World

Tuesday

Don’t be fooled by China’s ‘carbon neutral’ pledge

China’s commitment to become ‘carbon neutral’ by 2060 has excited environmentalists but it should be seen as part of China’s strategy to become the world’s economic and military hegemon. Carbon neutrality by a date as remote as 2060 will not constrain the ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the slightest. It is time to admit that the policy of economic engagement with China has failed. Optimists used to argue that embracing China in the world economy, especially by admitting it to WTO membership in 2001, would lead the Chinese people to demand democracy. The remarkable naivety of our leaders is captured in a speech given by President Clinton

Tim Ogden

What’s behind the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan?

The outbreak of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the weekend is the latest episode in a saga stretching back to the waning years of the USSR. Although recognised as being part of Azerbaijan, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh is a de facto independent zone populated by ethnic Armenians. Its independence came as a result of a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse; while this ended in the mid-1990s in a victory for the Armenian-backed separatists, sporadic fighting has plagued the area ever since. This has most often taken the form of localised artillery duels, but this July witnessed the heaviest exchanges since the war

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

How green is China?

33 min listen

China is the world’s largest polluter. At the same time, it accounts for a quarter of international investment into renewable energy, and it’s the leading exporter of solar panels. So are ideas of China’s eco-unfriendliness outdated? Journalist Isabel Hilton, who received an OBE for her contribution to raising environmental awareness in China, joins the podcast. She paints a complicated picture: of a country undergoing rapid industrial revolution; of a one-party state divining public opinion to solve public health issues; and of a country trying to use climate change as a jumping board into global leadership.

Daniel DePetris

Trump’s tax leak won’t turn the election

Donald Trump has a lot to worry about these days. The man who is deathly afraid of being ‘a loser’ could be weeks away from losing in the most visible way to Joe Biden, a competitor Trump has blatantly suggested may be taking performance-enhancing drugs to stay awake on the campaign trail.  He is facing an ongoing coronavirus crisis in the United States which passed the 200,000 fatality mark last week. The polls aren’t looking great for the President either; the Washington Post released a survey on Sunday showing Biden up 10-points nationally. The last thing Trump needed was another public relations fire to put out. But then the New

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What have we actually learnt from Trump’s tax revelations?

Is anyone really surprised that Donald Trump’s tax affairs are opaque? Or that he is not as rich as he claims? Is it really all that horrifying that he has for years claimed business losses in order to offset his significant income tax liability? Does it appal us that the Trump family used a Delaware-based consulting group to pay themselves? Of course not. Despite clearly exhaustive efforts, the Times investigative team has failed to uncover any illegality The New York Times’s big Trump tax files splash yesterday is therefore something of a damp squib. It is well-timed — an election is fast-approaching and the story might give Biden a good

Sunday

Matt Mayer

Meet Trump’s Supreme Court nominee

The biggest takeaway from the 2016 presidential election was that Main Street America was so sick of elites in Washington DC telling them how to live that they elected a politically inexperienced, trash-talking billionaire from New York City to ‘drain the swamp’. While some suburban women appear to have tired of Donald Trump’s style, there is little evidence that the mass of voters who sent that message regret their decision, especially in key states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump shockingly is getting his third appointment to the Supreme Court in less than four years. That appointment will shift the

Marc Goldberg

Why Benjamin Netanyahu keeps on winning

It’s been 20 years since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada, a period of carnage that saw the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians. The Intifada killed people and it killed hope. It killed Israeli hopes for an end to conflict and Palestinian hopes to become citizens in their own sovereign state. In August 2000, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed to be only a couple of signatures away from becoming a footnote in the history of the Middle East. The accepted logic in Washington DC and foreign policy think tanks throughout the Western world was that Israeli-Palestinian peace was the gateway to wider peace in the Middle East. History has

Saturday

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Was America really ‘stolen’?

15 min listen

Historian Jeff Fynn-Paul joins Freddy on this episode to discuss whether or not America was really ‘stolen’ from the Native Americans. Fynn-Paul writes about the issue in this week’s Spectator.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Has terror returned to the streets of Paris?

The first thing I heard when I switched on the French radio this morning was a Green activist berating the world for its lack of urgency in tackling climate change. That’s why, he explained, Youth for Climate France is organising a series of demonstrations this weekend, including one on Saturday in which Extinction Rebellion will be present. Another protest took place in France today, this one in Marseille where hundreds of angry residents vented their anger at the government’s announcement on Wednesday that as of tomorrow the city’s bars and restaurants must close for two weeks. It was only a few weeks ago that president Macron was playing it cool

Thursday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Closing time: the coming Tory brawl over Covid rules

39 min listen

Another Conservative civil war threatens to bubble over, so will the government start taking its backbenchers seriously? (00:55) Plus, the contentious fight over the next Supreme Court nominee (15:25) and what is it like to be in Madagascar during the pandemic? (29:05) With Political Editor James Forsyth; Chair of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers Sir Graham Brady; Professor Charles Lipson from the University of Chicago; USA Editor Freddy Gray; and writer Jo Deacon. Presented by Cindy Yu. Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery.

