World

Gavin Mortimer

France has partly seen sense on face masks

I went for a long walk last night in Paris. I chuntered most of the way, only breaking off to nod a greeting to the handful of other maskless pedestrians. We’re a dwindling band, but there’s a camaraderie among us, a bond created by our refusal to give in to hysteria. It’s an eclectic club, cutting across sex, age and ethnicity. A report this week stated that Frenchwomen in their 50s were the most reluctant to wear masks, but in Paris I would say it’s men in their forties and women in their early twenties. But to see someone on the streets in Paris without a mask has become increasingly

Dominic Green

Leaked letter: Boris Johnson rejects Trump on Iran sanctions

A leaked letter to the UN Security Council shows that the British government has rejected the US position on Iran’s nuclear and conventional weapons programs, is siding with France and Germany at the UN, and is risking a diplomatic confrontation with its closest ally. The letter, dated August 20, notifies the head of the UN Security Council that the ‘E3’ (Britain, France, Germany) remain ‘committed to fully implementing UNSCR 2231 (2015), by which the JCPOA [the ‘Iran deal’] was endorsed in 2015’, and that the United States request for ‘snapback’ on sanctions on Iran has no legal validity: ‘Germany, France and the United Kingdom (‘the E3’) do not consider that

Freddy Gray

Trump goes for Biden’s jugular in convention speech

President Donald J. Trump just gave an impressive and unprecedented State of the Union address from the lawn of the White House…oh wait, it was his 2020 Republication nomination speech. It just felt like a quasi-imperial event. The address was long, too long for an acceptance speech — coming in at 6,000 words, it took more than an hour. Trump just always has to dwell on all his achievements. ‘I say very modestly that I have done more for the African-American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president,’ he said. That really is his idea of modesty. The President hasn’t changed much after three and a

Merkel may come to regret her furlough generosity

As Britain’s furlough scheme winds down, Germany’s is set to continue: Merkel’s government has announced that its enormously-expensive policy will stay in place until the end of next year. Hubertus Heil, the country’s finance minister, says furloughing offers ‘the stablest bridge over a deep economic valley’. Many in Britain are clamouring for Rishi Sunak to adopt the same approach. But with a price tag of 30 billion euros (£26 billion) and no guarantee it will prevent a surge in unemployment, is Germany’s strategy really a sensible one? This isn’t the first time Germany is hoping furloughing workers can get it out of a crisis. Kurzarbeitergeld, or ‘short-work money’, is state-regulated

Med alert: Greece and Turkey are in a battle for hegemony

No one should fool themselves about the nature of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision for Turkey. It’s an imperialist project that would see Turkey’s hegemony stretch from the Mediterranean Sea and Libya all the way to Iran. Erdogan’s plans for his country’s expansion are evident in the current stand-off in the eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece. Turkish frigates are accompanying a research vessel, the Oruc Reis, as it enters disputed waters to carry out a seismic survey in search of natural gas. In its path lies a joint force of Greek and French warships, attempting to prevent the Turkish from venturing further. The two sides have almost come to blows

Rod Liddle

The West doesn’t know best

I’d always rather liked the Finns, until I came across the conductor Dalia Stasevska. When I asked my mother what they were like, back when I was five or six and enjoyed staring at a globe of the world, she described them as ‘drunken and stupid, but very brave’. This was, by Mother’s standards, an extremely kindly benediction. Most of her descriptions of the world’s various people did not contain commendations. There were a few exceptions — Trinidadians were ‘drunken and stupid, but very cheerful’, for example. But by and large, to her the world comprised people who were drunken and stupid, apart from the Muslim world, where people were

Freddy Gray

The Trump show: he could just win again

‘Keep America Great’ is President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election slogan and it sounds off. The phrase doesn’t have the same ring as Make America Great Again, the mantra that Trump pinched from Reagan and repeated to victory in 2016. As an acronym, KAG is uglier than MAGA. The words particularly jar when America’s cities are burning, homicide rates are spiking, almost 180,000 Americans have died of or with Covid, and the country is reeling from the largest economic shock of all time. You call that great? Then again, 2020 is an even crazier year than 2016, and the maddest news is that Donald Trump might be about to defy the

Protestors are clearing a path for Trump

‘This city is not going to stop burning itself down until they [the protestors] know that this officer has been fired.’ Thus spoke Whitney Cabal, a leader of the Kenosha chapter of Black Lives Matter, in response to the latest police shooting in Wisconsin. The use of the passive in that sentence is revealing. As Theodore Dalrymple has pointed out (see ‘The knife went in’) it is common for people to assign motive to inanimate objects when they are loth to admit to being in the wrong. I suspect that the suitably named Ms Cabal knows that the state of Wisconsin did not auto-combust this week, as Krook does at

Nine lessons from the Republican and Democrat conventions

What’s the bottom line so far? The Democrats think they will win by making the race a referendum on Donald Trump (more the person than the policies, though they hate both). They are effectively trying to run Joe Biden as a generic Democrat. The Republicans think the path to victory is to make the race a choice, Trump versus Biden, to say the Democratic Party is dominated by the far left and that Biden is unable or unwilling to stop that oppressive movement. Drawing a sharp contrast between the two parties was the whole point of Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to conclude the convention’s third night. For the most

