America

At 6.30 p.m. on Thursday 16 December 1773, a group of between 100 and 150 Americans raided three East India Company merchantmen moored in Boston and threw 92,000lb of tea (worth $1.7 million in today’s terms) into the harbour. A central part of the American founding story, the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is being commemorated this month as a key moment when patriotic Americans fought back against the greedy British and their oppressive taxation policies that forced up prices on commodities such as tea, which in turn led to the American Revolution. The ‘Sons of Liberty’ were essentially the henchmen of the rich smuggler-barons who were faced

There are many rituals surrounding the placement of a new Japanese Emperor on the Chrysanthemum Throne. Perhaps the most peculiar is the would-be emperor’s encounter with aquasi-sacred, 1300-year-old bronze mirror, the Yata no Kagami. This object, which embodies ‘wisdom’, is so enigmatic the aspirant emperor isn’t even allowed to see it; instead, functionaries are sent to assure the mirror of the new emperor’s fidelity. Some historians believe the mirror no longer exists, and was lost in a fire in Honshu’s Ise Shrine, 980 years ago. Thus it is with Labour leaders and Margaret Thatcher. Ever since the departure of the Iron Lady, aspiring or actual Labour prime ministers have made obeisance to the strange, overpowering ghost of British politics, years after her retirement and death, when her continued omnipresence is therefore a kind of Zen mystery. Tony Blair, as ever, got in his fealty precociously early. As a young Labour frontbencher, he expressed his high regard for her election winning clarity,

Sans Trump, the Republican presidential debates of 2023 have mostly been piddling contests in a shallow pool. We’ve seen nasty insults — most aimed at or directed by Vivek Ramaswamy — and that’s fun to watch. But you can catch those bits on social media and the rest hasn’t been worth tuning in for. Maybe the problem isn’t just the lack of the Big Orange on stage. Maybe it’s just that the TV debate format doesn’t really work in the internet age. It’s never a battle of compelling ideas. It’s a clash of off-putting egos, each looking to land the big viral moment. DeSantis is just hard to like: he

The next few weeks will be filled with remembrances, fulsome appreciations, and harsh criticism of Henry Alfred Kissinger, who died on Wednesday at 100. His prominence is well deserved. The only modern secretaries of state who rank with him are George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, who constructed the architecture of Cold War containment in the late 1940s. Kissinger’s central achievement was updating that architecture to include China, less as an American ally than as a Russian adversary. Until the late 1960s, Washington and Beijing had seen each other as bitter foes, not only because they had fought each other in the Korean War but because they represented the era’s two

Javier Milei, Argentina’s anti-establishment, pro-dollarisation and pro-privatisation president, is already making a splash. Milei, who won a surprise victory in the country’s election on Sunday, said in his campaign that the future of the Falklands ‘cannot be ignored’. The islands, he said, must be returned to Argentina. It didn’t take long for Britain to hit back. ‘The Falkland Islands are British. That is non-negotiable and undeniable,’ defence secretary Grant Shapps wrote on Twitter/ X this morning. Brits – and Argentines – should brace themselves for much more of these bust ups now that Milei is in charge. But the future of the Falklands is likely to be far down the

Vice presidents are meant to be dependable – and in a funny way Kamala Harris is exactly that. Joe Biden knows that, no matter how bad his poll numbers, hers will be worse: she’s the most unpopular vice president since polling began, according to one recent survey. Biden can afford to be pitifully vague in public partly because she is so painfully annoying. He loses his thread; she loses the plot.  That’s one of the reasons why, for all the alarm in Washington circles about the Commander-in-Chief’s ‘job performance’ and the distinct possibility that he might lose to Donald Trump next year, the Biden-Harris ticket seems locked in place for

A month is a long time in American politics – or so it would seem judging by the growing split among US Democrats over the Israel-Hamas war. In the days immediately after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 240 hostages, Democrats across the board in America offered unequivocal support for Israel and its right to self-defence. That was then. Now, support for Israel’s actions has plunged the party into an increasingly vitriolic internal battle that is pitting former political allies against each other. The festering divisions in the American left running along ideological, generational and racial lines are set to deepen as the

Not so long ago, Republicans called Democrats the ‘party of abortion’ as an insult, or a pre-election attack line. Now, it is the Republicans, as the party against abortion, who are losing. This is a grim reality for Americans who believe that the unborn deserve protection.    Since Dobbs, in elections where abortion is on the ballot, the party of abortion keeps winning Since June last year, when the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs, overturning the right to an abortion under Roe vs Wade and returning the issue back to state legislatures, the Democrats have won over and over in elections all over America by campaigning to ‘preserve access’, as they like to say, to

