World

Tuesday

Dominic Green Dominic Green

Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel

Did Joe Biden fall asleep during the opening speeches of the COP26 climate jamboree in Glasgow? It’s hard to blame him if he did. A conference dedicated to saving the planet is generating nothing but hot air, some of it carboniferously heavy with the exhaust of the armada of private jets that brought the guests. But it’s Biden’s job to stay awake, look lively and remember his lines. The footage shows a frail man who’s jetlagged, pushing eighty and trying his best to absorb the torrent of heated eco-bilge that’s being pumped into his ears. But he’s only human. The presidential eyelids start to flutter as a speaker pleads ‘on

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Healing the ‘cancer’ of the Cultural Revolution

37 min listen

It’s not easy to talk about the Cultural Revolution inside China – let alone teach it. In recent years, one of the last professors to have taught the period has been hounded out of her role at a top university. Sun Peidong has now taken a post at Cornell, after Chinese journals stopped publishing her work, the university party secretary banned her lectures, and even her students turned on her – denouncing Sun as if she were an ‘anti-revolutionary’ of the very period she taught. In this frank discussion, I interview Sun about academic freedom and diversity of thought on Chinese campuses; about what it was like to shed light

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Britain heading for a full-blown fish war with France?

As the COP26 summit gets underway, a diplomatic Brexit row is escalating on the sidelines of the conference over fish. After France threatened to block British boats from its ports and increase checks on vessels over a disagreement on fishing licences, the UK warned it could retaliate if France goes through with it. Suggestions from the French over the weekend that a solution in the form of ‘practical operational measures’ had been found were quickly shot down by the UK side. With a French election looming, Macron can be expected to do more not less of this This morning, Liz Truss doubled down – using a morning media round to say the UK is

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron is following in the failed footsteps of the wrong Napoleon

Is Emmanuel Macron turning into Emperor Napoleon III? Not the great Napoleon who conquered Europe and was eventually defeated by a British-led coalition at Waterloo and exiled to Saint Helena in the south Atlantic. But his lesser nephew, whose obsession with his uncle’s glory drove him to flatulent demagoguery at home, grandiose schemes abroad and humiliating defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870.  Under the last monarch of France, the country descended into the revolutionary Commune, was amputated of Alsace-Lorraine and prostrated before a united and all-powerful Germany. The lesser Napoleon was eventually deposed, vilified and outlawed to Chislehurst, outside London. It was to Napoleon III that Karl Marx

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Has COP26 already flopped?

‘There is no chance of stopping climate change next week,’ the Prime Minister told me in an interview for ITV News. ‘There is no chance of getting an agreement to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees’. Standing in Rome’s magnificent ancient Colosseum, he warned that the cost of this failure, if not somehow rectified, would be far worse than the recent pandemic: ‘The Romans thought they were going to go on forever…Then wham, the middle of the fifth century, they hit a complete crisis, uncontrolled immigration, you have the Dark Ages. The lesson is things can go backwards… for a long time. Unless we fix climate change, unless we halt

Sunday

David Engels

Can Poland and the EU resolve the rule of law crisis?

In recent months the spectre of ‘Polexit’ has been haunting Europe. Poland and the EU have become embroiled in a dispute over the rule of law and this week the European court announced that it would be fining Poland one million euros every day until it abolished its controversial disciplinary chamber for judges, leading some to speculate that Poland could be heading towards leaving the European Union. But is Polexit really a risk? Possibly not. But one thing is clear: the crisis between Warsaw and Brussels will not build up for much longer without either a compromise or drastic consequences. Before considering the possibility of Polexit, it must first be

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

How can we stop rogue states misusing drones?