Stephen Daisley

It’s time for Boris to back Israel

Dominic Raab has visited Israel for his first trip as Foreign Secretary. By all accounts, he was made very welcome, despite the UK’s craven abstention at the UN over extending an arms embargo on Iran, a country where they arrest our ambassador, burn our flag and chat ‘Death to Britain’. Quite the dilemma we faced in that vote. According to the Foreign Office, Raab met Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 16th year of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. He was keen to ‘reinforce UK commitment to preventing annexation and pursuing a negotiated two-state solution’.  ‘Annexation’ is what we call now-suspended

Kate Andrews

Don’t Panic! How to talk about climate change

23 min listen

Can the conversation around climate change all too often get heated, hysterical, and panicked? Should we be appealing for more calm in the climate debate? In the first of this mini podcast series featuring Bjorn Lomborg and Matt Ridley, host Kate Andrews challenges Bjorn and Matt on their views over the best way to conduct what some say is the most important debate of our lifetimes.

Why Putin might not be to blame for poisoning Alexey Navalny

In news that should surprise nobody, the German government says there is a ‘certain likelihood’ Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who fell ill while on a domestic flight last week and was evacuated to Germany on the weekend, was poisoned. According to doctors treating him, Navalny was poisoned by an unknown substance from ‘within the group of cholinesterase inhibitors’, indicating he is likely the victim of a nerve agent attack. For many (perhaps too many), this already has Vladimir Putin’s finger prints all over it. Yet over the last two decades of being in power, Putin has blurred the boundaries between state, quasi-state, and non-state to the point where

The paradox of Israeli peace

Days after the UAE and Israel announced a deal, Israelis were already talking about trips to Dubai and all the great five star hotels the Gulf offers. At the same time, the country has been speculating about which states will be next in line to make peace. This sense of a coming era of peacemaking is palpable. However, the reality in the region is that while many countries have been considering closer ties with Israel because of shared threats and interests they are also moving cautiously. Oman is a good example of this paradox. Oman welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a surprise visit in 2018 and it appeared to

The myth of China’s ‘debt-trap diplomacy’

It is hard to remember now, but just five years ago David Cameron’s No. 10 was declaring a ‘golden era’ of Sino-British ties. Now the US sees China as a ‘strategic rival’ and Britain has joined a growing coalition of Western nations attempting to limit Beijing’s power. There are certainly good reasons to be wary of China’s regime. But there’s also a clear risk that growing Sinophobia distorts the reality of Chinese behaviour, which is often far less strategic than is widely supposed. This is particularly clear with respect to China’s ‘belt and road initiative’, an attempt to build a rail and maritime trade network across the globe. Launched in

Ross Clark

Could blood plasma be used to treat Covid-19?

What are we to make of the decision by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to grant emergency use authorisation for blood plasma treatment of Covid-19? Is this a medical breakthrough or a dangerous move forced on it by a desperate president who sees his electoral chances slipping away unless he somehow gets on top of the crisis over the next few weeks? It goes without saying that the approval of drugs ought to be above partisan politics. Introducing novel drugs into everyday use has the potential to bring a huge amount of good – but also the potential to cause a great deal of harm. The only satisfactory

Lionel Shriver

Spectator Out Loud: Lionel Shriver, Simon Cooper and Gerri Peev

22 min listen

On this week’s podcast, Lionel Shriver says that the real determinant of coronavirus isn’t race – it’s obesity (01:00) Simon Cooper asks whether the return of beavers to English rivers is really something to be celebrated (09:35) Gerri Peev asks why the European Union keeps backing Bulgaria’s kleptocratic government. (15:40)

Why can’t France’s middle class learn to love Britain?

Many of us British Francophiles discover early on in our relationship with la belle France that there is an undercurrent of – well, to put it bluntly, Anglophobia. It is not quite blotted out by French geniality and (usually) courtesy towards les Rosbifs individually. When we first went to France many years ago, we were frequently taken to task about burning Joan of Arc or sinking the French fleet at Mers el Kébir. Today, it takes the form of irritation at Brexit (with a confident expectation that it will bring disaster), and competition over which country has the most (or least) cases of Covid. One rarely comes across crude Anglophobia. It

It’s time for Imran Khan to accept Israel is here to stay

‘Our stand on Israel is clear,’ Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan said this week. ‘We cannot recognise Israel until Palestinians get their right’, he said. For Khan, the UAE’s deal with Israel – which will inevitably lead to more Muslim states formalising relations with Israel – counts for little. But Khan is no stranger to volte-faces. It’s time for him to make another one – and formalise ties with Israel. Pakistan was actually closer to recognising Israel this time last year, in the aftermath of India scrapping the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, than it is today. Many politicians in Pakistan came to realise that if the Arab states

Could Giorgia Meloni become Italy’s first female PM?

Last summer, a bare-chested Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing League and interior minister at the time, roamed the trendiest beaches on the Adriatic coast drinking Mojitos and dancing to DJ sets. But twelve months on, the partying has stopped and Salvini has lost his magic touch: the League has been ousted from the government and support is draining away by the day. ‘Papeete Syndrome’ – named after the tawdry beach club which became the League’s unofficial headquarters last August – is now a synonym of self-defeating hubris in Italy’s political lexicon. And today Italian conservatives worship a new idol: Giorgia Meloni. Salvini’s decline in the polls has largely coincided