Will the riots burn down Trump’s presidency?
15 min listen
As America continues to burn, Freddy discusses with Jacob Heilbrunn what the protests mean for Trump’s chances for re-election.
World
Wednesday
Inside the final act of the Brexit drama
The fourth round of official Brexit negotiations resumed on Tuesday, screen-to-screen. They will determine whether the stalemate can be broken and a trade deal sealed by the end of the transition date of 31 December. By mid-June, a high-level ‘stock-take’ between Boris Johnson and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will assess whether sufficient progress has been made to continue negotiations. Such is not the case thus far, according to recent public utterances from Michel Barnier and David Frost, who has claimed ‘very little progress’. Just like in Endgame, Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy, a sense of hopelessness pervades the final scene of the drama. In the play – as with Brexit – the
Brazil’s Bolsonaro is struggling to tackle coronavirus
Coronavirus is devastating Brazil. 31,000 people have died and the country has 558,000 confirmed cases (the actual toll is believed to be much higher). But even in the midst of a global pandemic, the state’s war on the favela drug gangs continues unabated. It was six o’clock in the morning on May 15 when Tiê Vasconcelos woke up to the sound of heavy artillery. ‘My first reaction, as always, was to lie down on the floor’, says the 25-year-old community organiser and YouTuber, who lives in the Complexo do Alemão favela, a sprawling impoverished community in the north of Rio de Janeiro. ‘There was an intense exchange of fire, heavy noises,
Monday
The case against the UK’s Hong Kong amnesty
Almost across the political spectrum, people appear to have decided that it is a very good thing that the government may offer Hong Kong citizens with British Nationals Overseas (BNO) status the chance to come and live in the UK permanently. With China having passed draconian security legislation that runs against democratic norms, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab have made clear that Britain’s doors will be opening to those Hong Kongers with BNO status who would like to move here. As Ms Patel said: If China imposes this law, we will explore options to allow British Nationals Overseas to apply for leave to stay in the UK,
There is no justice in looting
‘Never deny, seldom affirm, always distinguish.’ We should dust off that old Jesuit adage in this season of American rioting. It may not be quite as mellifluous as ‘persistent perversity provokes the patient pedagogue to produce particularly painful punishment’, but it does suit the case. The death in Minneapolis of George Floyd at the hands – or the knee – of now ex-cop Derek Chauvin was an outrageous abuse of police power. It is right and just that Chauvin should be charged with third-degree murder – homicide that is unintentional but nonetheless exhibits ‘a depraved mind, without regard for human life’. The fact that Chauvin has a history of complaints – and at least
Saturday
A no-deal Brexit is now all but inevitable
Coronavirus is obscuring much about the future of the EU – and Britain’s relationship with it. Not everyone is joining the dots, but business is. And this means the decision for a no-deal Brexit is being taken outside of the official negotiations. Nissan unveiled its global restructuring this week after making a £5 billion net loss in the last financial year. It will close its Barcelona factory with a loss of 2,800 jobs while the Spanish government has said this was the end of Nissan’s manufacturing in Europe. And so it is if Europe means the EU. For Nissan also announced that the future of its UK plant in Sunderland was
Friday
Can Germany spend its way out of the corona crisis?
Coronavirus is grim news for all major economies and Germany is no exception. The country’s economic output decreased by 2.2 per cent during the first quarter of the year, the sharpest fall since the 2008 crash and the second biggest since German reunification in 1990. A double-digit dip in the second quarter, when the full impact of the lockdown restrictions introduced in March become more visible, seems likely. But while Germany is not alone in facing up to grim economic statistics, it is using its economic clout – unavailable to poorer countries in Europe – to try and spend its way out of the crisis. Many German employers have been
Poland is having its own ‘Dominic Cummings moment’
Kazik Staszewski, a grizzled 57-year-old, does not look like the kind of singer who would top the charts. Nor does his recent accordion-heavy song ‘Your Pain Is Better Than Mine’ sound like the kind of song that sells. Nonetheless, the song took Poland by storm, topping the Radio Three charts and racking up millions of views on YouTube. Why? The lyrics launched a stinging attack on Jarosław Kaczyński, the most polarising man in Polish politics – and another high-profile figure to be accused, like Dominic Cummings, of breaching lockdown rules. Kaczyński leads Law and Justice, the largest party in the Polish parliament, and serves as its kingmaker and ideological backbone.
Thursday
What’s going on in Minneapolis?
23 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to Andy Ngo, editor at large of the Post Millennial, about the riots unfolding in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd.
Escaping the dragon: rethinking our approach to China
42 min listen
It’s not just coronavirus, but the government is keen to have a new approach to China. We discuss what this entails and whether or not it’s a good idea (00:50). Plus, what will be the lasting impact of the Cummings affair on the government? (17:16) And last, the way to deal with noisy neighbours now that people are working from home (34:00). With our Political Editor James Forsyth; former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin; our Deputy Political Editor Katy Balls; Conservative Home’s Paul Goodman; Spectator columnist Melissa Kite; and our ‘Dear Mary’ columnist and Gogglebox star Mary Killen.