The announcement last week that US officials believe Iran was behind the October drone strike on the al-Tanf US base in southeastern Syria did not garner the headlines it should have done. But it was nevertheless yet another reminder that drone technology is altering geopolitics – whether we like it or not. As Seth Frantzman points out in his recent Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future – the most comprehensive and important book on drone warfare ever written – drones are already transforming modern conflict. A drone killed Qasem Soleimani last year in Iraq; Turkey has been using them in Syria for years; while Iran now

Saturday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China’s energy crisis

The absence of Xi Jinping from COP26 in Glasgow this weekend should strip away any illusion that China is a serious partner on climate change. It also points to another intriguing possibility – that we may be witnessing not Peak Carbon, but Peak China. The Communist party may be facing the sort of decline it wishes on the West, and as with the climate, the impact could be dangerous and unpredictable. By staying at home China’s leader can concentrate on what has become an urgent priority for his government: massively ramping up the production and import of coal to solve the energy crunch his increasingly unsustainable economy is facing. That

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s fish war on Britain is no laughing matter

Once upon a time, the insolence demonstrated by Emmanuel Macron in his fish war with the United Kingdom would have been met with a firmer response than inviting the French ambassador to the Foreign Office for a chat. Bombarding the ramparts of Saint-Malo hardly seems on the menu today, however – even were our navy capable. Boris Johnson has promised to do ‘whatever is necessary’ to protect British vessels but threatening ‘rigorous checks’ on French boats is as feeble as it is improbable, given that the Royal Navy has just eight small boats patrolling 756,000 square kilometres (300,000 square miles) of water, almost four times the surface area of Great

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Why did neo-Nazis patrol the German border?

Just after midnight last Sunday, around 50 vigilantes gathered in east Germany to ‘patrol’ the country’s border with Poland. They were there to stop illegal immigrants, armed as they did so with batons, a machete, a bayonet and pepper spray. They were discovered by local police forces, but a certain nervousness from the authorities was palpable as they pleaded with residents in the eastern border regions to not take the law into their own hands. While the array of confiscated weapons suggests a well thought out plan, these ‘patrols’ are by no means coherent. The largest single group was reportedly stopped by the police in the border village of Groß Gastrose

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Britain’s fish fight with France risks triggering a new low in EU relations

Another day, another troubling development in UK/ EU relations. Earlier this week, a British trawler was seized by France and another fined. Now, France’s prime minister has written to the EU asking for its backing for further measures against the UK because of the refusal of various fishing licenses. The letter asks for support because, Jean Castex says, it must be demonstrated that ‘leaving the Union is more damaging than remaining in it.’  It isn’t only fishing which is causing tensions The UK, for its part, has summoned the French ambassador over the issue. Britain has made it clear it will carry out ‘rigorous enforcement processes’ on EU vessels fishing in UK waters if the French carry

Thursday

Neill Lochery

Why Portugal’s troubled history of political crises will continue

Portugal has once again been plunged into a political crisis: the country is facing a snap election after its socialist-led government failed to pass its budget in the National Assembly yesterday. António Costa, who has led the country’s minority government since November 2015, was brought down by the refusal of the PCP (communist party) and the Bloco de Esquerda (left block) to back his budget.  This latest upheaval comes at a particularly bad time for Portugal, which is attempting to return to normality following 18 months of Covid lockdowns and closures. Now, the country is once again in political limbo: an election is likely to take some months to carry out, and what happens to the

Wolfgang Münchau Wolfgang Münchau

The EU is driving Poland away

Until yesterday, it was possible to imagine that there would be a political solution to the standoff between the EU and Poland. Poland would reform the disciplinary chamber for its judges, and the EU would be satisfied that its principal grievance had been addressed. The Polish government had already promised to reform its disciplinary chamber, but it was unable to set a binding timetable, as it relies for its majority on United Poland (UP), a small, deeply anti-European party. Zbigniew Ziobro, the leader of UP, is also justice minister. The EU used to be quite adept at handling political impasses like this one, through diplomacy rather than full confrontation. But

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

In Israel, there’s never an easy fix

From an Israeli army base on the border with Lebanon, I can see the village of Maroun al-Ras. An Iranian flag flies from the dome of the mosque. Nearby, strapped to a post, is a 20ft cutout of the late Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, which was put there earlier this year by Hezbollah after he was killed by an American air strike. His right arm and index finger are stretched out, pointing menacingly over the valley at Israel. Hezbollah, backed by Tehran, control Maroun al-Ras, and I can hear the buzz of a drone watching them. Some Israeli officials say Iran could have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb

Douglas Murray

What if Clinton had come clean?

