World

Saturday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

How sumo wrestling bounced back

Sumo is the featured attraction at the Royal Albert Hall this weekend in a rare foray for the ancient sport outside of its spiritual home of Japan. The five-day tournament started on Wednesday and features 40 rikishi (wrestlers) (about six-tonnes’ worth) squaring off in a specially constructed dohyo (ring). Reinforced chairs and upgraded toilets have been installed for the exclusive use of the 28-stone ‘naked ambassadors’ (as they are being called here in Japan). Like test cricket, sumo wrestling is set apart and sustained by its antiquity It has been a huge success so far. Tickets sold out long ago but can be picked up for hundreds of pounds on

Grigor Atanesian

Will Trump’s peace hold in Nagorno-Karabakh?

On the Armenian banks of the winding Aras River, which represents the border with Iran, I am approached by two boys offering local grapes. The fruit is more yellow than green, and translucent and very sweet. ‘Are you American?’, one boy asks in Armenian. I am not, I tell them, and they are disappointed. It is late September and I am in Armenia, on the banks of this river, surrounded by the dramatic peaks of the Zangezur mountains, to film a programme for the BBC World Service about Donald Trump’s intervention in this country’s war with Azerbaijan. In early August, Trump announced with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan that

Friday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Has Trump fallen into Putin’s trap – again?

Sorry, Volodymyr. There won’t be any Tomahawk missiles headed to Ukraine now that president Vladimir Putin of Russia has talked on the phone with president Donald Trump, who called their session ‘very productive.’ What it will produce remains an open question. But it does seem to have resulted in a decision to hold an upcoming summit in Budapest. The bottom line: Putin has outflanked Ukrainian president Zelensky, who will meet at the White House with Trump today. Trump is a transactional president and he has business that he wants to transact with Russia, including, but not limited to, a peace deal between it and Ukraine. If anything, Trump, intent on winning

Sam Olsen

China really is a threat to Britain

When Dominic Cummings claimed this week that China had hacked into Britain’s most secret systems, the government rushed to deny it – understandably, given the political heat over the collapsed Chinese spy trial. But even if Cummings’ story proves false, the underlying truth remains: China has been systematically targeting Western networks for years, and extracting vast quantities of sensitive information. What is striking is not the allegation, but the reaction by a government so anxious not to call China a threat that it pretends not to see one. It is a surreal position, because the danger has been obvious for years. The truth is that China poses a greater strategic threat to Britain than any state since the

Daniel DePetris

Trump has a new European target in his crosshairs

There was a time not so long ago when Germany was US president Donald Trump’s favourite punching bag in Europe. During his first term in office, Trump had a penchant for biting Berlin’s ear off, blasting its political leadership as grossly incompetent, blaming the country for destroying itself by accepting a million refugees and wagging his finger at the Germans’ unwillingness to take more responsibility for their own defence. Trump hasn’t forgotten what happened in the lead-up to the Nato summit over the summer Yet those days are over. Trump, now in his second term, has a new European target in his crosshairs: Spain. The land of Tempranillo and Jamón

Nick Boles

Nick Boles, James Ball, Andrew Rosenheim, Arabella Byrne & Rory Sutherland

27 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Nick Boles says that Ukraine must stand as a fortress of European freedom; James Ball reviews If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: The Case Against Superintelligent AI, by Eliezer Yudowsky and Nate Sores; Andrew Rosenheim examines the treasure trove of John Le Carre’s papers at the Bodleian; Arabella Byrne provides her notes on skip-diving; and, in the battle of the sexes, Rory Sutherland says the thing to fear is not feminisation, but emasculation. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

James Tidmarsh

Macron survives again – but at what cost?

