World

Monday

Sean Thomas

Writers will lose to AI

It’s a cliché of publishing that men over the age of 40 only read military history. In my case it’s not entirely true: I still occasionally squeeze in the odd novel, some politics, even poetry if I’ve drunk too much sweet wine. But it’s true enough that my mind is probably over-furnished with historical-military examples, metaphors, and allusions. And for the last week I’ve been trying to find the correct analogy, from the annals of war, to characterise the battle recently joined by the Writers Guild of America. For anyone that has missed this particular strike, amidst our own melancholy roster of industrial actions, here’s the skinny: as of 2 May 2023 all the screenwriters of the USA, from east coast to west, from gag-smiths to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is Macron finally taking on the cult of net zero?

Hell hath no fury like an environmentalist scorned and Emmanuel Macron has felt a wave of green wrath since his declaration last week that France has gone far enough in pursuit of net zero. ‘We are ahead, in regulatory terms, of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world,’ said Macron in a speech at the Élysée. ‘We must not make any new changes to the rules, because we will lose all the players,’ he continued.   Calling for a ‘pause’ of more EU environmental red tape, Macron said member states required stability if they were to attract future investment.  One could argue that 21st century western workers

Owen Matthews

Erdogan faces runoff vote in the Turkish elections

Turkey is a strange kind of democracy. But nonetheless it is a democracy where an apparently invincible strongman can – in theory at least – be deposed after two decades in power by the will of the electorate. With over 99 per cent of the votes of Sunday night’s presidential vote counted, it looks like neither the 69-year-old Erdogan nor his challenger, the 74-year-old veteran leader of the Republican People’s party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu, have managed to break the required 50 per cent threshold to prevent a runoff. Erdogan is currently on 49 per cent, according to estimates by the official Anadolu Agency, while Kilicdaroglu is on 45 per cent.

Sunday

Daniel Thorpe

Erdogan is unlikely to go quietly

The Turkish election is just hours away, and an opposition victory seems more likely than ever under president Erdogan’s rule. Everywhere from cafés to the civil service, from social media to newspapers, the big question on everyone’s lips is whether Erdogan will concede after 21 years in power. Fears of escalation and violence on the streets are high. As Turkey’s electoral system is old-fashioned and analogue, irregularities and small-scale fraud are common, especially in rural areas. However, the system leaves little to no room for mass election fraud. Losing an election does not necessarily mean the end of a strongman In the 2019 local elections, the opposition Republican People’s party

Norman Davies

How Russia lost Kazakhstan

Prior to Russia’s invasion in February 2022, few westerners knew much about Ukraine, and even less about Kazakhstan. We all suffer from Moscow-centred perceptions and the bad habit of equating the Soviet Union with Russia.  But now we know that Putin is driven by spurious historical theories, in which Ukraine has no right to exist, one needs to ask how they might apply to other ex-Russian provinces. Nowhere is more affected than European Russia’s eastern neighbour, Kazakhstan, which separates Muscovy from China, in the same way that Ukraine and Belarus divide it from the EU and Nato.   Ukraine is half as big again as France or Germany. But ‘KZ’

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

The Black Sea is Nato’s new front line against Russia

Earlier this month, an unarmed Polish aircraft monitoring potential human smuggling and illegal fishing on the Black Sea almost ditched into the sea when a Russian Su-35 fighter engaged it over international waters. It was a reminder that while attention is inevitably focused on the land battles anticipated when Kyiv launches its spring counter-offensive, this is also a war playing out at sea. It was also a reminder that what happens offshore has far wider implications. The twin-engine L-410 Turbolet, more commonly used as a small commuter aircraft, was being used by Frontex, the European Union’s border security agency, as part of its Western Black Sea 2023 operation. It was

Saturday

Sergey Radchenko

Putin’s acolytes can smell blood

Yevgeny Prigozhin, standing in the darkness next to a row of bloodied dead bodies, was shouting obscenities. With his yellowish, unnaturally hairless face contorted in primordial hatred, there was something about his appearance that seemed decidedly horrific. Prigozhin may well be positioning himself for Putin’s likely downfall and the eventual (and probably very nasty) succession struggle The look goes with his reputation. The head of the notorious Wagner (which cut its teeth as a mercenary force in Africa and the Middle East), Prigozhin is known for his untamed brutality and deep cynicism, and for his ability and willingness to get his hands dirty, or bloody. Perhaps that was why he