Jeff Fynn-Paul

The myth of the ‘stolen country’

Last month, in the middle of the Covid panic, a group of first-year university students at the University of Connecticut were welcomed to their campus via a series of online ‘events’. At one event, students were directed to download an app for their phones. The app allowed students to input their home address, and it would piously inform them from which group of Native Americans their home had been ‘stolen’. ​We all know the interpretation of history on which this app is based. The United States was founded by a monumental act of genocide, accompanied by larceny on the grandest scale. Animated by racism and a sense of civilisational superiority,

The Spectator

Iran hasn’t earned the right to bear arms

Hard though it is to remember now, 2020 began with a very different dark cloud on the horizon. For a week or so it looked as if the West’s cold war with Iran would burst into full-scale conflict. The assassination by US forces of Iran’s revolutionary guard leader Qassem Soleimani on 3 January sent oil prices soaring and raised fears that President Trump’s reputation as a war-monger was finally to be deserved. As we now know, the crisis fizzled into nothing. In retaliation, Iran halfheartedlyfired missiles at a couple of air bases in Iraq where US forces were stationed, killing no one. Donald Trump announced ‘all is well’ and, as

Jo Deacon

In Madagascar, more will starve than die of the virus

Earlier this month, in his weekly address to the nation, our President, the former DJ and coup leader Andry Rajoelina, announced that Madagascar would shortly produce an injectable treatment for Covid, ‘a medicinal cure not just for Madagascar but for the world’. This was no great surprise to the people of Madagascar. After all, way back in April, when Covid had barely hit our beautifully remote island, President Andry launched Covid Organics, a miracle drink that serves as both a prophylactic and a cure to the virus sweeping the world. Covid Organics, also known as CVO, is based on a herbal remedy for malaria, artemisia annua, along with extracts from

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Does Biden really attract young voters?

26 min listen

A new poll from Harvard suggests that Joe Biden could win the votes of 60 per cent of under-30s in November’s election. But does the Democratic candidate really energise young people, or are they simply repelled by Donald Trump? Freddy Gray speaks to Marcus Roberts, director of international projects at YouGov, about the numbers dictating the race.

Tuesday

Dr Rachel Irwin

The truth about Sweden’s voluntary lockdown

Sweden didn’t ‘refuse’ to lockdown. Nor does it have a herd immunity strategy, although it was recognised that some level of immunity in the population could be a side effect of its approach. The false premise of that rumour is that Sweden stayed open in order to allow the virus to spread, thus promoting herd immunity. In reality, Swedish law does not allow for many types of lockdown measures. Even something as simple as closing a beach is tricky because, in general, beach access is covered by the Right of Public Access which, in turn, is enshrined in the Swedish constitution. The limitations of Swedish law partly explain why the parliament passed

Saturday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The ‘Notorious RBG’ and her triumph over tribalism

Ruth the Moabite is the only Biblical figure to merit the description ‘eshet chayil’ – ‘a woman of valour’. One rabbinical exegesis sees Proverbs 31’s womanly virtues as a reference to Ruth: ‘Many women have done well, but you surpass them all.’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died aged 87 on Erev Rosh Hashanah, surpassed the expectations and limitations placed on women who came before her. But she did more than that: the Brooklyn-born lawyer fundamentally transformed the role of women in law and changed the law on women’s roles. Only the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, she authored the majority opinion in cases such

Daniel McCarthy

The persistent myth of a non-political Supreme Court

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a terrible blow to Democrats, but there is an important point to be considered – the principled arguments Democrats made in 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia prevail. Democrats insisted that the Scalia vacancy should be filled swiftly by President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold hearings. Their pleas were not in vain, however, and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell has now been persuaded by the logic and compassion of the Democrats’ case – and this time the president’s nominee will, probably, get a speedy hearing. It took four years, but Democrats will get the

Dominic Green Dominic Green

What’s the real reason behind Joe Biden’s Brexit threats?

Is Donald Trump taking the Democrats’ line on Brexit and the Irish border? We might think so from the Financial Times. On Friday, the FT quoted Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, saying that the Trump administration, the State Department and the US Congress ‘would all be aligned in the desire to see the Good Friday Agreement preserved to see the lack of a border maintained’, and that no one wants ‘a border by accident’. Does this mean that the Trump administration agrees with Joe Biden? No, it doesn’t. Biden, along with House of Representatives leader Nancy Pelosi and a gaggle of Democratic committee leaders, is siding with