World

Sunday

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

Sam Meadows

Bolivia’s fuel crisis could cause a populist turn

‘Some of them will have been waiting for two days.’ My taxi driver was pointing at a queue of lorries, vans and cars stretching essentially the entire length of Villazon, a small town on Bolivia’s border with Argentina. At the front of the queue? A petrol station. Bolivia is in the grip of a severe fuel crisis. Bolivia has traditionally been heavily reliant on natural gas exports, but a collapse in production after years of government neglect has sparked shortages, causing the long queues at petrol stations. The country, the only landlocked nation in South America, and also one of the poorest, is currently importing substantial amounts of fuel. The

Saturday

Francis Pike

What is more worrying than war between India and Pakistan?

This week, jihadist gunmen killed 26 tourists. For some reason Islamist diehards, supported by their stooges in British universities, did not pour onto London’s streets with their heads wrapped in kaffiyeh. I wonder why? Perhaps it was because the tourists killed were Indians not Jews or Caucasians, and the place was Pahalgam, a picturesque village in Indian controlled Kashmir, not southern Israel – so nothing to celebrate then. India has firmly laid blame for the atrocity at Pakistan’s door. Police say the suspects are members of the radical Sunni jihadist group, The Resistance Front, an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT) – ‘the Army of the Righteous’. It appears some of the perpetrators

Kristina Murkett

How Trump could reverse America’s baby bust

Over the past few weeks, the White House has been considering a range of ideas to boost America’s falling birth rate: a $5,000 (£3,756) ‘baby bonus’ to new mothers, programmes to educate women on their menstrual cycles, a ‘National Medal of Motherhood’ for women with six children or more. Trump has pledged to be the ‘fertilisation president’, whilst J.D. Vance has said, ‘to put it simply, I want more babies in America’. Across the world, countries are trialling increasingly creative and dramatic policies to try to reverse the fertility decline. In Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s self-proclaimed mission is ‘procreation, not immigration’, mothers with two or more children are

Michael Evans

Can Pete Hegseth remain at the Pentagon?

The moment the Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s nomination for defence secretary, the Pentagon community knew it was in trouble. One horrified defence official said at the time: ‘He may have been educated at Princeton and Harvard, but does he know anything about running a huge organisation like the Pentagon? No, he doesn’t.’ As both Trump and Hegseth have said in recent days, the Pentagon establishment was against this controversial appointment from the beginning and have claimed this is why the defence department is going through its current turmoil, with summary sackings, accusations of intimidation and unauthorised leaks to sympathetic, ‘establishment’ newspapers. There is a degree of truth in

Linda Jaivin

How Mao haunts China

Imagine a time traveller from Mao Zedong’s China – say a Red Guard  – landing in a Chinese city today, nearly half a century since Mao’s death in 1976 brought the Cultural Revolution to an end. Picture her in baggy unisex khaki and blunt bob, gaping at women her age prancing past in heels and short skirts. See her take in the soaring buildings, bustling shopping centres and pumping night clubs. She looks at a newspaper. Some things make sense: ‘America’s democracy is in decline,’ one headline declares. There are familiar reports on model workers and the same sort of photos of leaders visiting factories and welcoming foreign presidents. But

Friday

Sam Meadows

Milei freed the peso. Argentina’s economy survived

It was Argentina’s ‘liberation day’, Javier Milei proclaimed last week after meeting US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the Pink House, Argentina’s presidential palace. On Friday, he had shocked the country by lifting the cepo – ‘clamp’ in Spanish – which has restricted currency trades in South America’s second-largest economy for so long. ‘After 15 years of capital controls, we have cast off the anvil to which we were chained,’ Milei said. Lifting the cepo was a key part of Milei’s policy agenda. Nevertheless, few expected him to do anything before mid-term elections in October. But doing so was a key requirement of the disbursement of $20bn from the International Monetary Fund, also announced on

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Is the US getting closer to a Ukraine deal?

US special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Russia this morning to meet with Vladimir Putin, as Donald Trump ploughs ahead with his plan to secure a peace deal in Ukraine by hook or by crook. This is the pair’s fourth meeting in nearly as many months. Putin and Witkoff are expected to discuss Trump’s final proposal for a ceasefire in the conflict, which is believed to include American recognition of Russian control over Crimea, along with all territories occupied by Moscow since February 2022, a ban on Ukraine joining Nato and the lifting of all sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated earlier this week that

Jim Lawley

Spain’s defence spending boost pleases nobody

Just a week after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Spain to spend more on defence, the country’s socialist prime minister, has unveiled a massive defence development initiative costing over ten billion euros (£8.5 billion). This new plan raises Spain’s defence budget from a mere 1.4 per cent of its GDP, the lowest amongst Nato’s 32 members, to Nato’s current target of two per cent. When announcing the measure, prime minister Pedro Sánchez notably refrained from mentioning Bessent’s directive or US president Donald Trump’s pointed observation that ‘Spain is very low’ in defence spending. He did, however, frame the decision as a necessary response to new global realities: ‘We are

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What Pope Francis got wrong about illegal migration

Migrants have been pouring into the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa this month. Over 100 on Monday and 344 on Wednesday; the previous week 269 landed, and at the start of April more than 1,000 arrived in a 48-hour period. They are Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Guineans, Moroccans, Syrians, Malaysians, Somalis and Senegalese but the three nationalities most heavily represented are Bangladeshis, Egyptians and Pakistanis. Most told their rescuers that they set out from Libya. So much for Giorgia Meloni’s efforts to persuade Libya to work with her to stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean. Last year the Italian PM, supported by the EU, signed deals with Libya and Tunisia;

Terry Barnes

Do young Australians still care about Anzac Day?