What if Bill Clinton had told the truth? Would America’s sexual and political history be different? The thought occurs because of the new TV drama Impeachment (being shown in Britain on BBC2) about the Monica Lewinsky affair. Somewhat unfairly to both main parties, it is part of the American Crime Story series. Previous subjects have included O.J. Simpson and Andrew Cunanan, who killed Gianni Versace. It’s a bit rich putting Bill Clinton in the same bracket as these murder cases. Nonetheless, the result is intriguing, not just because of the magnificent acting and production — and not only because in the quarter of a century since the world’s most famous

Wednesday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The rise and fall of Jack Ma

Jack Ma used to give rock star performances for his employees at Alibaba, Asia’s biggest online commerce company. He once dressed as Michael Jackson. But those halcyon days are gone. Over the last year, China’s richest man has had his wings clipped by the Chinese Communist party. The flamboyant Ma has only made a handful of public appearances (prompting rumours of a ‘disappearance’ at the hands of the CCP). This week, it transpired that Alibaba has almost halved in value — losing a record $373 billion over just the last 12 months. Ma’s downfall can be traced back to a misjudged speech he made in Shanghai this time last year.

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Can Beijing buy the Taliban?

China is seeking a grand bargain from the Taliban: eliminate the groups Beijing says are stirring up trouble among its Muslim Uighurs in exchange for massive aid to rebuild Afghanistan. It sounds enticing for both sides as they sit down in Doha this week, but there are numerous questions about whether either can deliver, and a good chance that China will become the next imperial power sucked into the ‘graveyard of empires’. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy prime minister, and Wang Li, China’s foreign minister, are reportedly meeting in the capital of Qatar just as the Taliban faces a growing number of attacks from Isis-K, a provincial affiliate of

Batya Ungar-Sargon

What broke the New York Times?

The New York Times entered the digital era under duress. In 2011, the Times erected a paywall in what it called a ‘subscription-first business model’. The gamble was that readers would want to pay for quality journalism. It was a risk, and at first it didn’t seem to be paying off: after a challenging 2014, the company shed 100 people from the newsroom in buyouts and layoffs. A.G. Sulzberger, who was getting ready to replace his father as publisher, commissioned an in-house report, its title ‘Innovation’. The report made it very clear who was to blame. A journalist’s job, the report said, no longer ended with choosing, reporting and publishing

Andrew Garfield

Why Britain and France can’t have an amicable divorce

Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson famously said that the National Health Service is the nearest thing we British have to a state religion. You could say much the same thing about the European Union and the French. To our Gallic neighbours, the ‘construction of Europe’ is a sacred task that brooks no challenge. What goal can be higher than binding the once bellicose German nation into a new rules-based European order that has brought peace to a continent riven by war and revolution? What nobler cause for France than leveraging the outsized economic heft of its neighbour outre-Rhin in support of its mission to create an alternative beacon of enlightenment values

Tuesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Frances Haugen: a very convenient whistleblower

Facebook wants to move its business model towards the metaverse, that virtual future in which we will all hang out online through headsets and pretend it isn’t weird. The trouble is, we already appear to live in an alternate reality created by communications specialists with highly political agendas. Just look at the clearly PR-orchestrated Online Safety vs Facebook story which the media is playing out before our non-digital eyes. This week’s protagonist is Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who appeared yesterday in parliament to give evidence to MPs scrutinising the Online Harms Bill. That is the bill through which the government says it intends to regulate social media companies to