World

Wednesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The dangerous myth of degrowth

Britain is beset by low productivity and stagnant growth, and things are not getting better. In the public sector, productivity stands at 7.4 per cent lower than it did before the pandemic. Until we can generate more growth in the economy, we cannot grow richer and real wages cannot grow. An uncontroversial statement, you might think – even if opinions vary on what to do about it. But no. There are people who genuinely don’t want economic growth, who think it an evil that must be ended. Take a comment piece published late last year in the normally sober pages of the scientific journal Nature. Under the title ‘Degrowth Can

Taki

My lunch with Fergie’s body double

Gstaad There is nothing much I can add to what Daniel Johnson and Charles Moore wrote about the great Paul Johnson, except that I shall miss his annual summer visits to Gstaad, where we walked for hours on mountain trails and I had the opportunity to take in some of his best bon mots. He knew everything and could tell a story like no one else. On the occasions when Lady Carla was with us – she is Italian and never draws a breath – Paul would not slow down for her to catch up but every five minutes or so he’d bellow ‘Is that so?’ and then bash on.

Julius Strauss

In Orikhiv, war has a rhythm

On the road to the frontline Andrii, 36, managed to coax the tired old British ambulance up to 80mph.  The tarmac ahead was scarred with the impact of artillery shells and some of the holes were big enough to pitch us off the road, but he navigated around them skillfully. Suddenly, far in front of us and high above, we saw the contrails of an airplane: an innocuous sight in a peaceful country. Here it almost certainly meant an incoming Russian strike. Andrii and his helper, Oleksandr, 29, donned their body armour. And then from our left a new contrail appeared: a Ukrainian missile. The first contrail made a sudden

Om Malik

The era of endless prosperity in tech is over

‘I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work,’ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said at a company all-hands. He might not have been talking about his company, but you could apply his words to the entire technology ecosystem, which after nearly a decade of unprecedented boom is afflicted by the disease of wealth. It’s grown fat, rich and bloated. During the pandemic, the total headcount for Silicon Valley was on the way up. Yet the economic downturn, slowing growth, the end of cheap money and an increasingly bellicose investment community are making Silicon Valley now

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The French have rejected Macron’s love for the EU

Another 1.2 million people took to the streets in France yesterday to protest against Emmanuel Macron’s plan to push back the age of retirement from 62 to 64. His prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, insisted at the weekend that his pension reforms are non-negotiable. We’ll see about that, was the response of the people, who for the second time in a fortnight demonstrated en masse.   But they are protesting about much more than just the pension reform. This is the culmination of six years of ras-le-bol (despair), the word one hears most frequently from the demonstrators. I have seen it countless times scrawled on placards, banners and on the yellow vests

Tuesday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Putin can’t keep Russians in the dark forever about the Ukraine death toll

Nearly 188,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine eleven months ago, according to the latest estimate by US intelligence. This devastating toll amounts to an average of over 500 Russian dead or wounded soldiers for each of the 341 days Russia has been at war with Ukraine. Russia is also believed to have lost as many as two thirds of its tanks on the battlefield in the past eleven months. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Kremlin has yet to acknowledge these figures that were confirmed in a UK cabinet meeting this morning, even to deny them. The last time the Russian Ministry

James Innes-Smith

Why is BLM blaming Tyre Nichols’ death on ‘white supremacy’?

The video of Tyre Nichols’ arrest makes for unbearable viewing. The 29-year-old father is dragged out of a car before being set upon by five black policemen. Lawyers for his family said the officers acted like a ‘pack of wolves’; after watching the film, it’s hard to dispute that description. As the backlash to the incident in Memphis on 10 January intensifies, there are plenty of unanswered question. But it seems that Black Lives Matter is already jumping to conclusions. Any hope that Nichols’ horrifying death might spark some unity in the United States has been dashed by the release of a demoralising statement from BLM. Rather than using Nichols’

Steven Casey

Are Brits losing sympathy for Ukraine?

