World

Does Kamala Harris deserve to be vice president?

Is it rude to refer to the Vice President of the USA as the world’s most famous diversity hire? Possibly. But it is the same with so many things that are true. You needn’t take my word for it. Joe Biden made his selection priorities clear when he was confirmed as his party’s nominee last year. He immediately declared that his search for a running mate was going to focus on non-white women. And in some ways it was a savvy move. Like John McCain in 2008, he knew that the US media might not thrill to a ticket made up of a couple of white, male soon-to-be octogenarians. Yet

Ian Williams

Why is China turning its back on the world?

China reacted to the news of the US government’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics with predictable fury — a foreign ministry spokesman described it as a ‘naked political provocation’. He then added that US officials had jumped the gun because they had not even been invited. That seemed like a bit of added petulance, but it is entirely in keeping with China’s growing mood of self-isolation — a mood that is beginning to have some bizarre and dangerous consequences. The Chinese Communist party has always been a paranoid organisation, with a deep suspicion towards the outside world, but President Xi Jinping has taken this to new heights. Western

America is a nation divided

New York Imagine a European country today in which a newspaper in its most populous city launches a mendacious project reinterpreting its past. The practice was perfected under the old communist system that ruled Romania, Hungary, Poland and the rest of the Soviet satellites. But it is no longer possible in that part of the world now that the old continent has rediscovered freedom. It is taking place elsewhere, though, right here in New York, marinated by the Bagel Times which has invented a nation predicated on racism and enforced racial inequality. The 1619 Project is based on delusion and is a sweeping assault on the American way of life

Islamonomics: how Erdogan crashed the Turkish economy

The Turkish lira sank to an all-time low against the dollar last week. The lira shed 30 per cent of its value in November alone, having lost nearly half its value since the start of the year. Inflation in the country is out of control — reaching over 21 per cent last month. Traditional economics tells you to raise interest rates to counter inflation. Higher rates make borrowing more expensive and saving more attractive — in theory reducing the amount of spending on goods and services. Indeed the Bank of England, facing inflation at just over 4 per cent, is hinting that it will raise them in the new year.

The decay at the heart of the civil service

That Britain no longer has the capability to maintain peace in Afghanistan other than as an appendage of the United States has been clear for decades. When President Biden made his decision to hurriedly withdraw from the country, then, Britain never had an option to do anything other than to join a messy evacuation. But at the very least we owed it to those Afghans who helped us during two decades of occupation to save as many as we could from the murderous clutches of the advancing Taliban. The testimony of a 25-year-old former junior officer in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) shows just how far short we

Has Christine Lagarde just let slip the truth about the euro?

Ursula von der Leyen dispensing vaccines, with a halo over her head perhaps? Emmanuel Macron riding a tank to symbolise the continent’s strategic autonomy? Or various commissioners whose names no one can quite remember setting carbon targets, fining Google and Apple, and dishing out grants for roads, bridges and tunnels?  It remains to be seen just what the European Central Bank comes up with for its planned re-design of the euro banknotes. One point is perfectly clear, however: the makeover will reveal the currency’s true colours as a vehicle for European integration rather than an effective instrument of economic policy. In fact, if the ECB really wanted to redesign the

Katy Balls

Afghanistan: five shocking claims made by the Foreign Office whistleblower

Dominic Raab faced the media round from hell this morning. The former Foreign Secretary faced a series of questions about evidence published by a former Foreign Office official over the government’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis. Raphael Marshall – an Oxford graduate with three years in the diplomatic service – worked in the department’s special cases team during the evacuation efforts. In testimony given to the foreign affairs select committee published on Tuesday, Marshall has given an account of the dysfunction and chaos he says dominated the government response. Among the most eye-catching claims: 1. Animals were prioritised over humans During the evacuation, there was a very public row over

Omicron: cause for hope?

It will be weeks before we know just how worried we should be about Omicron — but the first indications seem hopeful. The epicentre of the first recorded outbreak has been the subject of a study that suggests that it may be milder than Delta. Early data from 166 patients in the Tshwane district comes with the usual caveats, especially that very little Omicron has been found among South African over-65s. But the study nonetheless has two weeks of hospitalised Omicron patients to analyse — more than any other country. Here are the main indications so far:  Fewer people hospitalised with Omicron have ended up in intensive care: 8 per cent, compared to 25 per

Ross Clark

What’s the point of vaccine passports?

What is the purpose of vaccine passports: to keep down infection or to try to persuade more people to get vaccinated by making life for the unvaccinated inconvenient and restricted? Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wasn’t trying to conceal her intentions when she announced in a press conference on 8 November that vaccine passports would be reintroduced. ‘For all of you who are not vaccinated, it of course becomes more burdensome and that is also how I think it should be,’ she said. ‘In my eyes, there are no excuses to not go out and get vaccinated.’ ‘In my eyes, there are no excuses to not go out and get

Gavin Mortimer

Meet the Brexit-hating Macron clone who could be the next French president

The best way to describe Valérie Pécresse is Emmanuel Macron in a blouse. The newly-elected candidate for Les Republicans (LR) swears she is the French president’s polar opposite, but ideologically there is little to separate the pair. The 54-year-old Pécresse, who will now stand against Macron in next year’s presidential election, has been on the political scene for three decades. She is currently the president of the Paris region, and is not only stinking rich, but a centrist, a globalist and a committed Europhile. Pécresse was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the poshest part of Paris, into an upper middle class family. She shares an Alma mater with Macron, École Nationale d’Administration,

Jake Wallis Simons

Mossad is preparing to strike at the heart of Iran’s nuclear programme

Iran is about to be hit by a fresh wave of Mossad operations, sources in Jerusalem have told me. This is the result of a change in Israeli policy: from now on, when Tehran’s proxy militias make trouble in the region, the Jewish state will retaliate on Iranian soil. ‘No more attacking the tentacles of the octopus,’ one source said. ‘Now we will go for the head.’ For the foreseeable future, I can confirm, this will not take the form of air raids, missile strikes or drone attacks. Instead, Israel’s feared secret service has been told to carry out pinpoint operations inside the Islamic Republic, inflicting surgical but devastating punishment.