Will Boris Johnson stand with Hong Kong?
Hong Kong, ‘Asia’s World City’, is becoming a place where legislators fear that they could face years in prison for talking to politicians from other countries, including British MPs. So many of us have fond memories of Hong Kong. Dynamic and vibrant, the city is a melting pot of different cultures, which represents the meeting point of East and West. Yet in recent days, the mood in Hong Kong has soured. Moral, courageous people now face the choice of standing up and risking arrest; or staying quiet and giving up on their way of life as they know it. For many Hong Kongers who are descendants of refugees from the worst of
How Xi Jinping plans to crush Hong Kong
The Hong Kong government has recently extended its Covid regulations banning gatherings of more than eight people until 4 June. How convenient. Last year, according to organisers, 180,000 people gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on 4 June 1989. In future, being an organiser may well land you in court under a new national security law, which Beijing announced last week at its annual National People’s Congress. Perhaps we should have expected it. After all, the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s ‘constitution’, lays down that the Hong Kong government should enact such a law, and the big party meeting in October told us that the ‘legal systems and
Escaping the dragon: the government’s new approach to China
How will the world be different after coronavirus? Will everything return to the way it was or will there be lasting change? For this country, there is one thing that will clearly be different: the government’s approach to China. I understand that while Boris Johnson’s grand, integrated foreign policy review has been put on hold because of the pandemic, the work on Anglo-Sino relations has been brought forward as a matter of urgency. One of those heavily involved in the development of this new policy tells me that the aim is to get this country ‘off the trajectory of ever-increasing dependence’ on China. The issue is not that Covid-19 emerged
Wednesday
Norway health chief: lockdown was not needed to tame Covid
Norway is assembling a picture of what happened before lockdown and its latest discovery is pretty significant. It is using observed data – hospital figures, infection numbers and so on – to construct a picture of what was happening in March. At the time, no one really knew. It was feared that virus was rampant with each person infecting two or three others – and only lockdown could get this exponential growth rate (the so-called R number) down to a safe level of 1. This was the hypothesis advanced in various graphs by Imperial College London for Britain, Norway and several European countries. But the Norwegian public health authority has
Japan’s Covid success is a mystery
Japan’s Covid ‘State of Emergency’ is now officially over. Tokyo, the last of Japan’s 47 prefectures to be officially released from restrictions, was declared safe(ish) on Monday, meaning its cautious three-step programme of reopening all commercial premises and entertainment venues can begin. The war over Corona may have been won here, but with a host of competing theories and interested parties hoping to claim credit, the battle to decide how it happened is just beginning. Japan’s official death toll from Covid-19 has not yet reached 1,000. This is in a country of 126 million people with densely packed cities, where people live a cheek-by-jowl existence on public transport, in compact
Saturday
Did Obama have a hand in Russiagate?
19 min listen
Friday
Hong Kong’s ‘one country, two systems’ is over
The Chinese Communist party made an announcement yesterday which effectively ends ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong, and in so doing launched a brazen assault on the international rules-based order. They have also dramatically changed the very nature and way of life of the city which was once my home. Over the past six years, the regime in Beijing has increasingly tightened its grip on Hong Kong, eroding its freedoms initially subtly but more recently with dramatic acceleration, and tearing up the promises it made in an international treaty with Britain before the handover. But yesterday came the final, most blatant nail in the coffin: the announcement that the
Taiwan’s balancing act is becoming ever more precarious
After a landslide victory in January’s election, Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen was re-inaugurated on Wednesday at a scaled-down ceremony in Taipei. As ever, Taiwan’s relationship with China was the central issue of the election. This year, though, a greater sense of urgency surrounded the vote, primarily because of the instability in Hong Kong. Now, polling day feels like it belongs to a distant past, taking place amid rumblings of a new virus infecting residents of Wuhan across the Taiwan Strait. Although Taiwan has rightly received much praise for its response to coronavirus, the past few months have not been without significant difficulties. Above all, coronavirus has reinvigorated discussion of Taiwan’s position on the
Pakistan’s ‘Islamophobia’ problem
Imran Khan has dedicated much energy to the plight of Muslims around the world. Now, his government has finally decided to pay heed to the suffering of its own religious minorities, by putting together a long-planned commission last month. Days after the commission was formed, it was decided to exclude Ahmadis from it. Since coming to power in 2018, Khan has vociferously spoken up for Muslim minorities, most notably for those in India. In the meantime, Khan has overturned decisions to include a preeminent Ahmadi economist in a financial advisory body, and has now retracted membership of Ahmadis from a commission that merely reaffirms them as a religious minority. Pakistan is the
Is Donald Trump more left wing than Joe Biden?
25 min listen
