World

Sunday

Julius Strauss

The night train to Kyiv

After several months in the UK, the lady sleeping on the opposite bunk on the night train to Kyiv told me she had had enough. Welcomed under the Homes for Ukraine scheme into a small English village, she had watched as the thermostat in the house was turned down and then turned down again. ‘Finally they set it to 15 degrees’, she said. ‘I know they were trying to save money but for all the water bottles I used I just couldn’t keep warm. I decided life back in Kyiv had to be better.’ An hour before our conversation I had arrived at Lviv station in western Ukraine. I sat

Saturday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Why did Jacinda Ardern resign?

24 min listen

Kate Andrews talks to Fraser Nelson and the New Zealand based journalist and author Andrea Vance about the surprise announcement from Jacinda Ardern that she will be leaving the world stage next month.

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Sorry, folks, Donald Trump isn’t going away

Almost all of us can recite the reasons why Donald Trump’s political career should be over. We hear them again and again. He lost the presidency in 2020 after four exhausting years. His angry fans stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a now infamous day in American history. He lost his media clout after being banned from Facebook and (until recently) Twitter. He has clung to his ‘election denial’, as Democrats like to call it, and that makes all his political antics now seem petulant and tired. In the mid-terms in November, a fair number of the candidates he backed lost crucial senate and gubernatorial races which his party

Thursday

Sam Collins

Jacinda Ardern over-promised and under-delivered

And just like that, she’s gone. In one of the biggest shocks to hit New Zealand politics since that late night in 1984 when a clearly inebriated Robert Muldoon called a doomed snap election, Jacinda Ardern has announced her resignation as New Zealand prime minister after five years in power.  Some may argue that she is ‘getting out at the top’. But anyone with serious knowledge of New Zealand politics can recognise the sight of a prime minister getting out before an election they feel they are unable to win. Kiwi political leaders (as with our cousins in Australia) have a proud tradition of leaving office (either voluntarily or not)

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The unhinged environmentalism of Al Gore

Lucky old Americans. They only had to put up with one fruitcake as president, in Donald Trump. It could have been worse. But for a few hanging chads in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, they could have ended up with Al Gore.  It isn’t just the hanging chads, though, that have become unhinged, but Gore himself. In an extraordinary speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, an increasingly crimson Gore angrily berated the rest of the world – Greta Thunberg and other youthful activists excepted – for failing to realise just how close we are to climate apocalypse. ‘People are familiar with the thin blue line which astronauts

Wednesday

Iain Macwhirter

Gender wars: the Union’s new battle line

When Rishi Sunak had dinner with Nicola Sturgeon last week, the idea was to show he was interested in a friendly relationship: a ‘constructive dialogue’. Liz Truss had dismissed Sturgeon as an ‘attention seeker’ who was ‘best ignored’, but Sunak preferred a more positive approach. He was keen to pose for pictures afterwards. This new friendship lasted four days. Sturgeon is now accusing Sunak of ‘a full-frontal attack on the democratically elected Scottish parliament’ because he has become the first Prime Minister in history to veto a bill passed there – the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. Sturgeon has put on a virtuoso performance of grievance. It’s ‘an outrage’, she

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Is Putin about to gamble on a second mobilisation wave?

Is Vladimir Putin finally about to announce a second mobilisation wave? Ukraine has been warning for weeks that up to half-a-million more troops could be forced into the army. Jitters are growing in Russia that a call-up might be imminent: rumours are circulating that the Kremlin might shut Russia’s borders and resort to a second round of mobilisation. The Kremlin has denied these reports: but Putin is increasingly getting desperate. He needs to find a way to turn this war around. He also needs to fulfil defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s quota that an army of approximately 1.5 million is needed ‘to guarantee the fulfilment of tasks to ensure Russia’s security’ –

Owen Matthews

Boris Bondarev: Why more Russians aren’t defecting

Boris Bondarev’s Twitter profile sums up his past, present and future in three short phrases: ‘Russian diplomat in exile. Stop the war. The old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ – a quote from Wilfred Owen’s 1918 denunciation of patriotic hypocrisy. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 42-year-old Bondarev quit his job as an arms control expert at Russia’s diplomatic mission to Geneva in protest. None of his colleagues in Geneva, or anywhere else, followed suit (at least not publicly). Does that make Bondarev the only Russian diplomat with a conscience? ‘It’s not about conscience,’ Bondarev tells me by Zoom from an undisclosed Swiss location where he now

Douglas Murray

If not Biden, who?

Monday was Martin Luther King Jr Day in the United States. And this year it was most memorable for two events. The first was the unveiling in Boston of a new sculptural tribute to the civil rights hero. Unfortunately, depending on the position from which you view this inept work of public art, it resembles either a man holding his head in despair or some people holding aloft a giant turd. The second incident was Joe Biden doing what he does best. The President was careful not to politicise the day – apart from attacking the Republicans. But during his remarks he also noted that it was the birthday of

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

What Boris Johnson should do next

If you were rich, foreign and globally mobile, would you choose to move to the UK? The trend, it turns out, is the other way: according to migration consultants Henley & Partners, we’ve seen a net outflow of 12,000 millionaires since 2017, with 1,500 departures last year. And it’s pretty obvious why. If tax is your top concern, a tightening of non-dom rules and the near-certain prospect of a Keir Starmer government abolishing non-dom status altogether would loom large. If you’re Asian, you may think Australia looks more welcoming. If you’re European and offended by Brexit, you might prefer Ireland or fashionable Portugal. But actually we’d be mad not to

Aidan Hartley

My nonagenarian father-in-law has embraced East Africa

Kenya My father-in-law Gerry Taylor is 91 and walks daily on our Kenya ranch among herds of buffalo, giraffe and zebras. A few days ago he inadvertently came within 20 feet of an elephant and the both of them pretended not to see each other. He says he enjoys highland Kenya for its open spaces and endless horizons, the sense of freedom which, he points out, cannot be found in a row of English houses. Late in his life, East Africa has been his compensation for the India he lost as a youth. Born in Calcutta, Gerry was the son of a British Army officer who worked on India’s railways.

