World

Thursday

Leah McLaren

Trudeau vs truckers: a head-on collision

Two-and-a-half centuries ago in 2015 I had a video call with a Canadian friend who lives in my hometown of Toronto. As we spoke, she was putting together a Middle Eastern spice box for the Syrian refugee family she’d sponsored through her daughter’s school, carefully printing the labels in Arabic. Canada had recently committed to accepting 25,000 refugees, compared with the UK’s 10,000, which we both agreed was stingy. I explained to her that although there were lots of charities and refugee initiatives here, the public attitude was different. Not xenophobic, I insisted, just less precious. None of the parents at my son’s school, as far as I knew, were

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Kamala Harris and the problem of affirmative action

In lauding Joe Biden’s promise to fill the upcoming vacancy on the US Supreme Court with a black woman, last week the commentator Jonathan Capehart effused on PBS NewsHour that any black woman was bound to duplicate the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer’s famous pragmatism, because ‘there is no more pragmatic people in the world, of necessity, than a black woman (sic)’. With no other knowledge of the prospective nominee beyond her race and sex, Capehart trotted out confidently that she will ‘probably be more impressive, have more qualifications, be more brilliant than the folks who have come in before her, because people used her race to downgrade and belittle and

Douglas Murray

Is our Ukrainian ambassador OK?

I know the following sentence is going to get me into trouble. Still, there are times when you wonder whether highly feminised people should perform certain jobs. I am not saying ‘women’ and I am not saying ‘always’, just ‘times’. Still, I can hear you say: what sort of a dinosaur are you? Well, join me in the Jurassic period for a moment by contemplating the social media activity of our lead diplomatic representative and ambassador in the Ukraine, Melinda Simmons. Simmons is in a rather important position at present, yet her social-media account suggests otherwise. Here is Simmons a few months ago, writing on Instagram about a photograph of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Two years on, what’s the evidence for lockdown?

Did lockdowns save lives? We will never have a definitive answer to this vital question because it was impossible to conduct controlled experiments — we don’t have two identical countries, one where lockdown was imposed and one where it wasn’t. Nor is it easy to compare similar countries, for the simple reason that every country in the world — bar Comoros in the Indian Ocean — reacted to Covid by introducing at least one non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) by the end of March 2020. There was no clear link between lockdown stringency and fewer deaths in the spring of 2020, A team from Johns Hopkins University has, however, assessed the many

Wednesday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Frozen: can China escape its zero-Covid trap?

To understand what Xi Jinping wants from the Winter Olympics, look at the man chosen to direct the opening ceremony. Zhang Yimou is one of China’s most famous film directors, but his hits (such as Hero and Raise the Red Lantern) are better loved by foreigners than by the Chinese. His job is to wow the outside world with images of China’s power and culture. In a deeply controversial Olympics — already being boycotted by ministers and officials from Britain, the US and many others — he is Beijing’s secret artistic weapon. But unlike the extravagance of Beijing’s 2008 opening ceremony (also directed by Zhang), this Winter Olympics will be

Jim Lawley

Can Spain save its dying villages?

In a little village on the Spanish Meseta, I once asked an old lady about the next village some three or four miles away. She shook her head as if considering a hopeless case and said, ‘Oh, the people there are very different.’ To me, those villages seemed like two peas in a pod. But to her, they were worlds apart. Spaniards often refer to their home town or village as their patria chica: the little fatherland. ‘Every village, every town,’ wrote Gerald Brenan in The Spanish Labyrinth, ‘is the centre of an intense social and political life. As in classical times, a man’s allegiance is first of all to his native place,

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Levelling up: don’t copy the Germans

‘Germany has succeeded in levelling up where we have not,’ Boris Johnson claimed back in July last year, when talk of pork pie putsches lay far off in the future. But as the government unveils its levelling up plans today, the promise of a German-style investment package is unlikely to materialise. And that’s probably a good thing. Germany’s economic and social reunification is not the miracle it is claimed to be. In many ways, East Germany and the left-behind regions of Britain have similar economic problems, if for different reasons. When the Berlin wall fell in 1989, East Germany’s largely nationalised economy was sold-out to private investors at breakneck speed.

