World

Thursday

Matthew Lynn

Is the EU sacrificing net zero to protect its electric car industry?

They are too expensive. There are not enough of them on the market. It’s too much hassle to charge them. There are lots of reasons why people are still reluctant to switch from petrol to electric cars, with their cost right at the very top of the list. Still, with the world about to be flooded with cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), that is about to change. You might think that anyone seriously worried about combating climate change would welcome that. Except now it turns out that the EU, for all its rhetoric, cares more about protecting its own auto industry and is planning to slap tariffs on Chinese imports.

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin’s North Korea summit was pure theatre

If a little tyrant theatre is your goal, then rumbling across the border in an armoured train decked out like a palace (if your palace was decorated in the 1970s) is hard to beat. As North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin met at the Vostochny spaceport, the Bond villain vibes were strong – and one might suspect that was the point.  As of writing, we don’t yet know the precise terms of whatever deal has been thrashed out. Even though his factories are running 24/7, Putin clearly wants more munitions for his war in Ukraine. North Korea’s are reportedly of stunningly poor quality, but something is better

Nigel Jones

Biden and Trump are too old for office

Like the little boy who pointed out that the emperor was naked, veteran US politician Mitt Romney has just voiced an uncomfortable truth that everyone knows, but few wish to utter: America is being run by men who are too old for office. At 76, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts and presidential contender is no spring chicken himself, but in announcing that he is retiring from being the junior senator for his native state of Utah, Romney called on both 80-year-old President Joe Biden and 77-year-old former President Donald Trump – who is running for a second term in the White House – to follow his example and step down

Wednesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How America’s 2024 election will affect Britain’s

There were many potential titles for Liz Truss’s memoir: 49 Days that Shook the World, perhaps, or simply What Happened, like Hillary Clinton’s. Instead, she’s gone for a cri de coeur: Ten Years to Save the West. Westminster has a long history of drawing inspiration from Washington Such swashbuckling language is best suited to an American market, and the former prime minister seems to have this in mind. She has declared that her book will appear ‘ahead of the US presidential election’ and explain why it’s vital that ‘conservative arguments win – and the left is defeated’. In the PR so far, Truss has referenced Joe Biden more times than

The Spectator

Republicans will regret impeaching Joe Biden

As Napoleon is reputed to have said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. So why are Republicans seeking to impeach Joe Biden when he’s looking increasingly capable of losing next year’s presidential election all by himself? We will never know what kind of president Biden would have made in his prime, but it is clear that his prime was passed some time ago. It has become painful to watch the President interact with people or make a speech – even with prompt cards at the ready. This week, his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was moved to call a premature end to a press conference he had

Boris Johnson

Why aren’t we giving Ukraine what it needs?

When you visit the rehabilitation centres for those Ukrainian soldiers who have received life-changing injuries, you swiftly learn how to deal with the shock of what you see. You don’t flinch or look away; of course not. You learn the habit of the skilled doctors and nurses and physiotherapists – of concentrating not on the wounds but on the individuals, on the men; and though many women have been killed or injured in this beastly conflict, I must have seen over a hundred badly injured soldiers in Kyiv and Lviv, in three different hospitals, and they all were men. Do not believe for one second that these Ukrainian soldiers could

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

How I got to know Westminster’s ‘Chinese agent’

On Monday, I was surprised to discover a photo of myself in the papers next to a parliamentary researcher who had been arrested on suspicion of being a ‘Chinese agent’. The photo was taken in February at a panel in parliament entitled ‘Defeating the dictators’. The man and I are both twentysomething China watchers who work in Westminster. I’d got to know him in a professional capacity, but every so often, we had a drink together or hung out at a friend’s flat. It was only when I saw reports of his arrest that I realised I hadn’t heard from him since an evening six months ago when we teamed

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

How to do business with China

Amid reports of Chinese spies in Westminster, we learn that Huawei – the telecoms manufacturer western governments shun for fear of cyber espionage – has launched a smartphone containing microchips more advanced than anything China was previously thought capable of making. Some analysts say China is now ahead of the US in tech fields ranging from AI to robotics, while, in the auto sector, BMW chief executive Oliver Zipse (announcing plans to make electric Minis at Cowley from 2026) described Chinese electric carmakers with improved battery technology as an ‘imminent threat’ to his industry in Europe. In response, Rishi Sunak – after a brief and no doubt deeply oblique meeting

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Mexico’s progressive hell

Every morning I check to see if Rodrigo Iván Cortés has published the ‘apology’ that the court in Mexico has written for him and which it has ordered him to post on his social media accounts for 30 days in a row. I still have a flicker of faith left in civilisation and the rule of law, but the day Cortés actually makes his forced confession is the day that flicker dies out. And I’d be interested to know what my progress–minded friends think about his case. Is this the sort of justice system you envision? Luévano’s bill proposed to outlaw any expression of traditional Christian views about sexuality Rodrigo

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Does Joe Biden need a conservatorship?

America’s wacky Libertarian party, which sadly never gets anywhere in presidential elections, has just filed a petition to put Democratic President Joe Biden, 80, and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 81, under ‘conservatorship’. The Libertarians claim that America’s ‘geriatric elites’ are evidently unfit for public office and need, for everyone’s sake, to have all decision-making powers taken away.  The petition is a clever stunt — funny because it’s so true. There’s something deeply wrong with America’s leadership and everyone knows it.  There’s something deeply wrong with America’s leadership and everyone knows it The Republican party has just announced that it will be launching an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over

Eliot Wilson

Is it time to admit China is a ‘threat’?

