun with a side order of mediaeval theocracy The freeing of Fakana is further confirmation – as if it were