World

Saturday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Israel declares war on Hamas

Some 5,000 rockets have rained down on Israeli civilians in an attack co-ordinated from land, sea and air by Gaza-based Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Gunmen have stormed the south of Israel, taking control of a number of towns. The attack seems to have taken Israeli intelligence completely by surprise: the death toll – 300 so far – is certain to rise with 900 injured and 100 kidnapped. ‘We are at war, not in an operation, not in rounds of fighting. At war,’ Benjamin Netanyahu has said. ‘I instructed a wide-scale call for reserves to respond militarily at an intensity and scale that the enemy has not known before. The

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Why hasn’t the UK outlawed the IRGC?

As the scale and barbarity of the Hamas terrorist assault on Israel begins to unfold, to no-one’s surprise Iran has leant its formal support to the insurgents. While thousands of rockets rain down on Israeli civilians and and Iran’s proxies pull men women and children out of their homes — murdering them in the streets — it’s worth remembering that the United Kingdom still has not proscribed that regime’s state terror exporters, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.   Whether it is terror funding and training to Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon or Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the occupied territories, the IRGC is inextricably linked to today’s butchery. This is the same

Limor Simhony Philpott

Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel was meant to bring war

In the early hours of this morning, Israelis had a flashback to the surprise attack of the Yom Kippur War that started almost 50 years ago to the day, in October 1973. Hamas says it has launched 5,000 missiles deep into Israeli territory. The missiles were used to mask a much more elaborate attack that saw dozens of Hamas terrorists, dressed in uniform and — according to reports on Israeli media — heavily armed with machine guns and grenades, invade Israeli territory. The terrorists entered towns and villages by foot, paraglides and vehicles. Fighting between Israeli security services and the terrorists has gone on for hours, with reports of dead,

Phoebe Hennell

Could this former tantric sex coach become Argentina’s president?

One of Argentina’s presidential candidates is unlike the others. La Libertad Avanza’s Javier Milei whizzes past crowds shaking a chainsaw in the air and roaring his catchphrase ‘¡Viva la libertad, carajo!’, or ‘Long live freedom, goddamnit!’. In the run-up to the general election, on 22 October, this anarcho-capitalist libertarian has flipped from being a joker wild card – and something of a meme – to the front-runner. Milei, a pro-life, climate change-sceptical libertarian, sends a message of his intentions to chainsaw through the red tape of what he considers the most prolific ‘organised crime group’, otherwise known as the state. His chainsaw has become such a signature accessory that figurines have gone on sale of Milei

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What’s going on in the Republican party?

23 min listen

Freddy speaks to Roger Kimball, editor of the New Criterion and columnist for The Spectator’s US edition. After Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker of the House this week, they discuss why the Republican party is such a mess. 

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

When will the EU take France’s Islamist concerns seriously?

The European Parliament hosted an event in Brussels last week entitled ‘Close Guantanamo’. It was hosted by two Irish left-wing MEPs, and among the invites were representatives of Cage, which has been described by the French government as an ‘Islamist’ organisation, an allegation Cage denies. Cage was briefly infamous in Britain in 2015 when its director, Asim Qureshi, called Islamic State butcher Mohammed Emwazi, aka ‘Jihadi John’, who made a living hacking off Westerners’ heads, a ‘beautiful young man’ and blamed security services for his radicalisation. Qureshi later said he regretted his ‘inappropriate description’ of the Isis fighter. Cage isn’t the only organisation with dubious credentials that has been courted

Aleks Szczerbiak

How immigration came to define the Polish elections

Poland is heading for a highly divisive and polarised election on October 15th. The country’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has ruled since 2015, is highly critical of the institutions and elites that emerged following the collapse of communism in 1989. And it has broken with the Polish foreign policy consensus pursued by previous governments, accusing them of aligning too closely with Berlin and failing to stand up for Poland’s interests within the EU.  As a consequence, Law and Justice has come in for heavy criticism from both its domestic opponents and the EU political establishment for undermining democracy and the ‘rule of law’, particularly for its judicial reforms.

