World

Thursday

Sam Olsen

Will Nato pass – or fail – Russia’s great test?

Poland woke yesterday morning to what its prime minister, Donald Tusk, called an “unprecedented violation of Polish airspace.” In the early hours, a “huge” swarm of Russian drones – at least 19 by Warsaw’s count, perhaps 23 according to Polish media – crossed the frontier during overnight strikes on Ukraine. Polish and Nato fighters scrambled, including Dutch F-35s, to bring them down. Airports were closed as air-raid sirens wailed. In one village, falling debris from an intercepted drone crashed into a residential block. For Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is not the goal but the stepping stone This was not business as usual. Drones have strayed into Poland’s skies before, but this

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Angela Rayner resigns, Poland downs Russian drones and Israel bombs Qatar

Home The government shuddered when Angela Rayner resigned as housing secretary, deputy prime minister and deputy leader of the Labour party after being found to have breached the ministerial code by Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent adviser on ministerial standards. He said she had followed advice from a legal firm when not paying enough stamp duty on her new flat in Hove, but ignored a recommendation to seek expert tax advice. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, called her ‘the living embodiment of social mobility’. He then threw himself into a great big cabinet shuffle, in which Yvette Cooper became Foreign Secretary and was replaced as Home Secretary by Shabana

Francis Pike

Fragile China: who’s really in charge?

Xi Jinping effectively vanished in July and the first half of August. Some China watchers speculated that his unexplained absence was a sign that he was losing his grip on power. But he has since reappeared and been very visible again. At the end of last month, he visited Tibet, then indulged in a high-profile, back-slapping meeting with Vladimir Putin and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tianjin. He capped off his busy fortnight with the 3 September military parade in Beijing and a second meeting with his star guest Putin, this time accompanied by Kim Jong-un. So, a great triumph for the neo-Maoist leader and the new Axis

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Mandelson’s Epstein problem is not going away

When King Charles hosts Donald Trump for the state banquet at Windsor Castle next week, the dignitaries should know better than to mention Jeffrey Epstein. Inevitably, however, Epstein’s ghost will hang over proceedings, the paedo-Banquo at the feast. In the coming days, the details of Mandelson’s bond with Epstein may end up overshadowing all talk of the special relationship The royal family will entertain the President, though the Duke of York will (surely?) stay away. He no longer works for the crown and everyone knows why. Trump, meanwhile, will still be batting away suggestions that in 2003 he contributed a puerile drawing to Epstein’s 50th ‘birthday book’ – a strange

Owen Matthews

The Kremlin had nothing to gain from sending drones to Poland

Provocation, mistake, or something in between? Either Putin sent Russian drones into Poland’s airspace on Tuesday night to test Nato’s reaction, or Ukrainian electronic jamming scrambled the targeting systems on Russian drones and sent them haywire. Or perhaps the Kremlin is playing a grey-zone game, launching an accidentally-on-purpose attack to push Europe’s boundaries.  The problem with the Kremlin testing the boundaries theory is that it doesn’t make much political or military sense Whatever Putin’s intent, the shooting down of several drones marks the first time ever that Nato warplanes have engaged and destroyed Russian weapons in European airspace. Though Polish prime minister Donald Tusk noted that ‘there is no reason

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Why Nepal’s Gen Z overthrew its government

Nepal’s prime minister KP Sharma Oli has resigned after nationwide demonstrations descended into bloodshed. At least 22 people have been killed and hundreds injured in the country’s deadliest protests for nearly two decades. Spearheaded by the Nepal’s disaffected youth, the ‘Gen Z protest’ has evolved into one targeting the corruption of the government coalition led by the Congress and Communist parties. The protests were triggered by the government’s decision last week to issue a blanket ban on 26 social media platforms After events took a violent turn on Monday when authorities unleashed fury on the protestors, killing at least 19, demonstrators responded by targeting state institutions in Kathmandu. They ransacked government buildings, including the country’s parliament, and targeted politicians’ homes. Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar, the wife