Today is Anzac Day, arguably the most solemnly sacred day in the Australian calendar. At dawn on this day in 1915, as part of an Anglo-French operation, men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on a rocky beach on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula in the face of murderous fire from Turkish defenders. Many died then and there. Many more were doomed to fight, suffer and die in a losing campaign, pitted against an enemy they scarcely knew, in a European war that could have, should have, been averted in July 1914. The greatest Anzac military achievement of the Gallipoli campaign was a masterly overnight withdrawal, without a single

Samaan Lateef

Will India strike back after the Kashmir terror attack?

India is bracing for a potential military confrontation with Pakistan after a deadly terrorist attack on tourists in India-administered Kashmir left 26 people dead, triggering a wave of national outrage and sharpening regional tensions. The assault – described by authorities as the deadliest attack on civilians in the region in recent years – claimed the lives of 25 Indian nationals and one foreigner. While no group has claimed responsibility, Indian officials have pointed fingers across the border, reigniting old hostilities between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Addressing a rally in Bihar, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking unusually in English, delivered a fiery speech signalling retaliation. ‘India will identify, trace, and

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The EU’s new travel rules won’t stop illegal migration

Like it or not, for ordinary people, Brexit is about to make itself felt in a way which it has not done so far. MEPs have finally given their approval to the EU’s much-delayed Entry and Exit System (EES), which will now be introduced over a six month period starting in October. It means that from that date, all visitors with a UK passport will have to have a facial scan and their fingerprints taken at the border when they travel to the EU. In the case of Eurostar passengers and those taking Eurotunnel or sea routes, the biometric information will be collected physically in Britain before you leave –

Eliot Wilson

Trump should be allowed to address Parliament

Labour MPs have been busy this week. No, not running the country – but voicing their opposition to Donald Trump’s state visit. Diane Abbott, Nadia Whittome and Clive Lewis are among 17 parliamentarians campaigning to ensure the US President isn’t allowed to address the Houses of Parliament. Their Early Day Motion rehearses various criticisms of the President – ‘misogynism, racism and xenophobia’ and his treatment of Ukraine – and says it would be ‘inappropriate’ for Trump to be given the honour when he comes to the UK in September. Like him or loathe him, MPs must treat Trump with respec This legislative stunt is unlikely to trouble Trump. The Early Day Motion

Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews, Matthew Parris, Marcus Nevitt, Angus Colwell and Sean Thomas

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Owen Matthews reads his letter from Rome (1:21); Matthew Parris travels the Channel Islands (7:53); Reviewing Minoo Dinshaw, Marcus Nevitt looks at Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward Hyde, once close colleagues who fell out during the English civil war (15:19); Angus Colwell discusses his Marco Pierre White obsession, aided by the chef himself (21:26); and, Sean Thomas provides his notes on boredom (26:28).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

James Tidmarsh

The African cardinal who terrifies Macron

Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea in West Africa has been named among the potential successors to Pope Francis and the prospect is sending a jolt through the French establishment. He has accused the West of betraying its Christian roots and described mass migration as a form of ‘self destruction’. He has spoken of immigration as a ‘new form of slavery’ created by Europe’s failure to defend its identity and has called on young Africans to remain in their own countries and build their futures at home. In 2021, during an interview on French radio, he made one of his most quoted comments: ‘If Europe continues in this way, it will

Thursday

Owen Matthews

‘Vladimir, STOP!’ – Trump is being humiliated by Putin

Theodore Roosevelt was a believer in speaking softly but carrying a big stick. But where does that leave Donald Trump, who today resorted to all-caps plea, or perhaps demand, that Putin ‘STOP!’ his offensive operations against Ukrainian cities – yet backed up his entreaty with precisely nothing?  ‘I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV.’ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social after footage emerged of civilians buried under rubble in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa. ‘Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP!’  The message was a rare instance of Trump directly criticising Putin. Indeed, just a few hours before the latest Russian strikes on Ukraine’s capital, Trump

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Can Rachel Reeves woo Trump’s team – without alienating the EU?

The government is on a charm offensive in Washington. Tonight, Britain’s ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson, will host officials from Donald Trump’s government and American business figures at the British embassy. Tomorrow, the Chancellor will meet her counterpart, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Rachel Reeves is looking to permanently end the punishing 25 per cent tariff on British cars and 10 per levy on other exports. Reeves has given an interview to one of Trump’s favourite channels, Newsmax, in which she was asked about her upcoming meeting with Bessent. In response, Reeves said she believed ‘there was a deal to be done’ and that both Keir Starmer’s and Trump’s governments