Thursday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Juncker dismisses ‘corrupt’ Ukraine joining EU in near future

Just days after Ukraine’s President Zelensky declared his intention to start EU membership negotiations by the end of this year, the bloc’s former president Jean-Claude Juncker has poured cold water on the idea, branding it a country ‘corrupt at all levels of society’. In an interview with the South German regional Augsburger Allgemeine paper, Juncker accused current EU officials of making ‘false promises’ to Ukraine and ‘telling Ukrainians that they can become members immediately’.  The Ukrainian government admitted that only two of the seven EU membership conditions had been met ‘Despite its efforts, it is not eligible to join and needs massive internal reform,’ he said. ‘We have had bad experiences with

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why a gangster’s death in Central Asia matters

Such is the globalisation of the modern underworld, that the fate of a gangster you may never have heard of, in a country of which you may know little, may actually matter to you. I’d suggest this is true of the Kyrgyz godfather Kamchy Kolbayev, who was killed on Wednesday by a bullet in the head, during a police operation to arrest him in the capital, Bishkek. Kolbaev was widely recognised as the most powerful gangster in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan. Born in 1974, he took fullest advantage of the political and economic disruption that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s to establish a

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The western hypocrisy about Pakistan’s migrant crisis

Pakistan has told all unauthorised Afghan migrants that they must leave the country by the end of October.  Imagine if France announced in the wake of a terrorist attack that it was expelling all Algerians. There would be uproar across the world The announcement was made on Tuesday, and affects as many 1.7 million men, women and children. The Pakistan government prefers to describe them as ‘illegal’ migrants rather than asylum seekers, and justifies the decision because of an increase in terrorist attacks along the Pakistan-Afghan border. There have been 24 suicide bombings in this region since the start of 2023, and the Pakistan military says more than half of

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Republican party is a mess

In comparison to the Republicans in the United States, the British Conservative party is a model of unity and discipline. In Manchester this week, for all the blather about Nigel Farage and ‘pandering’ to the far right, the grumbling about nanny-statism and HS2ing-to-nowhere, the Tories held themselves together.  Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, a small group of right-wing representatives in Congress managed to throw out their own House speaker, Kevin McCarthy. A motion for him to ‘vacate to chair’ was won 216 to 210. That’s never happened before.  The trigger for McCarthy’s removal was disgruntlement over the spending deal he struck with President Joe Biden in order to avoid a US

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

I’m leaving Britain – and I feel guilty

I’m torn between headlining this column ‘Why I’m moving to Portugal’ and ‘Why I’m leaving the UK’. Exhausted, shadowed by tippling towers of cardboard, once more unable to put my hands on a black marker when I bought a whole box or to locate a tape gun when we have bloody four of them, in all having perversely disassembled a working household into a shambled heap, I am hard-pressed to answer either question. Why have I done this to myself? Remind me. If the UK is falling on hard times, isn’t it when you’re down on your luck that your mates should rally round? On the positive side, I have

Charles Lipson

The Republicans are telling the world they can’t govern

Congressman Matt Gaetz pulled the alarm but, unlike the stunt by his fellow House member Jamaal Bowman – who recently set off a fire alarm to delay a vote – there really was a fire. Gaetz set it himself, with help from seven other Republicans on the party’s populist right. Now the whole party has to deal with the smoking ruins.  Make no mistake: the entire Republican Party will pay an enormous price for this manoeuvre Because the majority party has only a slim edge in the House of Representatives, any small, cohesive group among them can wield huge leverage. They can threaten to sink legislation or oust the Speaker by

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Does Germany want to bring down Giorgia Meloni?