Terry Barnes

Trudeau’s ‘coronation gift’ is just lip service to the monarchy

Cynically dressed up as a coronation-related gift to the Canadian nation, just days after the coronation, the country’s leader Justin Trudeau has unveiled a Royal Crown of Canada.   Trudeau is paying lip service to the monarchy Canada shares with Britain and the King’s other realms Not a physical gold and jewelled crown, mind you, but a virtual crown, designed to replace St Edward’s crown – the very crown placed on the King’s head a week ago – on Canada’s coat of arms, official documents, and armed forces and Mountie badges and insignia.  This new Canadian crown replaces the crosses and fleur-de-lys of St Edward’s Crown with stylised maple leaves. The rim is

Leon Mangasarian

Why trophy hunting could be key to saving Africa’s wildlife

The lion or elephant in the photo should be stone-cold dead. The hunter posing with it should be ugly, fat and preferably American. Cue to social media outrage from celebrities, journalists and online nobodies. Few things generate more furious likes and retweets than old, white men killing African mega-fauna. Yet, as Barack Obama once said: ‘This idea of purity and you’re never compromised … you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.’ In order to survive outside the parks, wildlife needs to have a value for rural Africans As counter-intuitive as it sounds, African trophy hunting is

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Unrest is growing in Macron’s febrile France

Across Europe the numbers are soaring. In Britain, net migration figures are expected to near one million when the figures are released later this month; in Germany, there have been 101,981 asylum applications so far this year, an increase of 78 per cent on the same period in 2022.   2022 was a record year in France with the arrival of nearly half a million legal migrants. This is on top of those who are in the country illegally. According to the MP for Nice, Eric Ciotti, president of the centre-right Republican party, there could be as many as one million in this category.  Extremism is not only present on

Thursday

Sasha Lensky

Russians live in fear of Putin’s dreaded draft

On 9 May, Russia’s wet squib this year of a Victory Day, president Putin addressed his beleaguered troops in Ukraine directly. ‘There is nothing more important now than your combat effort,’ he said. ‘The security of the country rests on you today, the future of our statehood and our people depend on you.’ Readers of The Spectator may be interested to learn of the Russian state’s efforts to augment this crucial ‘defensive’ force. One day last week in provincial Russia, I was awoken at 3 a.m. by the ping of a new email from Gosuslugi, a state portal that facilitates public services (e.g. getting a passport or even checking your

Daniel Thorpe

It would be foolish to rule out an Erdogan victory

With only a few days to go until Turkey’s election, the opposition continues to lead in most polls. But there is a growing feeling in Turkey that president Erdogan might defy the odds and win again. A striking image of a rally in Istanbul – Erdogan’s biggest so far – shows Turkey’s leader continues to enjoy popular support. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) claimed that 1.7 million people showed up at the decommissioned Atatürk airport for the event on Sunday; supporters were bused into the rally from across the country. While independent fact-checkers pointed out that the real number is likely less than half the number claimed, this

Sophia Money-Coutts

Why British women are turning to Danish sperm donors

‘Hello, my current occupation is police officer,’ says Dex in a thick Danish accent. ‘It seems very adventurous and exciting to do, and to make a difference for the people I meet out in the world.’ Dex is just over 13 stone, around six feet tall, has very fair skin and blue eyes. His favourite animal is the dog. Dex is also a Danish sperm donor, and I’m listening to the beginning of an 11-minute voice-recording on his profile. On the website of the European Sperm Bank, which bills itself as ‘Europe’s leading sperm bank’ and is based in Copenhagen, there are hundreds of profiles like Dex’s available to British

