World

Tuesday

Marcel Plichta

Is providing air defence equipment enough to help Ukraine?

During his first visit to Kyiv last Saturday, Rishi Sunak pledged a new tranche of British military aid to Ukraine. Unlike previous UK support, this new package was entirely focused on air defence: £50 million for anti-aircraft guns (almost certainly purchased via a third party as the UK military does not currently use them), radars, and counter-drone electronic warfare systems. The Prime Minister’s pledge follows a promise made by the UK to provide an additional 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles for Ukraine’s armed forces a few weeks ago.  It’s no mystery why air defence has become a key priority. Since October, Russian missiles and drones have pummelled Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and power

Debbie Hayton

What trans activists can learn from Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning, who leaked hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic records about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Wikileaks, is revered by some. ‘The biggest hero that ever lived,’ says Vivienne Westwood. To others, like Donald Trump, Manning is an ‘ungrateful traitor’ who should still be in jail.  To Trump’s fury, one of Barack Obama’s final acts as president was to release Manning. The former US army intelligence analyst is using that freedom to tour the world on a speaking circuit – but there’s something the former US soldier is not so eager to talk about: sex and gender. A day after Manning was sentenced back in 2013, Bradley became Chelsea. ‘I am a female,’ Manning said

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron shies away from confronting the migrant crisis

On the Sunday that Britain honoured its war dead, France remembered its fallen from the terrible evening of 13 November, 2015. One hundred and thirty Parisians were massacred at various venues across the capital. A subsequent investigation revealed that two of the Islamist terror cell had entered Europe from the Middle East by blending in among migrants. A year after the Paris atrocity, Monika Hohlmeier MEP, the European Parliament’s chief negotiator on a new European terrorism law, outlined the EU’s determination to keep its citizens safe from future attacks. Hohlmeier placed particular emphasis on tightening the ‘great deficiencies that became visible at the EU’s external borders over the last months’. Frontex, the

Monday

Wolfgang Münchau Wolfgang Münchau

The Swiss-style Brexit delusion

Rotation is the clearest sign of intellectual muddle. When Britain left the EU, some leave supporters thought they could negotiate a bespoke agreement that would give them all the benefits of membership but none of the obligations. Then it was the Swiss model. Remember Chequers? It was the beginning of the end of Theresa May. The deal she finally negotiated would have kept the UK in the single market and the customs union for several years. The deal that was finally adopted comes under the moniker of Canada: a classic free trade deal. Now the government is contemplating a rotation back to the Swiss model. After a predictable outcry following the

Ben Domenech

Mike Pompeo is the dark horse in the Republican race

The race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination began in earnest on 9 November 2022 — and it could prove far more competitive than many people think. Baked into the thinking of virtually every centre-right commentator, consultant and grifter is the assumption that former president Donald J. Trump will be the nominee. Only Trump opponents and conservative sceptics are even interested in the possibility that someone else will be the choice — and they have largely coalesced around the idea that the sole candidate who could beat the most Florida Man is another Florida Man: governor Ron DeSantis. Some assume that DeSantis will not challenge Trump, and that if he does,

Sunday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Fifa’s president is feeling African, gay and disabled. I’m feeling confused

‘I’m defending football here, and injustice’ was the standout quote, for me, from what has been described as a ‘bizarre tirade’ by Fifa president Gianni Infantino at a pre-World Cup press conference yesterday. But (Freudian?) slips aside, there were plenty of gems to choose from. Other highlights of the rambling, hour-long diatribe include Infantino’s impassioned identification with the downtrodden, ‘Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled.’ He could have reached a crescendo by standing up and declaring ‘I’m Spartacus’ but left it at that. Remarkably, with a straight if rather frosty face, and applying the sort of

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron’s humiliating climbdown over Aukus

Guess who turned up in Bangkok this week at the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting? The forum, which includes the US, China, Australia, Japan, Russia, but not France, was visited by none other than President Macron. ‘You must be asking yourself what a French president is doing here’, he charmed in English.  Macron claimed to be the first European leader to be invited to the forum. He insisted he was there because France is ‘a country of the region’. According to the Elysée this invitation ‘validates the Indo-Pacific strategy launched in 2018’. It does indeed, but with far more subtle ramifications. What has always been a logical, albeit humiliating, step

Saturday

Daniel DePetris

Why Biden has given MBS immunity over the Khashoggi killing

For US President Joe Biden, Saudi Arabia is the problem that never goes away. First came his decision to refrain from slapping penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) following the kidnapping and murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi royal insider who became increasingly critical of the ruling family (the Biden administration did place travel restrictions on 76 other Saudi officials and sanctioned the elite Saudi intelligence force that carried out the operation). There’s something dirty and soulless about giving presidents, prime ministers and kings more legal protection than the rest of us Then, in November last year, the White House notified Congress of its first arms deal with the kingdom, a

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why Macron won’t criticise the Qatar World Cup

France has adopted a different approach to the World Cup in Qatar than most of its European rivals. While the likes of England, Denmark and Germany will virtue signal their disapproval of the Gulf State’s views on various issues, France is set to remain silent.   Their captain, Hugo Lloris, the Tottenham goalkeeper, has said he won’t be joining other European skippers in donning an anti-discrimination armband during the tournament. ‘When we are in France, when we welcome foreigners, we often want them to follow our rules, to respect our culture, and I will do the same when I go to Qatar,’ explained Lloris. ‘I can agree or disagree with their

Friday

Ali Ansari

Is Iran going to execute its protestors?