Terry Barnes

Victoria’s Aboriginal ‘Treaty’ will undermine its democracy

On Tuesday evening, my six-year old’s suburban Melbourne primary school staged a wonderful concert, an all-school celebration of contemporary song, dance and collaboration. It was, however, preceded by an elaborate Acknowledgement of Country and Aboriginal Australians, in which a group of children led incantations to the ‘Old Ones’ that the rest of the school echoed in a mystical Gregorian-like chant. For the audience, it turned the theatre into a cathedral, as if we were witnessing a sacred rite – which, to the primary school children inculcated in its sacredness, it was. The 65,000 people who identify as Aboriginal, out of over seven million Victorians, will be given rights, privileges and

James Tidmarsh

Sébastien Lecornu is Macron’s last hope

Emmanuel Macron has named Sébastien Lecornu, a loyal confidant, as France’s new prime minister after François Bayrou’s resignation. At 39, Lecornu is Macron’s last stand, a bid to reset a deadlocked presidency. Lecornu is one of Macron’s most trusted allies. His appointment is a deeply personal choice, signalling that Macron is circling the wagons and relying on his innermost circle as the crisis deepens. Lecornu is not a compromise candidate or a unifying figure, he’s Macron’s man, appointed to hold the line and protect the president’s political legacy. Lecornu inherits a fractured parliament, a looming budget crisis and a country on the brink of strikes. There is no doubt that

Travis Aaroe

Iryna Zarutska and the reality of American ‘two-tier’ justice

Under Trumpism the old certainties no longer hold and are starting to ebb away. Do illegal immigrants really have an inviolable and unlimited right of appeal against deportation? Probably not. Is America honour-bound to defend small nations against aggressors? It isn’t. People don’t really believe in the ruling pieties anymore yet they do not know what should replace them; in this sense, Trump, who has only ever presented himself as a figure of expediency, really is the man of the hour.  Almost every reigning piety has now come in for some deconstruction, except this one One old certainty remains, however. Even when all the illegals are deported and all the

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is sending mixed messages about the Qatar attack

Oops. The White House is claiming that President Trump directed the ubiquitous Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar that Israel was going to strike Hamas headquarters in Doha. But Qatari officials denied that they received any such warning. ‘What happened today is state terrorism and an attempt to destabilise regional security and stability, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leading the region to an irreversible level,’ Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani stated in a televised address. ‘These missiles were used to attack the negotiating delegation of the other party. By what moral standards is this acceptable?’ Trump wants to placate an aggrieved Qatar without openly denouncing Israeli Prime

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why the French fear the far-left

A caller to a French radio station on Monday morning said he supported Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. However, he added, he wouldn’t vote for them in an election. Why? asked the host. The man said he feared that if the National Rally came to power the far-left would turn France ‘into a real mess’. I have heard similar anxiety from other middle-class French people who are tempted to vote for Le Pen’s party. They may not agree with her economic policies but they do share her concerns about mass immigration and insecurity. But what frightens them most is the far-left, which has a history of violence going back to

Tuesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Israel is right to strike Hamas’s leaders in Qatar

When the government of Qatar condemned the Israeli airstrike in Doha as a ‘cowardly’ act, it revealed less about the operation itself than about the priorities of the state voicing the charge. In reality, the strike was an extraordinary and unprecedented move: Israel launched a precision airstrike inside Qatari territory targeting senior Hamas leadership, aiming to eliminate figures at the apex of the group’s external political and financial hierarchy. It was a direct and deliberate attack on the masterminds behind terrorism, carried out by Israeli fighter aircraft with exceptional range and accuracy. The operation marked a bold assertion of Israeli extraterritorial power and strategic doctrine. There is nothing cowardly in

Daniel DePetris

What Israel’s Qatar strike on Hamas reveals

‘We are ready to accept a deal (with Hamas) that would end this war, based on the cabinet decision,’ Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said this morning. Yet whatever diplomatic momentum existed evaporated into thin air hours later. In an unprecedented Israeli operation in Qatar, Israel targeted the very Hamas officials they were supposed to be negotiating with. In the blink of an eye, smoke was rising from a building in the Qatari capital, Doha. Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, was targeted in the attack. Israel said the raid was in response to this week’s Jerusalem bus attack and the atrocities of October 7. Israel said the raid was in response to this week’s

Mary Dejevsky

Can Peter Mandelson survive his association with Jeffrey Epstein?

