World

Sunday

Sam Meadows

Chile flirts with a rightward turn

A border ‘ditch’ may prove to be the thing that brings the right back to power in Chile. Although the communist-affiliated candidate Jeannette Jara leads the polls going into this weekend’s election, a second-round run-off seems almost certain, with a consolidated right-wing alliance – running on a platform to cut illegal immigration – likely to win the final showdown. Jose Antonio Kast, the leading right-wing candidate, is a hardliner who admires both Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. He has promised to rule with ‘mano dura’ (an iron fist). He says drug dealers will be held in in solitary confinement and has pledged to construct a series of

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Are we in an age of necromancy?

19 min listen

Katherine Dee is the new technology correspondent for The Spectator World. She joins Freddy to discuss the phenomenon of necromancy, the practice of communicating with the dead, and how AI is fuelling it. How is technology blurring the lines between the living and the dead?

Jonathan Spyer

Why Israel fears Turkey’s involvement in Gaza

As the Gaza ceasefire struggles into its second month, a significant difference between the position of Israel and that of its chief ally, the United States, on the way forward is emerging. This difference reflects broader gaps in perception in Jerusalem and Washington regarding the nature and motivations of the current forces engaged in the Middle East. The subject of that difference is Turkey.   The Turks have expressed a desire to play a role in the ‘international stabilisation force’ (ISF), which, according to President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, is supposed to take over ground security control of Gaza from the IDF (and Hamas) in the framework of the plan’s implementation.

Friday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The Jewish blood libel is back. Its return should trouble us all

It’s back. The lie that led to the slaughter of so many Jews has returned to public life. The calumny that caused so much anti-Jewish persecution, expulsion and bloodshed has stirred, zombie-like, from its historic slumber. Jews drain the blood of Christians and use it to make bread – incredibly, unconscionably, this most appalling falsehood has returned. It is obscene that such words are being uttered on a university campus in 2025 At University College London (UCL) this week, a lecture was given in which it was allegedly suggested that Jews murder Gentiles and use their blood in perverse rituals. The comments were made by Samar Maqusi, a US academic.

Henry Donovan

Why German conscription should worry Britain

For years, Germany, like Britain, has drifted through history as though nothing could ever again disturb its peace. The world outside was assumed to be orderly, rational, restrained. Conflict was something that happened elsewhere. The Bundeswehr, neglected to the point of embarrassment, became a case study in strategic complacency. Germany’s political class preferred moral posturing to the dull, necessary business of national defence. Some fear that conscription is merely a prelude to sending Germany’s youth into war And as long as Russia was merely grumbling at its neighbours rather than invading them, Berlin convinced itself it could go on like this forever. Those days are over. And Germany, finally –

Patrick Gibbons

Is South Korea bracing for a third Trump-Kim summit?

Donald Trump’s meeting with President Xi was the standout moment of this month’s Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in South Korea. Yet almost as much attention focused on the rumours that Trump’s gaze had turned once again to North Korea. Addressing suggestions he would meet Kim, the American President told reporters, ‘I’d be open 100 per cent. I get along very well with Kim Jong Un.’ A meeting never materialised, but speculation – and tension – has only grown since.  Days after Trump’s departure, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived as part of his own tour of Asia. In Seoul, he became the first defence secretary in nearly eight years to visit

Thursday

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Epstein files continue to haunt Donald Trump

The main thing that has made the Epstein files seem politically (as opposed to morally) significant is that Donald Trump remains obsessed with preventing them from seeing the light of day. He thus devoted much of Wednesday to importuning Republicans such as Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert not to back their release. ‘Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican,’ Trump declared, ‘would fall into that trap.’ But senior Republicans are expecting mass vote defections in the coming week as legislators prepare to vote for a disclosure bill sponsored by Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says that releasing the files is ‘not only the right thing

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why does the American right take itself so seriously?

The American right has a problem: it can’t stop talking about itself. Commentators, academics and journalists of what used to be called a ‘conservative’ persuasion all tend to think that their ideas are tremendously interesting. And, in the way a difficult child becomes argumentative when he or she isn’t getting attention, they fight. They fear irrelevance and so they fall out with each other and take sides in order to prove to themselves that they have something worth saying. Things become messy and nasty and everybody gets carried away – usually in the hope of grabbing their own slice of an all-too easily distracted online audience. (Why else am I

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

A decade after Bataclan, France is more divided than ever

Ten years ago today, Islamist terrorists massacred 130 people in a coordinated attack across Paris. It was the heaviest loss of life on French soil since the second world war, and those who perished – as well as the 350 who were wounded – will be remembered today in a series of commemorations. Emmanuel Macron will visit the six sites where the terrorists struck, among them the Stade de France and the Bataclan concert hall, and the president will also inaugurate a memorial garden at Place Saint-Gervais, opposite Paris City Hall. According to the Élysée Palace, the day will be an opportunity for the nation ‘to honour the memory of

Edward Howell

Why Taiwan matters to Japan

It was only a matter of time before Japan’s Iron Lady would be targeted by China. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi mentioned how Tokyo might resort to force were Beijing to take military action over Taiwan: ‘If there are battleships and the use of force, no matter how you think about it, it could constitute a survival-threatening situation,’ she said. In response, China’s consul-general in Osaka, Xue Jian, threatened, on Monday, to ‘cut off’ the Japanese prime minister’s ‘filthy neck…without a moment’s hesitation’. Xue’s vitriolic online reaction, which he subsequently deleted from his X account, underscores how China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy has anything but abated. Yet, the incident highlights a more important