Tuesday

Thomas Falk

The failed attempt to ‘deradicalise’ Germany’s AfD

Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has lost its third chair in nine years. Jörg Meuthen is the latest to have succumbed to an internal power struggle over the party’s direction. His departure last week ends any illusions about the AfD eventually becoming a viable option in German politics. Like his predecessors Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry, Meuthen stood down as chair – and quit the party – because of concerns about radicalisation. ‘The heart of the party today beats very far to the right,’ he said. ‘I can see the totalitarian overtones.’  Since its creation in 2013, the AfD has been through a metamorphosis from an economically liberal, soft

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Covid has shattered France’s commitment to liberty

It is a peculiarity of how France has responded to the Covid pandemic that the unvaccinated, or those who have had only two jabs, are regarded as a greater threat to national security than Islamic extremists. The Covid passport, which came into effect last week, won overwhelming backing in parliament and in the senate, despite the reservations expressed by the Council of State in December. They said the passport would restrict the unvaccinated’s ‘liberty to come and go’. Six years ago the Council articulated similar concerns when the then-president, François Hollande, proposed a law that would strip dual nationals of their French citizenship for those convicted of terrorist offences. France

Meghan Murphy

Canada should be proud of the truckers’ convoy

The first wave of truckers in the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa on Friday, having travelled across Canada to protest the vaccine mandates and to fight Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tyrannical Covid restrictions. While the rest of the world has begun to admit that we simply need to learn to live with Covid, like any virus, Canada’s Liberal government has clamped down with vaccine passports, lockdowns, and vaccine and mask mandates. It’s those same measures that the truckers are determined to fight. In a January 26 press release, the organisers of the Freedom Convoy explained: ‘The supply chain has been in shambles for well over a year due to the

Monday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Are Kamala Harris’s days as Veep numbered?

President Joe Biden promised last week to nominate the first black woman to the Supreme Court. ‘Long overdue,’ he says. When it comes to elevating African-American females to high office, Biden has form. He chose Kamala Harris, remember, to be the first woman US Vice President of colour. But what if Biden elected to choose the same woman — namely, Vice President Kamala Harris — for the Supreme Court? Wouldn’t that be so unimaginative and tokenistic, as to be quite racist? Even a leader as error-prone as Biden wouldn’t do that, would he? Yet in Washington, there are whispers of a cunning plan to shunt Kamala on to the Supreme

Nicholas Farrell

Sergio Mattarella is Italy’s captive president

Ah, those Italians! Italy’s parliament spent last week trying and failing to elect a new president in seven secret ballots. Then, in the eighth ballot on Saturday evening, by a huge majority it re-elected the old one – Sergio Mattarella – against his will. Mattarella, 80, formerly of the post-communist Partito Democratico (PD) and now an independent, had repeatedly said he did not want to serve a second seven-year term. He had even moved out of the Quirinale – the presidential palace – and into a flat elsewhere in Rome. He was not actually a candidate because there are no formal candidates in an election for an Italian president whose powers,

Sunday

William Nattrass William Nattrass

Can the Czech Republic challenge Europe’s vaccine orthodoxy?

The Omicron wave has left European counties standing at a crossroads this year. Despite the relative mildness of Omicron compared to previous variants, several countries have stormed ahead with harsher measures to protect their populations from the virus. In Austria, for example, a vaccine mandate will come into effect on Tuesday, and until last week the unvaccinated had been confined to their homes for over two months. Germany is considering following Austria’s lead and introducing a vaccine mandate too. But other countries are starting to see this less deadly wave as an opportunity to restore normality to society, and are now backing away from some of their more extreme Covid

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Germany’s diplomatic game doesn’t make sense

Amidst the heavy criticism of Germany’s lack of commitment in the Ukraine crisis, the German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock argued in a speech to the German parliament on Thursday that alliance systems were a bit like a football team. ‘You don’t need 11 centre-forwards who all do the same thing; you need 11 players who get on with one another and who, most importantly, have the same game plan in mind.’ In other words, western alliance systems such as Nato should assign different roles and responsibilities to member states that are best suited to their individual strengths and weaknesses – horses for courses, to stay within the sporting imagery. The

John Keiger John Keiger

Zemmour, Marion Maréchal and the union of the French right

The news that the highly influential third-generation member of the Le Pen family, Marion Maréchal, will not be backing her aunt Marine for the French presidency is ‘brutal, violent and painful’, in Marine’s words. But beyond its emotional impact on the Le Pen family, for whom politics, betrayal and intrigue have always been of Shakespearean dimensions, this is potentially an earthquake in French politics. For the 32 year old intellectual branch of the family has hinted that she may join Éric Zemmour’s campaign. Far more important than its impact on the presidential race is the potential to achieve what was the quest of General de Gaulle in 1958 and more

Benedict Rogers

China’s censors have already won

The Chinese Communist Party regime has always been censorious. Its so-called ‘Great Firewall’ means that Facebook, Twitter and Google are blocked in China, many are films banned and even Winnie the Pooh was persona non grata after netizens spotted his resemblance to Xi Jinping. In the Chinese version of Bohemian Rhapsody, references to Freddie Mercury’s sexuality – an important part of his story – are purged. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was banned completely, for its references to ghosts and cannibalism, as was Nomadland, due to comments by its Chinese-born director Chloe Zhao, who described China as ‘a place where there are lies everywhere’. But now, Beijing is

Saturday

Jeremy Hildreth

The green case for Bitcoin

Of all the arguments against Bitcoin, one of the most popular these days is that it is bad for the planet. People who know nothing about cryptocurrencies are often heard saying that Bitcoin mining is such an energy-intensive process that it has become a major contributory factor to climate change. This is largely bunkum. Far from being a major polluter, Bitcoin could in fact prove to be an environmental solution. But understanding that requires a little deeper knowledge of what Bitcoin is and how it is mined. So here goes. Spelt with a small “b,” bitcoin is a digital monetary asset. Spelt with a big “B,” Bitcoin is the peer-to-peer network

Mary Dejevsky

5,000 helmets and Germany’s dark history in Ukraine

If anyone produces a ‘history in 100 objects’ for the first half of the 21st century, one of those objects could well be a German helmet from the consignment of 5,000 dispatched to Ukraine, as the Russians seemed about to invade. The donation was noteworthy because it was met not with gratitude but with ridicule, not only from Ukrainians on social media – will it be pillows or duvets next time? – but from Germans themselves. There were reasons, of course, why the Germans sent helmets, while the British made great play of airlifting 2,000 shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles and the Americans sent Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-air missiles, as part

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Eric Zemmour isn’t to blame for France’s anti-Semitism crisis

Emmanuel Macron sees anti-Semitism everywhere except where it really lurks. Earlier this month his government accused protesters opposed to the Covid Passport of giving the Nazi salute, a charge that was disproved by video footage and this week dismissed by the public prosecutor’s office in Paris. Yesterday, in a speech to mark International Holocaust Day, Macron warned of the return of ‘an ill wind’ blowing through the continent in some ‘political discourse’. He vowed that France would never cease to honour the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust ‘particularly when some try to falsify it.’ Macron’s Prime Minister, Jean Castex, spoke on similar lines during a

Friday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

The dangerous alliance between Russia and China

The growing alliance between Russia and China is something we shouldn’t lose sleep over, their long history of mutual suspicion runs too deep – or so we are told. Such a view is too complacent by half. China and Russia’s mutual hostility towards the West and their opportunism also run deep. And even if their burgeoning alliance is a marriage of convenience, it is still a very dangerous one. As Russia has massed more than 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, the nightmare for western strategists is that Vladimir Putin’s actions are being coordinated with those of Xi Jinping in and around the Taiwan Strait, where China’s military intimidation of