Britons were keen to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. A month into the war, more than half thought we hadn’t gone far enough. That was after the government had frozen the assets of Russia’s banks, banned the Russian airline Aeroflot from landing in Britain, and sanctioned Putin and his cabinet. Voters wanted more sanctions, even if it hurt the economy. Now, though, it seems the public isn’t so sure. Only a quarter of Britons think we should give Ukraine more support, according to a YouGov poll this month. We’ve given it tanks. Should we now send jets? Democratic governments often find it hard to keep up support for war, especially when it entails sacrifices. But history shows

James Snell

Is Isis to blame for the Pakistan mosque bombing?

The Islamic State may have been driven out of its capitals in Iraq’s Mosul and Syria’s Raqqa but that doesn’t mean it has disappeared. In the Philippines, West Africa, and most obviously in Afghanistan, the terror group is thriving. Isis’s tentacles have also spread to Pakistan. Over the weekend, in Peshawar, a terrible bombing took place in a mosque. At least 95 are dead, and hundreds have been injured. It remains unclear who is to blame for this atrocity, but, tragically, it is not the first time a place of worship has been targeted. In March 2022, the Afghan detachment of Isis bombed a Shia Mosque in Peshawar. More than 60 people

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Is the CCP’s desperation behind China’s abrupt reopening?

China usually shuts down for the Lunar New Year, but Communist party leaders have marked the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit with a burst of activity worthy of that skittish animal. They have followed their colossal U-turn on zero-Covid with a charm offensive to convince the outside world that China is open for business. In many ways it is as abrupt an about-turn as scrapping Covid controls in the first place. Xi Jinping despatched his trusted vice-premier and economic tsar Liu He to Davos to schmooze with western business leaders. In his speech to the World Economic Forum two weeks ago, he mentioned ‘strengthening international cooperation’ no less

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why do some Palestinians celebrate violence against Israel?

Jerusalem, 13 May 1998. Khairi Alkam, a 51-year-old Palestinian labourer, left home early in the morning to pray at al-Aqsa mosque before going to work. As he was walking through the Mea She’arim neighbourhood, a suspected Jewish terrorist stabbed him in the back and left him to bleed to death in the street. He left behind a wife and nine children.  The crime horrified Israelis and Palestinians alike. Ezer Weizman, then president of Israel, visited Alkam’s widow Dalal to pay his respects and described the killing of her husband as ‘a murder by cowards’. Dalal was not eligible for compensation under the Victims of Hostile Actions (Pensions) Law – no

Monday

James Snell

A Third Intifada looms in Israel

Peace has never seemed further away for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Several dreadful incidents recently have made that point sadly obvious. The most vicious was a terrorist attack: a horrific shooting in which seven people were killed and many injured outside a Jerusalem synagogue on Friday. We don’t know the organisational affiliation of the attacker, Khairi Alqam. He could have been Hamas. He could have been Islamic Jihad. None of those organisations claimed this attack. Some observers – on the basis of speculation, or possibly evidence not in the public domain at the moment – believe that he was a member of the Islamic State. What we know for sure is that this

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Can the UK secure its precarious energy supply?

32 min listen

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the insecurity of the UK’s energy supply. We may not have been reliant on Russian gas like our European neighbours, but that didn’t mean we avoided higher energy bills. The government had to seriously consider how the UK would cope with a blackout. Britain’s experience this winter has prompted a discussion about how we can safeguard our energy supply and avoid another precarious winter. On this podcast, Cindy Yu, The Spectator’s assistant editor, is joined by Laura Sandys, a former Tory MP who also chaired the government’s Energy Data Taskforce; James Murray, an environmental journalist who founded the website BusinessGreen; and Greg Jackson, the founder and