Wednesday

The Spectator

Why the economic war against Russia has failed

There was much mirth in the West this week when Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day parade through Red Square included just one tank, itself a relic from a museum. The inference was that Russia has lost so much military kit in Ukraine that it is a shadow of the military superpower the Soviet Union used to be. Russia has certainly borne heavy losses (although any country conducting a foreign war would presumably have its military hardware on active duty rather than on ceremonial parade). But we should avoid being smug. The truth is that the war is not going well for the West either – at least in one respect. When

Niall Ferguson

Trump’s second act: he can still win, in spite of everything

Everyone knows F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous line from the end of his unfinished novel The Last Tycoon: ‘There are no second acts in American lives.’ But Fitzgerald wasn’t talking about second chances. He meant that, unlike in a traditional play – where Act I presents a problem, Act II reveals the complications and Act III resolves it all – Americans want to skip Act II and go straight to the resolution. The more I think about it, the more I think the Joe Biden presidency is Act II – and Donald Trump is not the last tycoon. He’s Act III. He’s the next president. The campaign of lawfare against him

William Nattrass William Nattrass

Ukraine could lose one of its closest allies in Europe

Could one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies in Europe soon flip to become one of the most sceptical nations in the West when it comes to military and political aid? That question is troubling Kyiv and the EU, as a political crisis in Slovakia leaves the door wide open for a party to take over which is more hostile to Ukraine.  It was announced on Sunday that a technocratic caretaker government will be formed next week following the resignation of the Slovak prime minister, Eduard Heger. An election is expected in September, which the left-wing populist and Ukraine-sceptic Robert Fico is now favourite to win.   While the vast majority of Slovak politicians and

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

The tragedy of Ukraine’s stolen children

One of the most appalling and perplexing atrocities committed by Vladimir Putin has been the abduction of Ukrainian children. At least 20,000 boys and girls, some just babies, have been separated from their parents and placed in Russian camps, orphanages or foster homes. They are portrayed in Russia as grateful orphans being saved from ‘Kyiv’s war’ – but this is a lie. Most of the deported children have families who are searching for them, desperate to find them and take them back home before their names are changed and they become untraceable. The abduction of another nation’s children is a form of genocide. But Russia’s population is decreasing and Putin

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron remains in denial over Europe’s migrant crisis

Tuesday was ‘Europe Day’, or as the European Union proclaimed on its website, the occasion to ‘celebrate peace and unity’ and give thanks to Robert Schuman. It was the French statesman’s declaration on 9 May 1950 that put in place the framework ‘for a new form of political cooperation in Europe’.  No leader in Europe marked the day quite as enthusiastically as Emmanuel Macron. His Renaissance party tabled a bill on Tuesday in the National Assembly demanding that every village and town hall throughout France be made to fly the EU flag alongside the French tricolour.  One wonders what they made of Macron’s ‘Together, united’ declaration in Rome The President

Justin Marozzi

In Kyiv, tech start-ups are thriving

What better cocktail to try in Kyiv than ‘Lesya Ukrainka’s Dream’? Born in 1871, Ukrainka was a fierce feminist, poet, titan of Ukrainian literature and the angel-faced symbol of independent nationhood. In this time of war, writers like Ukrainka and Taras Shevchenko, the great 19th-century poet persecuted by the Russians, a man who has come to define Ukrainian national identity and liberation, are all the rage. The last verse of Ukrainka’s poem ‘Contra Spem Spero’ (‘I hope against hope’) captures the national mood: Yes, I will laugh despite my tears, I’ll sing out songs amidst my misfortunes; I’ll have hope despite all odds, I will live! Away, you sorrowful thoughts!

Ece Temelkuran

The final countdown: Turkey is on a knife-edge

‘Kilicdaroglu’ is a pronunciation nightmare for the non-Turkish. Yet after this Sunday’s presidential elections, international news presenters, who have struggled for 20 years with President Erdogan’s soft ‘g’, might have to work harder to articulate the name of the social democrat leader of opposition. ‘You may call him Mr Kemal [his first name] until he wins,’ I’ve been saying to journalist friends. It’s the kind of simplification that people from complex, non-western countries are self-trained to give so our maddening realities can be better understood: ‘To feel Turkey, imagine the acute polarisation during the Brexit referendum continuing for 20 years. Add to that a far more ruthless Trump with political