Are protestors in Iran going to be sentenced to death? That grim question will be on the mind of many Iranians today, after protestors reportedly threw petrol bombs last night at the former home of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Insults to supreme leaders past and present carry the death sentence in Iran. Further reports that 227 members of the Iranian parliament had signed a statement declaring the protestors ‘enemies of God’ and calling for them to be executed also went viral this week. The story managed to elicit a wave of condemnation across social media, the wider press and even led to Canadian prime minister Justin

Wednesday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is Xi drifting away from Putin?

There’s been none of the wolf warriorism we’ve become used to from Chinese diplomats as President Xi met world leaders this week. While meeting presidents Biden, Macron and Australia’s PM, Xi was all smiles; the discussion focused on climate change and food security, as well as how to prevent tensions from spilling over into war. The one exception to Xi’s more charming image seems to have been his encounter with Canada’s leader Justin Trudeau, who received a dressing down for his government leaking contents of their bilateral the day before. But this awkward clash was the exception. And on Russia, Xi seems to have said all the right things. According to a White House readout of Xi and Biden’s three-and-a-half hour meeting on Monday,

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is China finally easing its zero Covid strategy?

China’s president Xi Jinping has shaken hands with more world leaders over the last two days than he has met in three years. Xi hasn’t worn a mask throughout the G20 summit: from the moment he and his opera singer wife stepped off the plane in Bali, emerging from a Covid cocoon. When the summit finishes tomorrow, Xi will go straight to Thailand to meet other Asian leaders at the APEC summit. His outgoing deputy Li Keqiang has also been meeting other southeast Asian leaders in Cambodia. For China’s leaders, pressing the flesh has been unthinkable since the pandemic first broke out in China in December 2019. Now the pathological

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

A worrying lesson from the Polish missile tragedy

When what seems to have been a Ukrainian S-300 air defence missile accidentally hit the village of Przewodów in Poland, killing two farm workers, it became at once a litmus test of national attitudes and a reminder of the wider dangers of the war in Ukraine. At first, confusion about what had happened allowed everyone to reach for their favourite conclusion. There were suggestions that this was a deliberate Russian attack to test Nato’s will, and calls for the alliance’s Article 5 – whereby an attack on one member should be considered an attack on all – to be invoked. Poland’s early assessment that this was a ‘Russian-made missile’, which

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Donald Trump the Jeb Bush of 2024?

Donald Trump has been running for president for at least a decade. His campaign did not start on 16 June 2015, when he descended that golden escalator in that eponymous tower in New York. It began on 19 November 2012, days after President Barack Obama had defeated Mitt Romney, when Trump registered a trademark application for the phrase he pinched from Ronald Reagan: ‘Make America Great Again.’ After he won the White House in 2016, Trump did not cease pursuing re-election. After he lost in 2020, ditto. The fundraising – the key part – and therallies have kept going and going. On Tuesday night, at his home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida,

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

How Russia responded to the Polish missile incident

Yesterday, during the largest wave of missile strikes conducted by Russia since February, a shell flew six kilometres over the Ukrainian border into Poland, killing two people. Before any facts had been established, there was confusion in the Russian media whether to report on the story with outraged protestation or excitement. To begin with, Russian commentators reacted with glee. TV presenter and known Kremlin mouthpiece Margarita Simonyan gloated on social media, referencing recent Ukrainian shelling on the Russian border and taunting ‘Now Poland has its own Belgorod region, what did you expect?’. Nevertheless, several hours after the news broke, a statement came from the Russian Ministry of Defence denying responsibility

Nicholas Farrell

Could Berlusconi end the war in Ukraine?

Ravenna, Italy Silvio Berlusconi believes that he alone can entice his old friend Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and intends to give it a go before Christmas. The 86-year-old media tycoon and former Italian prime minister wants a peace deal, mediated by him, to be his political swansong. His private jet is already on standby. Last month, he said that Putin had sent him 20 bottles of vodka for his birthday and ‘a very sweet letter’ Internationally, the timing could not be better. Russia has suffered another military humiliation by abandoning the key city of Kherson and the Biden administration is reportedly telling Volodymyr Zelensky to think seriously about

Aidan Hartley

The energy of the world is shifting south

Kenya Greetings from Africa, my beleaguered cousins. I’ve written before about how in 1973, Uganda’s Idi Amin telegrammed Queen Elizabeth, promising to send shiploads of bananas to feed her subjects after ‘following with sorrow the alarming economic crisis befalling on Britain’. Now that you rival Burkina Faso in the number of times you’ve changed your leaders recently, I’m going to move out of the sunshine, take a swig of cold beer and show some sympathy once more. For a long time, those of us the British Empire left behind when you pushed off a few decades ago sniggering into your pith helmets sometimes wondered if we’d made a mistake. ‘No

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The bogus companies exploiting Britain’s registration rules

Britain appears to be enjoying a surge of entrepreneurialism, with more than 200,000 start-ups registered at Companies House between April and June this year alone. However, while many of these are genuine cases of people taking the plunge and embarking on their dream of opening a tea shop, launching a webinar app or whatever, an awful lot are not going to be contributing any cherries to our national pie – and some might well be pilfering a few. Among those unlikely to be contributing are the 36 companies registered last year to a single address in Bristol – not a business park but a small semi-detached house. Or the 95

The Spectator

Who has lost the most money in human history? 

Billion-dollar losers Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old founder of FTX, saw his wealth plummet from $16 bn to zero when the company collapsed. Other big fortunes lost: – Masayoshi Son, founder of Softbank, lost paper wealth of around $70 bn (in today’s money) during the dotcom crash of 2000-2. The company later floated and now he is reckoned by Forbes to be worth $22.8 bn. – Yasumitsu Shigeta, founder of mobile phone company Hikari Tsushin, lost a paper fortune of $42 bn in the dotcom crash, but thanks to a partial recovery in shares he is now worth $3.4 bn, says Forbes. – John Rockefeller, the oil magnate and America’s richest man