Canada’s rift with India continues. It’s been almost two months since Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau accused ‘agents of the government of India’ of assassinating Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Nijjar. The two countries have been in a diplomatic stand-off ever since, with trade talks suspended and Ottawa failing to provide any concrete proof behind its claim that Nijjar was killed under direction from Modi. But the possibility that Nijjar’s death was a result of gang activity between warring factions of criminal Sikh gang members in Canada has put a spotlight on the country’s growing Punjabi community and highlighted questions over Canada’s international student visa and immigration fraud. It’s no secret

There’s only a year to go until the most complex and consequential US presidential election ever. Ukraine, the Middle East, geriatric candidates, big-name independents, the criminal charges against Trump, a new House speaker (who must ratify the outcome) who didn’t recognise Biden’s victory in 2020 – the complexity is staggering.  The two main candidates, Biden and Trump, are both unpopular. Biden’s approval rating stands (or rather, squats) at around 37 per cent. Polls indicate he is losing support among two traditional bastions of the Democratic party: African-Americans and young voters. Meanwhile Trump, who has still to secure the Republican nomination, lost the popular vote in his two presidential campaigns. In

Try to think of leading names in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Kamala Harris is probably not the first that springs to mind. The woman can barely talk. But she is Vice President of the United States of America and as such she’s in London, about to give a speech ahead of Rishi Sunak’s big AI summit. Brace yourselves. Harris’s speeches often sound as if they had been scripted by an early or pre-intelligent incarnation of ChatGPT. But as sentient beings we can safely predict her gist. The advent of Artificial Intelligence brings many opportunities, Harris will say, but the technology must be carefully controlled to ensure it doesn’t become

In what would no doubt come as a shock to great feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvia Pankhurst and Simone de Beauvoir, arguing for sexual equality today makes you ‘far right’ and a purveyor of ‘hate speech’. Forget Hitler, Mussolini, or even Enoch Powell. According to the London Public Library in Ontario, Canada, it’s people like me, defenders of women’s sex-based rights, who lean perilously close to the wrong end of the political spectrum. When I say ‘people like me’ I actually mean me. Back in May this year, I was invited by the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship to give their annual public lecture. Traditionally, this is held

For the past few weeks, the US House Speaker’s chair has sat empty. Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the position on 3 October amid accusations from some Republicans that he was colluding with Democrats in a ‘secret deal’ to assist Ukraine. While the position has been vacant, critical legislation, including aid for Ukraine, has not been able to pass. But with the election of Mike Johnson, an ally of Donald Trump who is known to be Ukraine-sceptic, US politicians may have chosen their stance on the conflict. This development follows a decline in support for aid to Ukraine among both Democratic and Republican voters. Republicans for Ukraine, an advocacy group seeking support

Argentina’s presidential hopeful Javier Milei will have to wait to turn his country into an anarcho-capitalist anti-state where the peso is swapped for the dollar, the central bank ‘burned down’, and half the ministries torn up. Milei had been considered the frontrunner in Argentina’s presidential election, but he was pipped to the post in Sunday’s vote by centrist rival Sergio Massa, who received 36.6 per cent of votes to Milei’s 29.9 per cent. While Milei’s supporters are disappointed, all is not lost for the chainsaw-wielding climate change-sceptical, pro-life economist: a run-off showdown between Milei and Massa is set for 18 November. Whichever candidate picks up the 6.3 million votes of defeated

Hillary Clinton normally speaks in carefully crafted bromides, so when I read in the New York Post about her risqué suggestion during a televised interview with CNN that ‘maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members’ supporting Donald Trump, I took notice. Had the grimly platitudinous former secretary of state suddenly developed a sense of humour? Was she workshopping new material with a comedy coach? NAFTA really did win the White House for Trump, district by district, state be state When I watched her interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, however, I detected no irony whatsoever in Clinton’s face. Indeed, she was so straightforwardly monotone that I thought perhaps

Is it ageist to suggest that an obviously frail 80-year-old might not be well suited to the task of resolving global conflicts? Even a man in his prime would struggle to fly from Washington to Israel, do a frantic day of talks, greet the suffering, make a speech and jet off again hours later to go back to leading the free world.  Joe Biden is not, to put it mildly, a man in his prime. The octogenarian Commander-in-Chief just about got through his duties in the Holy Land. He delivered a passable, albeit platitudinous speech about dealing with the pain caused by terrorism.  But then he reappeared in front of reporters

Joe Biden prides himself on his decades of foreign-policy experience, his ability to talk tough yet be kind, and his talent for bringing opposing sides together. Touching down in Israel today, he gave Bibi Netanyahu a big hug – quite the gesture – and promptly told him he believed that ‘the other team’ – i.e. Hamas, not Israel – was responsible for the bomb that struck a hospital in Gaza last night, killing many of non-combatant Palestinians and inspiring another wave of anti-Israel protests. Biden will now set about trying to help release the hostages held by Hamas and persuading local powers to allow a secure flow of humanitarian aid