World

Wednesday

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The triumph of Bangladesh’s third gender

Tashnuva Anan Shishir last week became the first transgender person to read the news on Bangladeshi TV. The 29-year-old broke down in tears, overtaken by the momentous occasion, after delivering her first three-minute bulletin on March 8. Shishir reached this milestone after facing years of marginalisation, bullying and sexual assaults. A 2015 study of the media’s coverage of the transgender movement in Bangladesh underlines the mountains of prejudice that Shishir has had to overcome. She now hopes that other transgender people in Bangladesh won’t have to suffer anymore. Transgender people in Bangladesh have made small strides recently in their uphill battle to achieve basic human rights in a society largely

Tuesday

Gus Carter Gus Carter

MPs question Johnson’s plan for Global Britain

Boris Johnson still has a journalist’s ear for snappy phrases — levelling up, an oven-ready Brexit, Global Britain. The PM attempted to flesh out one of those headlines on Tuesday with his integrated review — so called because it ties together foreign and defence policy alongside trade and international aid.  The 100-page document — designed to set the course for ‘Global Britain’ over the next ten years — identifies Russia and China as the UK’s two biggest international challenges. The former is described as an ‘active threat’, a dangerous rogue state, while the East Asian country is seen instead as a ‘systemic challenge’. The position is clear: China is the

James Lewisohn

Why isn’t Britain adopting the Danish roadmap?

Denmark’s greatest philosopher, Søren Kirkegaard, experienced only one epidemic in his lifetime, the cholera outbreak of 1853, which occurred after Denmark foolishly lifted the coastal quarantine that had saved the country from Europe’s miserable 19th century cholera pandemics. Yet he aptly sensed our response to indeterminate lockdowns: ‘the most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have’. Danes and Britons are keenly ‘remembering’ summer 2021 and are desperate for lockdown to be over. In a televised debate last week, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen and opposition leader Jakob Ellemann-Jensen agreed ‘in principle’ that Denmark should reopen once all its over-50s have been fully vaccinated.

Jade McGlynn

Boris’s Russia review will delight Putin

The strategy outlined within the integrated review lacks the urgency, agility, and need for ambiguity needed to take on the country it deems our ‘most acute threat’: Russia. Described as the ‘biggest review of our foreign, defence, security and development policy since the end of the Cold War’, in fact — when it comes to Russia — much of the IR reads more like a literature review than a 21st Century ‘Long Telegram’. Russia is referenced only fourteen times directly, and then with a great deal more descriptive analysis than comprehensive plans of action. Much of the content is welcome: one section deals with Russia under the new term of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Don’t blame the EU for the latest Covid vaccine clash

Far from subsiding, as it seemed to be doing last week, the European war over the AstraZeneca vaccine has intensified. Over the past few weeks, EU leaders have swung from accusing the company – and Britain – of hoarding the vaccine and failing to supply it to EU countries, to claiming that it is ineffective, back to accusing us of hoarding it again. But the decision by several European countries to suspend rollout of the vaccine over fears of blood clots is the most serious challenge yet. This time, however, the blame cannot be laid at the door of the EU – the European Medicines Agency continues to declare the

Johnny Patterson

Boris’s China plan is a missed opportunity

From Brexit to China, ‘cakeism’ – the idea that it is possible to govern without making hard choices – appears to be the defining philosophy of Boris Johnson’s government. A hawk to the hawks and a dove to the doves; the Prime Minister wants to be all things to all men. The result is that the government have so far failed to make the hard decisions needed when it comes to China. But as with lockdown in March 2020, dither and delay is only going to increase the difficulty and trouble ahead down the road. The publication of the integrated review today makes this painfully clear. The report’s most significant passage is buried

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Support for Merkel’s party is crumbling

On Sunday, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) suffered a historic election defeat in their former heartlands of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. ‘The state elections struck deep at the heart of the union of the CDU and CSU,’ said Markus Söder, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. To an increasingly frustrated public, the ruling parties in the capital look tired and devoid of ideas. There is no incentive for Merkel and her cabinet to turn things around. After 16 years in government and on the brink of retirement, she has become a lame-duck chancellor. Some German journalists have even begun to call the whole

Sophia Gaston

The world will welcome the new ‘Global Britain’

Just what does ‘Global Britain’ actually mean? In the five years since the UK’s foreign policy was thrown into chaos after the EU Referendum, this question has reverberated without reply. In the publication of its Integrated Review of the UK’s Defence, Security, Development and Foreign Policy today, the UK Government has finally put its cards on the table. ‘Global Britain’ is no longer simply a slogan, but a roadmap underpinning a fundamental shift in our international ambitions. The Global Britain set out in the Review is a dynamic, forward-looking, tech-savvy nation, in which our domestic and international resilience is seen as one. The phrase ‘Global Britain’ was conjured in those

Tom Slater Tom Slater

In defence of Charlie Hebdo’s ‘racist royals’ cover

Amid the ongoing fallout from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s explosive Oprah interview, Charlie Hebdo seems to have done the impossible: it has united Team Queen and Team Meghan in outrage against it. In response to Markle’s claims that she was pushed out of the royal family by racism, the fearless French satirical magazine published a front-page cartoon of the queen with her knee on Meghan’s neck. The cartoon is titled ‘Why Meghan quit the palace’, to which Markle answers in a speech bubble, ‘Because I couldn’t breathe any more’. It has united Team Queen and Team Meghan in outrage The depiction of the queen, complete with hairy legs and

Monday

Ashis Ray

Will Modi’s ceasefire with Pakistan last?

