World

Thursday

Andrew Gimson

Is Zack Polanski our Zohran Mamdani?

Like Zohran Mamdani in New York, Zack Polanski offers the thrill of cost-free rebellion. Mamdani leapt to prominence at the end of June by unexpectedly winning the Democratic party nomination in the New York mayoral race, and doing so as an avowed socialist who claims that by taxing the rich he will relieve ‘the despair in working-class Americans’ lives’. Polanski has made waves since the start of September as the new leader of the Green party of England and Wales, using a rhetoric calculated to appeal to left-wing activists, while proclaiming himself the champion of plumbers and hairdressers. He has conjured up an alliance between utopian socialists like himself and

Tim Shipman

Gilded age: the lessons from Trump’s second term

Washington, D.C. When John Swinney, the SNP leader, and Peter Mandelson visited Donald Trump in the Oval Office a few months ago, the President showed them three different models for his planned renovation of the East Wing of the White House, which he has demolished to build a new ballroom. ‘If you’re going to do it,’ Scotland’s First Minister suggested, ‘you might as well go big.’ This Wednesday marked one year since Trump’s election victory, and going big captures the essence of his second term – bold and controversial moves, which have impressed even British politicians who thought him reckless in his first term. When Trump visited Chequers on his

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is New York finished?

New York has elected Zohran Mamdani — and Heather Mac Donald, fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Spectator writer, warns the city is heading for trouble. She tells Freddy Gray why she thinks Mayor-elect Mamdani’s agenda on crime, housing and education could undo decades of progress, and why this moment feels like “a student activist government taking over a real city”.

Douglas Murray

New York is not the city that Mamdani pretends it is

There is an unhappy history of left-wing Britons getting involved in US elections. Back in 2004, the Guardian organised a letter-writing campaign, urging voters in the swing state of Ohio not to re-elect George W. Bush. The good people of Ohio didn’t take kindly to a bunch of Islingtonians telling them how to vote, and although the Guardian’s campaign probably can’t be given all the credit, the voters of Ohio duly went to the polls and swung firmly behind Bush. One wishes that Sadiq Khan’s intervention in this week’s New York mayoral election might have had a similar result. Interviewed shortly before Zohran Mamdani was elected, the mayor of London praised the Democratic

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The Ile d’Oléron attack and Islamism’s ceaseless menace

A man shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ drove his car into a crowd on France’s Ile d’Oléron this morning. At least ten people on the popular holiday destination – situated off the Atlantic Coast – were injured, and three are in a critical condition. Police arrested the driver, a 35-year-old man with a history of petty crime. A search of his vehicle revealed some gas cylinders. Among the injured is 22-year-old Emma Vallain, a parliamentary assistant to Pascal Markowsky, an MP in Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. A rising star in the party, she took part in a televised debate at the weekend about the current political deadlock in France. Jordan Bardella,

Edward Howell

China’s South Korean espionage campaign is growing bolder

It is rare to see Xi Jinping burst into laughter. But something must have tickled China’s Paramount Leader when he met South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Gyeongju, South Korea. The summit will largely be remembered this year for Donald Trump’s tête-à-têtes with East Asian leaders, whether Xi Jinping, Lee Jae-myung, or Sanae Takaichi – despite the US president deciding to give the actual summit a miss. Yet, in what was a bumper week for South Korea, the summit’s host, other bilateral meetings must not go unacknowledged. When Lee met Xi Jinping on Saturday, few expected the two leaders to

Charles Lipson

The far-left have taken over the Democratic party

If you think America doesn’t permit assisted suicide, you haven’t been watching the New York mayoral election. The city is deliberately killing itself. The country’s largest city, its financial and media capital, had a choice among three truly dreadful candidates: a deeply-tarnished former governor, a Republican who runs in every election except Homecoming Queen and had no chance of winning this one (but refused to withdraw), and a young socialist with a winning smile, dreamy programmes, Islamist allies, and zero administrative experience. Predictably, New York voters chose the absolute worst. Zohran Mamdani won handily. Now, they’ll have to live with Mamdani’s socialist programmes, which fail everywhere and break the bank

Heather Mac Donald

Zohran Mamdani will destroy New York

William F. Buckley Jr once quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. New York City is about to be governed by the Columbia University student body. A city that used to think of itself as grown up has just elected a mayor who seems the very embodiment of the American college student: uninformed, entitled and self-important, enjoying a regal quality of life that depends parasitically upon a civilisation about which he knows nothing, yet for which he has nothing but scorn. American college students regularly act out little psychodramas of oppression before an appreciative audience

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why do white men’s feelings matter more than black lesbians’?

So there you have it: the feelings of white men matter more than the rights of black lesbians. That’s the takeaway from the mad fracas at a Gold’s Gym in Los Angeles this week, where a female gym-goer by the name of Tish Hyman says her membership was unceremoniously revoked. Her offence? She dared to complain about the presence of a person with a penis – what we used to call a bloke – in the women’s changing room. Women’s rights have been broken on the wheel of the trans ideology Ms Hyman is a lesbian and a singer originally from the Bronx in New York. She says she encountered

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Keir Starmer is letting China abuse our libel laws

The enormous cost of British libel law is a threat to national security. For the sake of enriching London barristers, Keir Starmer is preserving an unreformed and rapaciously expensive legal system that is wide open to abuse by oligarchs and dictatorships. And he knows it. When he was a young barrister in the 1990s,Starmer represented Helen Steel and David Morris. McDonald’stried to crush the two environmental activists because they had criticised its treatment of animals. The 1997 ‘McLibel’ affair remains notorious as the longest trial in British history. ‘This case shows the absurdity of the libel laws,’ Starmer said at the time. Now almost 30 years on, he is prime minister,