Sébastien Lecornu’s government has survived a no-confidence vote – but only because Emmanuel Macron shelved the pension reform that once defined his presidency. Today’s motion of censure fell short of the 289 votes needed to bring down the government, sparing Macron for now but leaving his authority weakened. What began as a crusade for fiscal responsibility has ended in capitulation, exposing the fragility of his presidency. If the vote saved Macron in the short term, it exposed how completely he has lost control of his political base Out of 577 members of parliament, 271 voted for censure, leaving the government 18 votes short of collapse. It was not a narrow

Arieh Kovler

Hamas is taking revenge on the gangs of Gaza

As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force, perhaps Gazans thought they might finally get some brief moment of peace. If so, they were wrong. Almost as soon as the IDF withdrew to the new Yellow Line inside Gaza, the bullets started flying and Palestinians were once again being killed: but this time, it was Hamas pulling the trigger. Their first target: the Doghmush clan.  Until it took power in a coup in 2007, Hamas was essentially just the biggest armed gang in Gaza, and it hasn’t forgotten this  Like every society, Palestinian society has its faultlines that divide its people into different smaller groups. There’s politics: Hamas,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Can anyone stop J.D. Vance becoming president?

As Donald J. Trump flew to the Holy Land on Sunday to declare peace, his Vice-President took to the airwaves to address the rumbling civil conflict on the home front. J.D. Vance did not rule out invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act in order to quell the violent protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in several American cities. ‘The problem is the fact that the entire media in this country, cheered on by a few far-left lunatics, have made it OK to tee off on American law enforcement,’ he told NBC News. ‘We cannot accept that in the United States of America.’ This is now Vance’s familiar role. He’s not

Nick Boles

Ukraine must stand as a fortress of European freedom

It is 35 years since I was last in Warsaw and the city is unrecognisable. Back then it was grimy and depressing, full of buildings still pockmarked by bomb damage. Nothing worked and nobody smiled. Now it gleams. The historic Old Town has been lovingly rebuilt and restored. Everything else is new: the cars, the shops, the office blocks and apartment buildings. The fashions are sharp and the teeth are white. It is a powerful tonic for beleaguered liberals. Don’t let the democracy-in-decline-mongers deceive you. Economic and political freedom work. And what the world needs is more of both. In the early 1990s I was sent as a wet-behind-the ears

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Gaza ceasefire, unemployment increases and a Gen Z uprising

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, praised President Donald Trump for the Gaza ceasefire agreement while in India accompanied by a trade delegation of 126. He then flew off to Egypt for the summit at which the peace declaration was signed. Sir Keir asserted that the dropping of a prosecution against two men for spying for Beijing (which they deny) was because China had not been a ‘threat to national security’ when they were accused of espionage between December 2021 and February 2023; Lord Case, the former cabinet secretary, said it definitely had been, and two former heads of MI6 agreed. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, was seen to

The Spectator

The questions the government must answer over the China spying case

Exactly a year ago, this magazine warned that ministers were showing a dangerous naivety towards China. We revealed that the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister were all intent on cosying up to Beijing. They were scornful of the wariness Conservative ministers had shown towards the Chinese Communist party. The Labour leadership believed that their pursuit of growth could be supercharged by Chinese investment. They hoped one of their missions – the drive to decarbonise the grid – could be facilitated by Chinese tech. They thought Tory attitudes to China were warped by ideology and a more pragmatic line towards Beijing would be economically rewarding. A ‘China Audit’

Tim Shipman

Here be dragons: the truth about Chinese espionage

On 3 July a Chinese man, Xu Zewei, was arrested in Milan to face extradition on nine charges relating to the hack carried out by a group called Haf-nium during the Covid pandemic. Western companies had secrets stolen in 2020 and 2021 when a weakness in the Microsoft Exchange servers was exploited. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ, later said 70 British firms had fallen victim to ‘a malicious act by Chinese state-backed actors’. The court documents claim that officers of China’s ‘Ministry of State Security and the Shanghai State Security Bureau directed Xu to conduct this hacking’. China is constantly probing for ‘weaknesses’ in British defences

Wednesday

Georgia L. Gilholy

Why are British aides going on ‘Future Leaders’ trips to China?