What a difference 48 hours can make. On Saturday afternoon, Lord Mandelson, the UK ambassador to the United States, was treading the green and pleasant lawns of Ditchley Park near Oxford, where he was giving the annual lecture to an audience made up for the most part of the great and the good of UK foreign policy. The landscape was quintessential England, it was a perfect late summer day, with golden light. Mandelson’s subject, nicely timed for ten days before the US President’s second state visit, was ‘Britain and America in the Age of Trump – and Beyond’. He managed, in characteristic Mandelson fashion, to argue that in most respects

James Tidmarsh

Marine Le Pen is calling the shots now

Emmanuel Macron projects authority, but he’s trapped. After the collapse of François Bayrou’s government yesterday evening, Macron faces a divided parliament, hostile blocs on both sides, and no obvious way forward. After the crushing no-confidence vote, Macron insists that he will appoint a new prime minister ‘in the coming days’. But appointing a successor without dissolving parliament won’t resolve anything. Without a clear majority, any new government would face the same hostile Assembly and the same threat of immediate censure as his previous appointees. The numbers don’t change just because the names do. Each option Macron explores risks failure. Increasingly, it is Marine Le Pen, and the choices she makes,

Monday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France is descending into chaos

As expected, the government of François Bayrou has lost its vote of confidence in the National Assembly. Three hundred and sixty-four MPs voted to bring down the centrist coalition government, ten months after Michel Barnier’s administration collapsed in similar circumstances. On that occasion 331 MPs cast their ballots against the Prime Minister. Bayrou has been a marked man since he unveiled his budget proposals in July, the objective of which was to slash €44 billion (£38 billion) in spending by 2026 in order to reduce France’s huge public debt. MPs from across the political spectrum condemned his budget. During an afternoon of impassioned debate in parliament, Bayrou had warned MPs:

James Tidmarsh

France has been plunged into crisis – again

Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government has collapsed after a bruising no-confidence vote in the French National Assembly. MPs rejected his budget by a margin of 364 votes to 194, with 25 abstentions, forcing his resignation and plunging Emmanuel Macron’s second term into chaos. On Monday evening, the Élysée released a statement saying that Macron has ‘taken note’ of Bayrou’s fall and will name his successor ‘in the coming days’. The president will meet Bayrou to formally accept his government’s resignation. But naming a new prime minister without calling elections risks prolonging the very deadlock that has brought the country to this point.The defeat marks the unravelling of Macronism – the president’s

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The Jerusalem massacre and the illusion of peace

You can tell a great deal about countries and people by how they react to a horrific act of terror. And this morning’s massacre at the Ramot junction in Jerusalem came at a moment heavy with symbolism: just as the world was waking up to reports of Donald Trump floating a new plan for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the illusion of a negotiated, civilised discussion with the Palestinian movement was shattered. The gunfire in Jerusalem was a brutal reminder that such fantasies collapse the moment they are tested against reality. To speak of ‘bringing back peace’ in this context is not only ahistorical, it is delusional

David Cohen

Four years on the run: New Zealand’s fugitive dad shot dead by police

A fugitive father who vanished into the rugged bushlands of the Waikato region of New Zealand with his three children has been shot and killed by police. Tom Phillips’s death marks the end of a case that has gripped the country for nearly four years. Phillips first disappeared from his small Marokopa community with his homeschooled kids, Jayda, now aged twelve, Maverick, ten, and Ember, nine, in September 2021, but was nabbed by police shortly afterwards and charged with their abduction, apparently stemming from a custody dispute. A member of Phillips’ family later said the episode had to do with the father needing to ‘clear his head’. Before the case

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

For the good of France, Macron must go

This evening Emmanuel Macron will almost certainly be searching for his fifth prime minister since January last year. Francois Bayrou’s decision to call a vote of confidence in his government looks like a calamitous misjudgement, one that will plunge France into another period of grave instability. Comparisons are being drawn with the tumult of the Fourth Republic when, between 1946 and 1958, France went through more than twenty governments. The French are fed up with their political class Bayrou’s coalition government has limped along this year, achieving little other than creating more disenchantment and contempt among the long-suffering electorate. The French are fed up with their political class. Above all, they’re