The perpetually fractious relationship between India and Pakistan reached a particularly low point two years ago, after dozens of Indian paramilitary personnel were killed in a suicide attack in Pulwama in the mountainous terrain of Kashmir. India blamed the attack on Pakistan and bombed what it believed was a terrorist training camp in Balakot across the border. The Pakistani air force retaliated by shooting down an Indian air force plane in a dog-fight, with the pilot having to eject on enemy soil. The airman was returned; but the downward spiral in ties accelerated with the two countries withdrawing their high commissioners and suspending bilateral trade altogether. Now, the endless volley

Dr Mark Toshner

Europe’s vaccine suspensions could come back to bite Britain

Germany is the latest country to suspend the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine over concerns about possible side effects. The Netherlands and Ireland have taken similar steps. So too has Denmark, Norway, Bulgaria and Iceland, while Italy and Austria have halted the use of certain batches of the drug as a precautionary measure.  Britain has done many things wrong in its handling of the pandemic, but it has done one thing well: the rollout of the jab. It’s the one place where we have useful lessons to teach the world in Covid-19. Europe, in particular, does not appear to be listening. Vaccine programmes as ambitious as the one needed now require joined-up international co-ordination and action. These latest delays

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Meghan, Harry and the rise of a new religion

The Meghan and Harry show is a window into our spiritual predicament — in Britain, America and beyond. Through breaking free from royal life, amid much unhappiness, they have acquired a powerful story of self-realisation. This is our culture’s new idea of the spiritual life. What exactly is this new idea? How does it relate to what came before? Is it replacing the old or is its appeal limited to certain sectors of society? The rise of the new spirituality has been gradual. We can neatly chart its rise with reference to Harry’s mother, Princess Diana. First we might pause to ask: why is the British royal family such an

Sunday

Hasan Ismaik

Why Great Britain matters even more after Brexit

We in the Middle East have been watching Britain with increased fascination. No, not because of the drama involving Meghan and Harry. But because of how the United Kingdom speaks to us across so many issues.  Its renewed independence with Brexit, the unstinting loyalty of Her Majesty the Queen to duty and country, the miraculous vaccine innovation and delivery success, David Attenborough’s warning to the UN on climate change, JK Rowling’s defence of women.  Despite pioneering change in the modern world, Britain has conserved its long tradition of the rule of law. Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Dominic Raab, and Priti Patel – all children or grandchildren of migrants to Britain

Saturday

Colin Brazier

Confessions of an accidental foreign correspondent

Perhaps you remember footage of the wave. It was mostly from traffic cameras, mute but darkly mesmerising. Millions of gallons of Pacific seawater upended by a 9.0 earthquake and hurled irresistibly inland. A few days later I saw what that meant, turning a corner in my hire-car to find the road blocked by a trawler that had been washed ashore. This week, Japan has commemorated the tenth anniversary of the tsunami which killed 15,000 of its people. A seismic tragedy which begat a man-made disaster. Inundated by water, part of the Fukushima nuclear reactor blew up, producing the worst radioactive leak since Chernobyl. It wasn’t long before scores of foreign journalists

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris, Biden and the era of big government

Bill Clinton’s declaration that ‘the era of big government is over’ summed up the late 1990s political zeitgeist. Centre-left political parties could win if they accepted the small state model bequeathed by the Thatcher-Reagan consensus. Now things feel very different, as I say in the Times today. The stimulus Joe Biden signed into law is huge, $1.9 trillion (£1.4 trillion): three times larger than the financial hole created by Covid. Here there has been nothing as dramatic. But it is still telling that Boris Johnson is insistent that the public finances won’t be brought back into order by ‘austerity cuts’. Big government appears to be back. Politics is going to become

Thursday

Pieter Cleppe

MEPs have missed their chance to protect human rights

The European Parliament is always eager to lecture the world about human rights. To a degree, this annoys the world’s despots and we should, of course, never underestimate how ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’. But the Parliament’s overall influence on foreign affairs is still limited. On Tuesday, however, MEPs received an opportunity to actually make a difference when it came to protecting human rights. The European Parliament had to decide whether to lift the immunity of three Catalan nationalist MEPs – former Catalan government leader Carles Puigdemont and former ministers Antoni Comín and Clara Ponsatí – that are facing criminal charges in Spain for their roles in organising an independence

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Will the Tokyo Olympics go ahead?

Tokyo This week was the tenth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country. It, along with the tsunami it triggered, claimed an estimated 19,000 lives. I was walking in the Shibuya district of Tokyo when the quake knocked me off my feet. I recall being first puzzled (why am I falling?); then awestruck, as I glanced up at a thin concrete ‘pencil’ building swaying gently like a flower in the breeze. Two women on a balcony seemed to be, bizarrely, unaccountably, laughing. Then I became aware of a man running towards me, gesticulating frantically and, oddly for Japan, swearing. When the

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

The West has lost its moral high ground

International travellers running the gauntlet of English airports must already test negative for Covid before the flight, and on return to the UK get tested again before boarding, fill out a locator form, quarantine for ten days and test negative twice more. But that’s not enough oppression for Boris Johnson’s government. As of this week, outbound intrepids have also to fill out ‘declaration forms’ explaining why their trip is essential. Not doing so is a criminal offence. This new hoop to jump is obnoxious on a host of levels. The declaration form came in on the very day the first few lockdown restrictions were eased, with hospitalisations and deaths dramatically

Seth J. Frantzman

Israel’s changing global fortunes

Israel has been working closely with other countries and international companies, developing and producing vaccines against Covid-19. At the same time, the Middle Eastern country is rapidly improving relations with its Gulf neighbours, the latest evidence being the appointment of a new UAE ambassador to Israel. A major shift has taken place in Israel — 20 years ago the country was under siege from terrorists, with bus bombings rocking Jerusalem and terror attacks in the heart of Tel Aviv. Just a few years ago Israel was fighting a major war in Gaza against Hamas, a war that is the subject of an inquiry by the International Criminal Court. For many years Israel