What if it were uncovered that staffers for Foreign Office ministers had been flown out to Moscow for lavish grace and favour trips with Vladimir Putin’s underlings? Investigations would be launched and resignations hastily tendered. But we can expect no such outrage when China, not Russia, is the destination. Why funnel money into tackling the CCP’s malign influence while investing in networking trips that fuel its propaganda machine? The ‘Future Leaders Programme’ is organised by the Great Britain-China Centre (GBCC), a taxpayer-funded quango charged with encouraging ‘dialogue’ with China. According to parliament’s register of interests, staffers for Catherine West, then Foreign Office minister for the Indo-Pacific, and for David Lammy, the

Mark Nayler

Pedro Sanchez is compiling a blacklist of anti-abortion doctors

Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, has demanded that the regions of Aragon, Asturias, the Balearic Islands and Madrid – most of which are governed by the Conservative People’s party (PP) – compile lists of doctors who refuse to perform pregnancy terminations. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the PP president of Madrid, has refused to publish what she calls a ‘blacklist’. The move is part of Sanchez’s plan to make abortion a constitutional right, following the example set by France last year. Abortion has been legal in Spain since 1985, and in 2010 the 12-week rule, which allowed women to receive pregnancy terminations without having to give a reason, was increased to 14

Yossi Melman

Netanyahu has let a key opportunity slip through his fingers

The refusal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the Sharm el-Sheikh peace summit this week has cast a long shadow over his future – both at home and abroad. After President Donald Trump landed earlier that day at Ben Gurion Airport – at the very moment Israeli hostages began to be released – he invited Netanyahu to ride with him in ‘the Beast’, the US presidential limousine, on the way to address the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. During the 30-minute drive, Trump personally urged Netanyahu to accompany him to the summit. Netanyahu, seeking formal protocol, requested an official invitation. Within minutes, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi telephoned the Israeli prime minister. On

Limor Simhony Philpott

Hamas unchecked is as brutal as ever

As the dust settles on Israel’s phased withdrawal from Gaza under Donald Trump’s hard-won ceasefire deal, Hamas has slithered straight back into the void. Barely hours after the ink dried on ‘phase one’ of Trump’s plan, the Islamist rulers of Gaza unleashed a wave of reprisals against rival Palestinian clans. Accusations of ‘collaboration’ with Israel, or simple refusal to bow to Hamas’s rule, have triggered executions, abductions and what survivors are calling outright massacres. Instead of rebuilding, Gaza is now witnessing a purge. The message is clear: anyone who worked against Hamas during the war will pay for it now. In Gaza City, fierce clashes have erupted between Hamas and

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Middle East experts got Trump all wrong

Whenever Donald Trump proposes a policy that runs counter to the progressive consensus, there are three stages of response: it’ll never work, it’s a disaster, it was our idea all along. We are at stage three on Trump’s truce in Gaza. Antony Blinken, Secretary of State in Joe Biden’s administration, says: ‘It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden administration developed after months of discussion with Arab partners, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.’ It’s true that Joe Biden secured a two-month ceasefire at the start of the year and with it the release of a sizeable contingent of hostages. It’s true also that Trump’s truce

Tim Shipman

China spy scandal: ‘a masterclass of ineptitude’?

13 min listen

Tim Shipman and Charles Parton, China adviser at the Council on Geostrategy, join James Heale to discuss the ongoing fallout over the collapse of the Westminster spy case. Security minister Dan Jarvis answered an urgent question on the matter late on Monday in Parliament, stringently denying that the government played an active role in collapsing the case. But, as Charles and Tim stress, the case still doesn’t add up. Is it as simple as the government not wanting to offend China? And is the deputy national security adviser being ‘hung out to dry’? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Irwin Stelzer

Can the peace in Gaza last?

He came, he saw, he conquered. That just about describes President Trump’s 12,000-mile round trip from Washington, D.C. to Israel and Egypt. He addressed Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, greeted the hostages and their families, hopped on Air Force One for a flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, signed the first phase of a Gaza peace deal, delivered a moving speech, met with the leaders of 27 countries to push the next phases of his 20-point peace plan forward and take a well-earned victory lap, and returned to Washington after what most people would consider a full day. The hope that a ceasefire will eventually reduce the bitter enmity between Gazans and Israel