Tuesday

Eleanor Jolliffe

We should mourn the loss of Rome’s medieval towers

The Torre dei Conti, next to Rome’s Forum, partially collapsed yesterday. A construction worker who was carrying out restoration work on the tower was trapped and eventually killed, but this is not the first time the Torre dei Conti has been involved in the death of Romans. The 45 or so remaining medieval towers of Rome are not high on the list of most visitors to the city, but they stand testament to a fascinating, violent and formative period of Rome’s history. The Torre dei Conti was built in the thirteenth century by the Conti family, the family of Pope Innocent III, as a fortified residence to defend and strengthen their

Eliot Wilson

Trump’s nuclear weapons testing is a dangerous idea

It is often difficult to discern the exact meaning of President Trump’s public statements. He does not consider words carefully, being a politician of pure and visceral instinct, but he is also not especially articulate, and this can produce ambiguous jumbles of language. Last week, minutes before he met President Xi Jinping of China at Busan Airport in South Korea, Trump made an extraordinary statement on his Truth Social platform: The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country… Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War

Margaret Mitchell

Was Dick Cheney a hero or a villain?

Former US vice president Dick Cheney died last night aged 84. He arrived in Washington as a congressman for Wyoming, then became secretary for defence under George H.W. Bush and served for eight years as George W. Bush’s vice president. He was considered by many to have pulled the strings behind the Bush administration. Throughout his life, Cheney held that what he had done was necessary What is perhaps his most lasting legacy is the ‘Cheney Doctrine,’ which influenced America’s decision to engage in wars in the Middle East. He campaigned for a military response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which drove his conviction that any country, organisation or individual

Andrew Tettenborn

The rise of anti-democratic human rights

Seventy-five years ago today the European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome by the 12 states, including Britain, that then formed the Council of Europe. There will be official celebrations: in Strasbourg tonight, a solemn ceremony of speeches and a gala classical concert at the Opéra national du Rhin, and in London next month a formal lecture by our recently-retired man in Strasbourg followed by a Foreign Office reception. But one thing is very noticeable: beyond the great, the good and the earnest (such as the human rights bar and organisations like Amnesty and Liberty), few care. Most of the public, and for that matter most of our

Nigel Jones

Do black lives still matter?

It was an ethnic massacre so bad that it could be seen from space. Satellites picked up bloodied patches of soil in North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) swept into the besieged city. Pools of blood and piles of bodies were identified. Thousands of people are feared to have died in the appalling violence. Many thousands more have fled for their lives. Others remain trapped in the city. Satellites picked up bloodied patches of soil in North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher The scenes of slaughter were so blatant that it should have brought marchers out on to the streets of London in passionate protest. But there

Monday

Eliot Wilson

Don’t take away Andrew’s Falklands medal

When the King ‘initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew’ last week – reducing his brother to plain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – the Royal family might have hoped that it would draw an end to the scandal. But public opinion has scented blood, and righteous outrage is building. Andrew’s brave service in the South Atlantic is a matter of record, for which he earned his South Atlantic Medal. It does not make him a good person, nor give him immunity for any later conduct Defence Secretary, John Healey, has revealed that the process of removing Andrew’s last remaining military distinction, his rank as Vice-Admiral,

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is in the grip of a heist epidemic

The good news for the French police is that three of the four people suspected of carrying off the ‘heist of the century’ at the Louvre last month are in custody. The bad news is that the crown jewels they stole, worth an estimated €88 million (£76 million), have yet to be recovered. Given the audacity of the robbery, committed on a Sunday morning as the museum opened its doors to the public, it was assumed by many that the theft was the work of seasoned professionals. The profile of those arrested paints a different picture: they are petty criminals, hailing from Seine-Saint-Denis, the impoverished department north of Paris. The DNA

Sunday

James Tidmarsh

Britain’s trains are dangerously exposed

Europe has seen this nightmare before. On 21 August 2015, a gunman armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle, a pistol and a knife opened fire on a Thalys train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris, wounding three passengers before being overpowered near Arras. The attacker, Ayoub El Khazzani, a 25-year-old Moroccan who had trained with Islamist militants in Syria, boarded the train intending to commit a massacre in the name of jihad. He was stopped only because three off-duty American servicemen happened to be on board and tackled him as he tried to reload. Without them, the carriage would have become a slaughterhouse. El Khazzani was sentenced to life by a

James Tidmarsh

Macron has declared war on free speech

Emmanuel Macron says Europeans should stop relying on social media for their news and turn back to traditional public media. Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, he said people were ‘completely wrong’ to use social networks for information and should instead depend on journalists and established outlets. Social platforms, he argued, are driven by a ‘process of maximum excitement’ designed to ‘maximise advertising revenue’, a system he said is ‘destroying the foundations of democratic debate’. His vision is of a Europe where free speech is tolerated only when it is traceable, and where platforms pre-emptively silence anything that might draw a regulator’s glare He accused X of being ‘dominated by far-right

Yossi Melman

The assassination that changed Israel forever

Few political assassinations of a political leader have fundamentally and dramatically altered the course of a nation. American democracy, for instance, endured the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and black Americans continued to enjoy their hard-won freedom. About a century later, the murder of President John F. Kennedy did not halt the legislative process that secured civil rights for African Americans. The most consequential political assassination in modern history was that of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in June 1914. His death at the hands of Serbian nationalist revolutionaries served as the spark that ignited the first world war. There is little doubt