Matt Ridley

America thinks Britain is finished

‘What’s missing?’ the tech titan Peter Thiel asks me, over lunch on the hummingbird-infested patio of his house in the Hollywood Hills. He gestures at the city of Los Angeles laid out in the haze below us. ‘Cranes!’ he explains. Thiel has argued for years that America has done most of its innovation in digital ‘bits’ instead of physical ‘atoms’, because bureaucracy, regulation and environmentalism have got in the way of the latter. While software has exploded, transport and infrastructure have stagnated. But over the next few days in Austin, Texas, and around San Francisco Bay, I see evidence this is changing. Travelling with the upbeat co-founders of the Rational

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: BBC vs Trump, a plot against Starmer and a weight loss deadline for North Sea oil workers

Home Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, resigned, as did Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News. Samir Shah, the chairman of the BBC, apologised for an ‘error of judgment’ in the editing by Panorama of a speech by President Donald Trump that made it look as though he was urging people to attack the Capitol in January 2021. This had been criticised in a 19-page memorandum to the BBC board by Michael Prescott, a former standards adviser, who also set out failings over Gaza and transgender matters. The leaked memo was published by the Telegraph. Trump wrote to the BBC threatening to sue it ‘for $1 billion’; he

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

The scandal that could bring down Volodymyr Zelensky

A solid gold toilet and cupboards loaded with bagfuls of €200 bills are among the treasures linked to the prominent Ukrainian businessman Timur Mindich, after an investigation by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu). Mindich is big in real estate, fertilisers, banking and diamond trading – but he is best known as a long-time co-owner of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 television production company. Nabu’s 15-month long investigation into what it describes as ‘high level’ corruption at the top of Ukraine’s political elite is likely to have momentous consequences for Zelensky’s political future. Zelensky will inevitably face serious questions as his close political and business allies fall under suspicion According to a YouTube

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

India and Pakistan are edging closer to war

At least eight people were killed in a car blast near New Delhi’s historic Red Fort on Monday. Less than 24 hours later, a district courthouse was targeted by a suicide bombing in Islamabad. A dozen people died. These successive blasts in the capitals of India and Pakistan have raised tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals, who clashed in May following a terror attack in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The situation is in danger of spiralling out of control. Pakistan has already accused New Delhi of being responsible for the Islamabad bombing. Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif called it one of the ‘worst examples of Indian state terrorism in the

Tuesday

Henry Donovan

Germany’s rearmament puts Britain to shame

Every 11 November, the United Kingdom stands still. Bugles sound, heads bow, and for two minutes the nation remembers – not just the fallen, but the idea that peace was bought at an impossible price. Yet remembrance, if it is to mean anything, must also be a warning. Europe is again unstable, deterrence is fragile, and Britain’s armed forces are once more the smallest they have been in generations. The difference is that, this time, it is not Germany that alarms us by arming – it is Germany that is doing what Britain will not. In Berlin, the ghosts of British tanks and troopers still linger. Drive a couple of

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s battle against the Democrats is only just beginning

No sooner did Democrats in the American Senate reach a deal to end the federal government shutdown than a frenzy of liberal pearl clutching ensued. The Democrats should have held out longer, they argued. Healthcare subsidies could have been rescued. Donald Trump’s approval ratings were plunging. Golly, maybe the Democrats could even have driven the dreaded Trump from office? Jonathan Chait’s verdict in the Atlantic was not untypical: ‘Senate Democrats just made a huge mistake.’ Don’t believe a word of it. The surprising thing isn’t that Democrats folded. It’s that they held out as long as they did. In the end, the moderate Democratic Senators, ranging from Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman

James Tidmarsh

The fall of Europe’s public service broadcasters

Europe’s public broadcasters were created to stop propaganda. Born in the wreckage of war to protect democracy from lies, they now preach soft, sanctimonious, state-approved truths. The resignations at the BBC this week are only the latest symptom of decay across the European media landscape. The model built to keep power in check now serves it. Public broadcasting was conceived in the aftermath of 1945. After Goebbels and Vichy radio, democracies decided that truth needed its own institutions. The state would fund but not control them. Broadcasters like the BBC, Radiodiffusion Française, Germany’s ARD and Italy’s RAI would speak for the public. For decades, they did. They were calm, factual,

Monday

Theo Padnos

The jihadist I knew: my life as a prisoner of Syria’s president

As Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al-Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country’s capital, Damascus. Who has ordered these militants into action? No one knows. What do they want? It isn’t clear. But, as a former prisoner of al-Sharaa’s band of jihadists, I can’t say I’m surprised by what is unfolding in Syria. That dark prophecy is alive in al-Sharaa’s Syria Whatever else might be said about the old regime of Bashar al-Assad, no one was ever in

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Has Trump Made America Great Again? Ann Coulter v Peter Hitchens

29 min listen

To watch the debate in full, go to https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americano-live-is-america-great-again/ American commentator Ann Coulter and British columnist Peter Hitchens join host Freddy Gray live in London to debate whether America is great again—and what the Trump era means for both sides of the Atlantic. From immigration and national identity to executive power and the rule of law, they clash over whether Trump has delivered real change or simply accelerated a dangerous new politics.