Former Tory leaders are queuing up to take a pop at the government’s response to the Westminster spy story. Liz Truss has labelled China the ‘largest threat’ to ‘democracy and freedom’ after it emerged that a parliamentary researcher had been arrested on suspicion of spying for the Chinese government. Iain Duncan Smith suggested that ‘the problem lies in the mess we have got into over whether we define China as a threat or not’. So far, the government is doing its best to sit on the fence. Rishi Sunak has said he ‘will not accept’ Chinese interference in the UK’s democracy, but has refused to go much further. Deputy Prime

Tuesday

Juan P. Villasmil

Republicans start impeachment proceedings against Biden

Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday that House Republicans will move ahead with an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. Questions about the business dealings of the president’s son Hunter have been raised since the Trump presidency, with a lot of speculation about whether Joe or other Biden family members benefited from his work. A rock-solid tie showing whether President Biden was an active participant in Hunter’s transactions is one of the chief things the House GOP will be investigating. ‘Today, I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden’, McCarthy said, as he stood in front of three American flags in the US

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why Putin is pointing the finger at Britain

Perfidious Albion is, we are told, at it again. In the course of a wide-ranging and often quite surreal speech at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin accused Britain of being behind attempted nuclear terrorism, rhetorically asking whether the government was ‘trying to provoke us into retaliating against Ukrainian atomic power stations’ or whether the British Prime Minister even ‘knows what his secret services are doing in Ukraine?’ Needless to say, no evidence is forthcoming to support Putin’s claims that a number of Ukrainian ‘saboteurs’ had been intercepted and detailed by Russia’s Federal Security Service on their way to break the power lines at an unnamed Russian nuclear

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The Colombian cartels are coming to Europe

In May this year 87,000 asylum applications were lodged with the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA). This was a 24 per cent increase on the number of claims made in May 2022.   Syrians, Afghans, Ivorians and Guineans were heavily represented among those making claims, but there was also a remarkable number of South Americans. Over 7,000 Venezuelans asylum seekers arrived in Europe this May, along with 2,500 Peruvians and 6,900 Colombians. In the case of Colombians, this is a 90 per cent increase on 2022. Most filed their asylum claims in Spain, and according to the EUAA, nearly all were first-time applicants.   Colombia has been beset by conflict for

Roger Kimball

Joe Biden has become a global embarrassment

What time is it? A bit like the emperor Domitian, Joe Biden seems confused about the time. Warned by an omen that his death would come at midday, Domitian daily pestered people around him with that question, relaxing only after the dreaded hour had passed.  Alas, his caution availed him not. One day in September 96 AD, a treacherous servant lied to Domitian about the time, inducing him to let down his guard. A knife-wielding steward did the rest.  I am not sure that President Biden is still possessed of a guard he can drop. But if his recent performance in Hanoi is any indication, he does seem to be confused

Monday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

There’s not much we can do about China spying

A parliamentary researcher has just been arrested on suspicion of espionage. A man in his late twenties, with reported links to the security minister and the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, is accused of spying for China and may have had access to sensitive secret documents. A second suspect has been collared in Oxfordshire. It’s said to be the worst Westminster security breach in years: ‘We haven’t seen anything like this before.’ I’m sure you were as surprised as I was to find out that the Chinese are spying on us. Gobsmacked. Flabbergasted. Probably nearly as surprised as the Prime Minister. And to hear his spokesman tell it,

Sunday

Rory Cormac

China is spying on us, so what?

That China is spying on us is hardly the revelation of the century. The Sunday Times broke the story that police have arrested two men amid allegations that a parliamentary researcher was spying for China. The spy, working on international policy, had alleged links to senior Tory MPs with sensitive information. He had previously lived and worked in China, leaving officials apparently fearing he may have been a ‘sleeper agent’ recruited to infiltrate British political networks.  Cue howls of indignation all round. An unnamed source close to Alicia Kearns, chairwoman of the foreign affairs select committee to whom the spy allegedly had access, claimed the allegations, if true, constituted a ‘serious escalation and show

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Does Japan not care about Kitagawa’s abuse?

The niece of Jonny Kitagawa, founder of the Japanese talent agency Jonny & Associates, stepped down this week from her role as president, acknowledging the decades long sexual abuse of the company’s young clients by its founder (who died in 1999). In a typically Japanese scene of corporate self-abasement, Julie Keiko Fujishima apologised to the victims and pledged to dedicate the rest of her life to addressing the issue. It was a bravura performance but one that has been met with deep cynicism, at least from some in Japan. Jonny Kitagawa was the godfather of J-Pop, an immensely powerful figure exercising dominion over the lives of his stable of young, often very young, male starlets (known in Japan as ‘talents’ or ‘idols’). Kitagawa would

Jim Lawley

Spain’s controlled anarchy

Life expectancy in Spain is 83 years – amongst the highest in the world. Deep, trusting relationships with family and friends surely contribute to this longevity. Orwell emphasised the ‘essential decency’ of the Spanish people, ‘above all, their straightforwardness and generosity. A Spaniard’s generosity, in the ordinary sense of the word, is at times almost embarrassing … And beyond this, there is generosity in a deeper sense, a real largeness of spirit, which I have met with again and again in the most unpromising circumstances.’ Bakunin, the nineteenth-century revolutionary Russian anarchist, noting the Spanish people’s kindly and generous feelings for those near them and their instinctive talent for co-operation, reasoned that

Eugene Finkel

Putin can’t be compromised with

The slow-grinding Ukrainian offensive in the country’s south has forced many to accept that the war against Russia might turn out to be a prolonged conflict. But while military experts debate whether or not Ukraine can win this war, and how such a victory could be achieved, the focus on military hardware and territory has skewed the West’s approach to the war and potential solutions. Russia’s war against Ukraine war is not a territorial conflict: it is an identity war aimed at extermination. It will not and cannot be solved by territorial changes or security compromises. Just listen to Putin and take him seriously.  This week, the Russian President sent