Abortion rights: the cracks are showing in Roe v. Wade

Crowds gathered outside of the Supreme Court this week as the Court prepared to hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the most consequential abortion case in a generation, which will decide if a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks is constitutional. Pro-life groups rallied outside the Court, holding signs to ‘love them both’ while chanting ‘we are the pro-life generation and we will abolish abortion.’ The pro-abortion group Shout Your Abortion stood opposite them, allegedly swallowing abortion pills while chanting ‘abortion pills forever.’ Inside the court, the atmosphere was more serene. Stepping forward to open the arguments, Mississippi solicitor general Scott Stewart framed his

William Nattrass

Why Viktor Orbán is fighting a war against ‘LGBT ideology’

‘Do you support the unrestricted presentation of sexual media content that influences the development of underage children?’ In a national referendum likely to be held in the spring, Hungarians will be asked this question and others about the ‘promotion of gender reassignment’ to children, the holding of sexual orientation classes without parental consent, and whether or not they ‘support the display of gender-sensitive media content’ to kids. Parliament approved the referendum on Tuesday; opposition MPs chose not to vote on what they see as an egregious waste of public money. But this has cleared the way for an attempt by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party to cloak its controversial crackdown on

Katja Hoyer

Will Germany’s compulsory vaccine plan backfire?

Covid was probably the last thing on Angela Merkel’s mind as she listened to the East German pop tunes of her youth played by the Bundeswehr’s military band for her retirement ceremony last night. But a few hours earlier, the outgoing German chancellor had one last entry to make on her political will. No longer a member of parliament herself, she urged those who are to vote for mandatory vaccination against Covid as an ‘act of national solidarity’. The German states had pulled forward a Covid conference planned for 9 December in light of high case numbers and localised pressure on hospitals and ICUs. They decided on a de-facto lockdown

Gavin Mortimer

Eric Zemmour’s big weakness has been exposed

George W Bush will forever be in debt to The Donald. Before Trump became the 45th president of the United States, the man nicknamed ‘Dubya’ was widely considered by many Americans to be the most inept. Then came Trump. No longer was Bush a clown. The American left forget how they’d demonised him and looked wistfully to a time when there was dignity in the Oval Office. Marine Le Pen is experiencing something similar since Eric Zemmour’s emergence as a presidential candidate. She is no longer Public Enemy No. 1 since her detractors turned their fire on Zemmour; where once their battle-cry before any election was ‘Anyone but Le Pen’, now

Is Twitter about to step up its censorship?

Farewell then @jack. Jack Dorsey’s departure from Twitter on Monday came as no surprise given that the firm Elliott Management, one of Twitter’s activist investors, almost ousted him last year. Only the coronavirus may have prolonged the inevitable. Twitter’s stock keeps dropping. It may not reach the revenue and daily user projections for 2023 that it set last February. It also has the smallest ‘Big Tech’ user base, behind Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. The prevailing theory is that Dorsey’s departure involves Elliott Management, which controls two board seats and over $1 billion in stock shares, and which flexed enough muscle to boot Dorsey out. Elliott executives seemed dubious of Dorsey’s

Jonathan Miller

How will Boris respond to Macron’s insult?

French president Emmanuel Macron is reported in this week’s Canard Enchaîné – the French equivalent to Private Eye – to have called Boris Johnson a ‘gougnafier’. Gougnafier is an intriguing term with many linguistic roots. It is a nightmarish word to translate. Can you find one word in English to convey someone both rude and useless? That is what gougnafier means. A gougnafier is a boor. A cock-up artist. Someone vulgar. Someone lacking manners. This wasn’t merely a drive-by insult. It was a carefully judged expression of contempt. What does this presidential insult say about the degradation of the Anglo-French relationship to Cold War? Doubtless British and French journalists will

Will the end of monarchy in Barbados spark a chain reaction?

As of this week, the Queen is down to 15 thrones, after the royal standard was lowered in Barbados in the early hours of Tuesday morning. A presidential flag now flies there. Elizabeth II still remains, by some margin, the host with the most in terms of square miles per head of state. Presidents Xi, Biden and Putin do not come close to the Queen of Canada, Australia and Papua New Guinea plus a chunk of Antarctica, little old Britain and all the rest of her realms and territories. Depending on how much ocean you include, she remains Sovereign of somewhere between an eighth and a sixth of the Earth’s

The EU’s naive response to China’s Belt and Road initiative

Britain’s top spy chief Richard Moore warned this week of the growing threat that China poses to the West. Besides the risk of cyber-warfare, the Communist country has been pumping huge sums across the globe as part of its Belt and Road strategy. Now, the EU has hit back: announcing a rival to the initiative to counter Chinese influence in Africa and elsewhere. Brussels’ ‘Global Gateway’ looks at how the EU can leverage billions of euros, taken from member states, financial institutions and elsewhere, to rival the Belt and Road initiative. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late. During the years I spent working in Africa, I saw first-hand how widespread