Tuesday

James Snell

Is Germany’s defence minister up to the job?

After yesterday’s abrupt and humiliating departure of Germany’s defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, beleaguered chancellor Olaf Scholz has today appointed her replacement. If you were expecting a stellar appointment, prepare to be disappointed. If, however, you have followed Scholz’s pilgrim’s progress on the war in Ukraine closely, then you can enjoy the sensation of your low expectations being met.  The new hire in question is Boris Pistorius, a stalwart of Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SPD). He has never held military rank. He has never held national office. He is a former mayor of Osnabrück, and was, until his elevation to the federal cabinet, the minister of the interior and sport for the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Who do Harry and Meghan think they are?

It is quite funny that Jeremy Clarkson, having written that silly joke about the Duchess of Sussex being paraded naked through the streets, should now find himself so ritually humiliated.  Clarkson, now in danger of losing his role as a television presenter and the acceptable face of British men who like cars, has felt compelled to apologise not once not twice but thrice. He first said sorry on Twitter, before Christmas. He also wrote to Harry. Then yesterday, in a statement, he performed the full grovel.  With vulgar haste, the couple poured more scorn on Clarkson ‘I really am sorry,’ he said. ‘All the way from the balls of my

Monday

James Snell

Germany’s missteps in Ukraine have left Scholz fighting for his political life

Difficult though it may be to believe, there is chaos at the top of the German government over its mishandling of the war in Ukraine. Germany’s defence minister, Christine Lambrecht of the Social Democratic party, has quit her post after the most extraordinary series of unforced errors.  The war has brought all of this to a head. It has exposed Europe’s lax security and complacency. But German defence has been in a league of its own for many years. Over the course of the war, there has been no end to the amount of troubling information that has emerged.    German authorities so underrated the chance of war, the country’s intelligence chief

Robin Ashenden

Russia’s wives and mothers are mobilising against Putin

On a Russian Telegram channel, Svetlana from Samara is making a public plea. She has not heard from her brother since the shelling of Makiivka on 31 December, which may have killed up to 400 Russian soldiers. Enquiries to the military registration, the city governor, the Ministry of Defence have apparently turned up nothing. ‘After all my appeals, requests, calls, I became desperate that no one was listening to me. Ordinary, simple people are not needed by anyone.’  Another, older woman, Valentina, posts from the same region. ‘Please help me find my son,’ she says. ‘He was in Makiivka on 31 December. Since then, there’s been no news. He is neither [registered

Steerpike Steerpike

Shock as the New York Times praises Britain

Ah, the New York Times. For years now, the world’s worst newspaper has painted a grim picture of Britain as a quasi-dictatorial kingdom. It’s a country drowning in ‘imperial nostalgia’, where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of the great metropolis, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps. Our late Queen ‘helped obscure a bloody history of decolonisation’; our judicial system is racist for daring to lock up slave masters. So deranged is the newspaper that it even hired a former Russia Today contributor to sneer that Britain is ‘a nation falling apart at the seams.’ Who on earth would ever want to live here? Well, it turns out, er, the

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The real problem with Davos and the World Economic Forum

The political and financial elite are gathered in Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting, which starts today. Yet before the conference has even kicked off, the narrative around it has already been crafted: the WEF will have to pivot away from the free-market and globalist outlook Davos usually promotes, and switch its focus to inequality instead. In a cost-of-living crisis, images of the glamorous Swiss resort and delegates quaffing champagne are not a good look.  This problem was pre-empted by many. Neither Rishi Sunak nor his chancellor Jeremy Hunt will be attending this year’s conference (trade secretary Kemi Badenoch and business secretary Grant Shapps will

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Goldman Sachs and the culling of the surplus elites

Goldman Sachs laid off 3,200 employees with as little as half an hour’s notice. It will probably please the petty, pinched, Schadenfreude-prone sort of little people who have never worked for a predatory investment bank to imagine the scenes. I know it did me. All these huffy guys dressed like Christian Bale in American Psycho, ties wrenched from necks, belongings tumbled into cardboard boxes (lucky gonks, family photos, stress balls, wrinkled twists of cocainey paper and whatnot), stepping out on to Wall Street like goddamn civilians, faces black with fury. Masters of the Universe demoted at a stroke to citizens of the universe.  It’s quite the retrospective performance review What’s more unusual is what happened next. Nothing

Sunday

Phillips O'Brien

Ukraine needs more than tanks

What weapons will Ukraine get next? It’s a crucial question that matters perhaps more than anything else for understanding how the Russo-Ukraine war will end. For the last few months two different systems have received the most attention, systems that Ukraine has asked for almost daily. These are tanks, or MBTs (Main Battle Tanks), the key armoured vehicle of 20th and 21st century land warfare, and ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems), the longest-range ammunition now available for the US-made HIMARS rocket launchers already in Ukraine.  Both are needed for the quickest possible Ukrainian victory in the war, though for now it seems that the first, tanks, are on their way and the

David Abulafia

Why has president Xi got my book about the Mediterranean?

A few days ago, an email arrived from someone I know in China: my book The Great Sea had been spotted on the bookshelves of president Xi when he delivered his beginning of the year address to China and the world. China watchers were expending plenty of energy identifying the other books on his shelves, and came up with 62 titles. The great majority were by Chinese authors, including famous classics: the history of ancient China by Sima Qian and the Full Collection of Tang Poems, not to mention works by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Admittedly there is a scattering of translations, including Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy