World

Saturday

Nicholas Farrell

Why is Bilbo Baggins a fascist favourite?

If you were asked to think of a perfect fascist, never in a month of Sundays would you suggest Bilbo Baggins of Bag End. Hobbits such as he, after all, grow no more than four feet tall and have slightly pointed ears and a round jovial face. Their feet have leathery soles and are covered with brown fur. They hardly ever wear shoes, let alone jackboots. Hobbits dress in bright colours, favouring yellow and green, definitely not black; and though capable of great courage and amazing feats in the proper circumstances, they are a little shy. No creature, surely, could be further removed from the macho ‘new man’ with which the founder of

Friday

Emily Hill Emily Hill

I stand with Novak Djokovic

Is anyone else alarmed by the widespread glee at the way Novak Djokovic has been treated by the Aussies? The world’s top tennis player is in an immigration detention hotel in Melbourne, fighting to avoid being deported. Djokovic, who was granted a medical exemption to defend his title in the Australian Open, somehow snuck into the country with a bunch of tennis racquets before he was intercepted by the Australian authorities. The media is labelling Djokovic’s case as yet another example of ‘rules for thee and not for me’. But it isn’t, because he hasn’t formulated any of the arbitrary and draconian Covid diktats imposed on the rest of us. Djokovic’s only crime was to adopt a

Sean Thomas

What the Capitol riots and the plot to stop Brexit have in common

It’s not often that browsing the genteel aisles of Waterstones reminds you of madmen storming the Capitol in buffalo-horn helmets, but that’s the buzz I got as I briskly scanned the History shelves. I happened on a slender volume called How To Stop Brexit, written by Nick Clegg. I’d never heard of the book (a realisation that probably attaches to quite a lot of books by Lib Dem leaders) so I pulled it out, with curiosity. The text, I thought, must be a new thing, written since we finally Brexited and Clegg joined Facebook. But no: it was published in 2017. It seems I was holding a kind of revolutionary pamphlet, advising

Thursday

Andrew Tettenborn

Have we reached peak human rights?

After the Colston debacle, you might be forgiven for having missed the other legal story that broke this week. The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed the complaint in the Ulster ‘gay cake’ case, so the decision in favour of the baker will stand. In case you need reminding, seven years ago a Belfast gay rights activist called Gareth Lee asked Ashers, a high-class bakery, to produce a cake inscribed with the phrase ‘Support Gay Marriage’ for an event he was organising. The bakery owners refused, citing Presbyterian religious scruples, whereupon Lee sued for discrimination. He lost. Our Supreme Court held that he had not been discriminated against because he

Mary Dejevsky

Bloodshed in Kazakhstan could spell trouble for Putin

Russian troops have now arrived in Kazakhstan in a desperate bid to halt the tide of violence that has swept the country. Their arrival is a last resort for the country’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as he fights to maintain his grip on power. But he isn’t the only leader who is eager to quell this unrest: Vladimir Putin will be deeply troubled by what events in Kazakhstan mean for his own leadership. Fuel price rises were the immediate trigger for the unrest in Kazakhstan, but the rapid spread of these protests – from the west of the country, close to Kazakhstan’s oil fields, to numerous towns and cities – shows that something much more fundamental

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter ban is nothing to celebrate

Marjorie Taylor Greene is nuttier than M&M World. Not your garden-variety conservative, or even a conservative at all, but a conspiracy theorist who rode these febrile times into a seat in Congress. She describes American Airlines Flight 77 as ‘the so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon’ on 9/11, remarking that ‘it’s odd there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon’. She suspects the 2018 California wildfires were started by a Rothschild-funded ‘laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth’ in order to help Democrats build a high-speed rail project. Her Facebook account has liked a post proposing ‘a bullet to the head’ for Nancy Pelosi.

Terry Barnes

Novak Djokovic is treating Australians like mugs

Just minutes from the heart of Victoria’s capital, Melbourne Park is one of the great tennis complexes. For a fortnight in January, it will be the centre of the tennis world as the home of the year’s first Grand Slam tournament, the Australian Open. For Melburnians the Open is more than just a tennis tournament. The grounds throb with life and with the relaxed summer holiday vibe that comes between Christmas and Australia Day on 26 January; night matches pause as celebratory fireworks light the skies over the city. This year will be no different, except for one thing. To enter Melbourne Park, patrons, staff, media and almost all players

Daniel McCarthy

January 6 was an alarm bell for America

If you’re tired of hypochondriac journalists’ takes on January 6, then try Thomas Jefferson’s. He delivered his judgment on events of that sort back in 1787. ‘I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing,’ he wrote to James Madison, ‘and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.’ Unlike the riot at the Capitol last year, the rebellion that Jefferson had in mind was a genuine armed insurrection. The Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays and his followers, furious over taxes and debts, forced state courts in Massachusetts to shut down in the late months of 1786. By early 1787, Shays commanded

Francis Pike

What’s happening in Kazakhstan?

Since the start of the new year, riots have spread throughout Kazakhstan. In the former capital of Almaty, the airport has been taken over and the mayor’s office stormed. Dozens of security forces and civilians have been killed in violent clashes while hundreds have been wounded. Is this Kazakhstan’s Tiananmen Square moment, in which the government is shaken to its roots but survives? Or will it be like the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in which a pro-Russian ruler was overthrown by the mob? The main cause of the uprising is not dissimilar to Tiananmen Square. It is not a demand for democracy, which some inept journalists at the BBC and CNN ascribed as the

Nyrola Elimä

The grim reality of being a ‘model Uighur’

I left China a decade ago when life there as a Uighur simply became too difficult. People know about the ongoing genocide of the Uighurs, but it didn’t come out of nowhere: it followed years of smaller scale persecution, which I experienced daily. I first grew aware of how bad things were in 2009, when I got a job in an inland city that required me to travel — a role that became impossible because hotels would refuse to let me stay. Receptionists would see my identity card, which bore my ethnicity, and curtly reply that there were no rooms available. Once, one smiled kindly and told me to wait

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

The EU’s new emperor: what would Macron’s second term look like?

Montpellier Emmanuel Macron, with eagle eyes, is staring at Europe like stout Cortez. Elected president of France almost five years ago aged just 39, he dreams beyond the renewal of his lease on the Élysée Palace in the April election. Now Angela Merkel has left the world stage, Macron’s ambition is to replace her as Europe’s de facto leader and to father a European federation, a United States of Europe, with France and himself at its centre. On New Year’s Day, France assumed the rotating six-month presidency of the European Council, the supreme institution of the European Union, an organisation some might think besieged by unresolved crises and policy conflicts

Matt Ridley

The universal appeal of the African savanna

My wife and I were lucky to escape for a long-delayed birdwatching holiday in Kenya over Christmas. To have been warm, sunlit and free while so many in Britain were not won’t endear me to most readers, I realise. Nairobi was rife with Covid and Christmas cancellations devastated the tourism industry. So we had the extraordinary Elephant Watch Camp run by Saba Douglas-Hamilton in the Samburu National Reserve almost to ourselves. Baboons and vervet monkeys wandered freely through the camp, and in the night the river flash-flooded after a storm in the hills to the west, but the tents were safe. Elephants were everywhere, feasting on fresh vegetation after a

Wednesday

Daniel Rey

Why England lost the Ashes

England’s wretched performance in the Ashes – which saw the side lose three tests and so the series to Australia last week – has been more abject than even the most inspired pessimist could have imagined. No sane observer expected England to win against Australia, but to lose the five match series little more than two days into the third test was a pitiful show. Inevitably, even as England continue to play the fourth test this week, there have been calls for a cricketing inquest. The standard of the domestic game, the structure of the English season and England’s pivot towards the one day and T20 formats are all expected

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s potty-mouthed outburst is deliberate – and calculated

President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration that he intends to ‘emmerder’ – which loosely translates, excuse my English, as ‘piss off’ – the non-vaccinated has been widely reported this morning as the mother of all political gaffes.  Macron declared, in an interview with Le Parisien, France’s best-selling newspaper:  In a democracy, the worst enemy is lies and stupidity. We put pressure on the non-vaccinated by limiting their access to social activities as much as possible. In fact, almost all people, over 90 per cent, have signed up. It is a very small minority that is resistant. How do we reduce this minority? We reduce them, I’m sorry to say, by annoying them

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron has crossed a line in his war on the unvaccinated

The new year has not started well for Emmanuel Macron. It began badly when some bright spark in the Elysée thought it would be a good idea to mark France’s six-month presidency of the European Union by unfurling the bloc’s blue and gold flag under the Arc de Triomphe. Millions of French were not amused at what they regarded as a sacrilegious gesture. Macron’s two main rivals on the right, Marine Le Pen of the National Rally and Valérie Pécresse of the Republicans, accused the president of dishonouring the memory of the country’s military. By Sunday, the EU flag had made a tactical withdrawal, to the delight of Le Pen,

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Why won’t Joe Biden stand up to Iran?

This week marks two years since Iranian terror mastermind Major General Qassem Soleimani was torn apart by a Reaper drone missile in Baghdad, on the orders of Donald Trump. The Iranian regime has marked the anniversary with a flurry of antagonism throughout the region. On Monday, a coalition base outside Iraq’s main airport was attacked by two drones armed with missiles with the words ‘Soleimani’s revenge’ on them. Both were safely shot down. That same day, two Israeli newspaper websites, the Jerusalem Post and Maariv, were hacked and made to display a picture of a missile being launched from Soleimani’s ring at Israel’s nuclear reactor. These provocations were preceded by a

Lukas Degutis

The EU’s weak response to Russian aggression plays into Putin’s hands

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell is in Ukraine today. His mission? To show solidarity with Kiev in the face of Russian aggression. But the visit is too little too late. Former Soviet states, such as Ukraine, have grown used to the lofty rhetoric and empty gestures of their EU. The reality is that when it really matters, the West is failing to stick up for its allies. Linas Linkevičius, Lithuania’s former minister of foreign affairs, says it’s time for Brussels – and the rest of the West – to change tack when it comes to dealing with Russia. Linkevičius is a stand-out Kremlin critic within European politics who

Tuesday

Matthew Lynn

The hypocrisy of Elon Musk

Tesla’s sleek, if expensive, electric cars are leading the battle against climate change. Its batteries are moving renewable energy into the mainstream, while its founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, likes to present himself as a free-thinking radical. It is hard to think of a company more right on than Tesla — well, okay, perhaps Unilever — or one that depends more on its politically correct credentials. But hold on. There turns out to be one opposed minority that Tesla couldn’t care less about: China’s Uighurs. Most of the corporate world will sooner or later have to make a tough decision: do they care about human rights? The company has landed

Amber Athey

AOC and the self-absorbed left

Raise your glass to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who hypocritically escaped record Covid cases in her home state of New York to drink cocktails and attend a drag brunch in free Florida. It’s not uncommon for a politician’s vacation to become the subject of national criticism, but in response, AOC has managed to deploy the worst communications strategy since ‘hiking the Appalachian trail’ became code for banging your mistress in Argentina. After being called out on Twitter for her newly attained snowbird status — and her boyfriend’s gaudy choice in footwear — AOC declared that her critics are just upset that they don’t get to sleep with her. It’s no secret

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Germany’s China-friendly approach is continuing under Olaf Scholz

As Angela Merkel prepares to write her autobiography, ‘explaining her key decisions in her own words’, her successor has his hands full dealing with the decisions she did not make. Germany’s new chancellor Olaf Scholz has taken captaincy of a ship on a course to nowhere in particular. He is beginning to find out just how difficult it is to steer his predecessor’s middle course between China and the West. Sooner rather than later, some difficult decisions will have to be made as their political world drifts too far apart to be navigated in tandem from Berlin. Admittedly, this dilemma is not of Scholz’s making. Over the course of Merkel’s