Is there a plot afoot to oust Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister and replace her with someone more to the progressive left’s taste?  There have been rumours in the European media that Meloni’s government is teetering and that it ‘could fall and make way for a technocrat government.’ The audacity of Germany is breathtaking In 2011 Mario Monti formed such a government after the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi and he filled his cabinet with unelected technocrats, prompting Berlusconi to accuse him of ‘adopting the rules of austerity proposed by Germany.’ The former European Commissioner lasted just over a year in office before he resigned. A decade after Monti was parachuted

Monday

John Connolly John Connolly

James Cleverly defends his China policy

How should Britain handle its relationship with China? That’s an increasingly fraught question inside the Tory party lately, with several China hawks in government and on the backbenches keen to limit engagement while classifying the country as a security threat. Earlier this year, James Cleverly faced criticism after becoming the first UK Foreign Secretary to visit Beijing in five years – a trip he defended at the time as necessary for diplomacy, arguing that disengaging from the country was not ‘credible’. Speaking to Cindy Yu at conference today, for a special edition of the Chinese Whispers podcast, Cleverly defended his position again, saying: ‘Foreign secretary flies to foreign country to have

Sunday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

How a pro-Russia party triumphed in Slovakia’s election

The staunchly pro-Russian Robert Fico is back in power for a third time in Slovakia. Fico’s Smer party clinched at least 23 per cent of the vote – enough to lead a coalition government. His victory comes five years after Fico was forced to resign following mass protests over the murder of a journalist investigation corruption in his government.  Fico has not been shy during campaigning about his views on Russia and Ukraine. His most striking pledge was to immediately end military support for Kyiv, promising to ‘not send a single round’ of ammunition to Ukraine if voted into power; now that he is, Ukraine’s allies are concerned about whether he will

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Paris has become the city of love, rats and bugs  

There are said to be six million rats in Paris. I met one last week when I was retrieving some winter clothes from a bag in my cellar.  Neither of us was particularly keen to make the other’s acquaintance.  Such a brief encounter may not please the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. In the summer her office announced the establishment of a committee to study how the city’s three million human inhabitants can learn to ‘cohabit’ with their furry neighbours.    Animal rights’ groups and green politicians expressed their satisfaction that the societal scourge of rat shaming is finally being challenged. Paris councillor Douchka Markovic has said the word ‘rat’

Saturday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Kate Andrews & Lloyd Evans

20 min listen

This week Freddy Gray takes a trip to Planet Biden and imagines what would happen if little green men invaded earth and found a big orange one back in the White House (01:15), Kate Andrews finds herself appalled by the so-called ‘advice’ routinely handed out to women that can be at best, judgemental, and at its worst, slightly bullying (12:51), and Lloyd Evans spills the beans on searching for love on his recent blind date, courtesy of the Guardian (07:13). Produced and presented by Linden Kemkaran

Robin Ashenden

What happened to the Russia I loved?

I first came to Russia as a travelling English literature-lecturer in the late 1990s. This wasn’t a job given to me but one I’d devised myself, sending off snail-mail begging letters to different university departments all over the Former Soviet Union – Barnaul to Minsk – outlining my services and occasionally, weeks or months later, being taken up on the offer. With a rucksack full of books, I’d catch a train – sometimes a days-long journey – to the next destination, where I’d be given a list of students to teach, a guided tour of the city and three weeks in a student hall of residence. Here cockroaches could outnumber

Friday

Nicholas Sheppard

There is still everything to play for in New Zealand’s general election

With two weeks to go before New Zealand’s general election, the contest is so close that many have stopped bothering to make predictions over who will win. And yet, despite such competition, one would be hard-pressed to call the parties’ campaigning lively. The election is being contested by a pair of unprepossessing men named Chris: wonkish, technocratic, affably bland on the stump, they have been crisscrossing the country in a spirit of hokey conviviality. One making cheese rolls, the other dressing up as a pirate; one wedged himself into a tot’s chair to stir goo at a children’s centre, the other drove a tractor ten yards. Neither candidate has been