Terry Barnes

Why Australia can’t forgive Novak Djokovic

So, Novak Djokovic has won the Australian Open tennis tournament – again. Djokovic was never seriously challenged at any stage, beating Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets in the final. In winning his 22nd Grand Slam title, drawing level with Spanish maestro Rafael Nadal, Djokovic also had his revenge on Australia – and Australians. Australia is, of course, the country that deported him for being unvaccinated in 2022. As recently as last month, polls indicated that just one in three Australians wanted Djokovic to come back this year. This clearly motivated the Serbian star: he wanted to prove his detractors wrong and, in his eyes, he did. Djokovic hinted at his

Sunday

John Keiger John Keiger

What Germany can learn from Japan about the new world order

The end of the second world war saw the defeated aggressors Germany and Japan accept moral capitulation and begin new international lives as liberal democratic and largely pacifist states bent on cooperation not coercion. But over the last few years an increasingly unsettled international order has emerged to test the pacifism of the fourth and third largest economic powers. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has finally cajoled a reluctant Germany out of its semi-neutral stance. As war returned to the European continent, Berlin has bowed to Western pressure to release its Leopard tanks to a martyrised Ukraine. No longer virgo intacta, Berlin has forfeited its 80 year state of innocence.  Japan has reacted

Saturday

Natasha Feroze

Matthew Parris, Lionel Shriver and Gus Carter

24 min listen

On this week’s episode, Matthew Parris wonders what ‘winning’ in Ukraine really means (00:52), Lionel Shriver says she’s fighting her own war against words (08:43), and Gus Carter wonders whether it’s a good idea to reintroduce Bison into Britain (18:28).

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe’s leaders are failing in their duty to keep people safe

Life in Europe is becoming increasingly precarious; a case of hoping it’s not your turn to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a Salisbury court on Monday a 21-year-old Afghan with a long history of violence was convicted of the brutal murder of Thomas Roberts; on Wednesday, a Palestinian allegedly stabbed two people to death on a German train. That same day in Spain a Moroccan under a deportation order was arrested after a verger was killed with a machete and a priest badly wounded in two related attacks in the city of Algeciras. Meanwhile in France an Algerian and a Kosovan are in custody after two

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why do young people fall for Holocaust conspiracies?

Millennials and Generation Z pride themselves on being ‘anti-racist’. We might, then, expect that remembering the Holocaust properly would be important to them – it was the largest act of racial hatred in modern history. The truth is very different and more troubling. New research commissioned by the Claims Conference finds Dutch millennials and Gen Z are more likely than the rest of the public to be ignorant of the Holocaust, deny the facts, oppose acknowledging the Netherlands’s role, and be sympathetic to contemporary Nazism. While 12 per cent of Dutch adults believe ‘the Holocaust is a myth’ or ‘the number of Jews who died has been greatly exaggerated’, that jumps to

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Is Japan doomed?

Japan is heading for trouble, the country’s prime minster Fumio Kishida has suggested. ‘Our country is on the brink of being unable to maintain the functions of society,’ he said in a speech earlier this week. Japan’s birth rate, the average number of children a woman will have, is too low, and still falling. It’s 1.3, and needs to be 2.1 to keep the population stable. With every year that passes, there are hundreds of thousands fewer Japanese people.  Economics is mostly to blame. Once, there was a secure and predictable life was for the average Japanese person. The men would toil away at a big company in return for the assurance of

Thursday

William Nattrass William Nattrass

Novak Djokovic and the real reason many Serbs support Russia

Novak Djokovic is no stranger to controversy. A year ago, the Serbian tennis star was deported from Australia after failing to comply with the country’s covid vaccination rules. Organisers of the Australian Open are once again fighting fires relating to Djokovic.  This time, it is Djokovic’s father, Srdjan, who is in trouble after he posed with supporters of Russian president Vladimir Putin outside the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. Djokovic senior was pictured with a man holding a Russian flag emblazoned with Putin’s face, and wearing a T-shirt printed with the pro-war Z symbol. In a video recording of the incident, Srdjan appears to say ‘Long live the Russians’. The Aussie Cossack YouTube channel,