World

Political debate, as we are forever being told, has become coarser in recent years. But there is a bigger change of which rather less is said. Debate seems to focus less and less on actual arguments and more and more on seeking to deny the legitimacy of those who are speaking. Never mind what they are saying – what right do they have to be granted this forum? This phenomenon is never more prevalent than when Nigel Farage pops up on the television, and Twitter is instantly filled with people demanding to know: “who does he represent?”. “Never elected to UK parliament on the seven occasions he tried and with

Britain’s civil service is supposed to be the envy of the world, seamlessly executing the will of whichever government happens to occupy the offices of state. But Mr S wonders whether the reality can be rather different. Disgruntled civil servants have toppled more than one over-mighty minister. Others have admitted actively trying to undermine government policy when it comes to Brexit. Much like different nations, Whitehall’s various departments – and the people who inhabit them – have their own eccentricities and foibles. So to help readers out, Mr S has put together a guide for the avid Whitehall twitcher, making it easy to spot the difference between the lesser-crested FCO

It should be obvious by now — but somehow isn’t. Whenever @realDonldTrump says something wild, you can bet the real Donald Trump is contemplating something sensible — and vice-versa. Often the Commander-in-Chief does the opposite to what his social media handle has just said. Trump the Twitterer is the yin to Trump President’s yang. One suspects the Chinese, who invented philosophical dualism, have figured this out by now. That might mean Beijing is less freaked by his latest outbursts than the markets, which are sliding. Coming into the G7 summit this weekend, Trump has been ramping up the trade war: his response to China’s latest tariff escalation. It’s been pretty

Donald Trump’s attempted purchase of Greenland may have fallen through but if he’s still in the market, there’s some prime real estate in the neighbourhood. It’s smaller, yes, but just as cold, almost as sparsely populated and even has its own independence movement agitating for a breakaway. Happily, the president already owns a chunk of the country in question, so he might be able to get the rest for a bargain.  Scotland, not Greenland, is where Trump should redirect his interest. If it’s a few more golf resorts he’s keen on, we can provide the countryside. If he needs space for a military base or two the Highlands offer all

From the moment Donald Trump stepped onto the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president of the United States, there have been people in the Republican party who have sought to bring him down.   During the 2016 GOP primary, Republican national security officials wrote scathing and embarrassing open letters against him. Conventional Republican strategists and commentators like Karl Rove, Bill Kristol and Spectator USA’s own Rick Wilson blasted him as an incompetent, indecent, moron who shouldn’t be ten miles from the Oval Office. Trump’s primary opponents even tried to scuttle his nomination at the convention, an attempt that fizzled out before it really began. Three years later, these Never

Nicola Sturgeon fancies herself as something of an international stateswoman, jetting off to the United States to boost her profile and touring the capitals of Europe in search of allies against Brexit. She is fond, too, of tweeting her commentary on global affairs, in the hope that others may learn from her example so that, one day, they too can lead a country with a £12.6bn deficit that can’t teach its children how to read. A network of de facto embassies has been steadily assembled, nominally to promote trade ties (which the UK Government already does) but in reality to promote Scotland externally as a separate state. Those who point

Joe Biden has led Democratic polls since day one, holding the kind of consistent lead within his party that Donald Trump held heading into the 2016 primaries. The numbers say he will be the nominee. They also say he will beat Trump. They’re wrong: you should still bet against Biden getting the nomination or getting into the White House.  Biden himself knows that his age and state of mind are a problem, and Glenn Thrush’s recent New York Times story showed that Barack Obama knows it, too. “At some point” in 2008, Thrush reports, while Biden was on his way to becoming the Democrats’ VP pick, he “told Obama aides that ‘Barack

‘Great Minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.’ (Eleanor Roosevelt) The essay which follows is about ideas, not people, for people – now more than ever – no matter what office they may hold, have far less agency than they imagine. It is ideas that change the world. Accordingly, the discussion below is not meant to constitute advice to any particular individual and should not be construed as such. The fact that a crisis in our diplomatic relations with Iran should have synchronised with a school chum’s appointment as Prime Minister is happenstance. To those trolls on Twitter who would wish to put a different spin

We seem to be building up to a second Tiananmen Square, 30 years after the first. This time the venue is Hong Kong. As then, the Chinese government longs to kill protestors, but it hesitates because it fears global reaction. It therefore matters greatly that the ‘rules-based international order’ strongly assert that breaking the 1984 Sino-British Agreement would put China beyond the pale. No international discussion of Brexit is complete without a reverent invocation of the Good Friday Agreement (which in fact has almost nothing to do with EU membership). The Hong Kong Agreement should command such reverence, and its pledge of ‘One country: two systems’ should be the test

August 11th 2019 may go down as Hong Kong’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ as police officers bludgeoned and bruised protesters who had taken to the streets. A young woman was hit in the eye by a rubber bullet. A man was pinned to the ground by police, pleading for mercy as his bloodied face was pushed into the concrete. A policeman shot pepper balls at youngsters from point blank range. Another officer pushed protesters off escalators. Videos also emerged of police officers disguised as protesters making arrests. And there were reports of triad gangsters left free to roam the city, beating up unsuspecting demonstrators. Hong Kong’s protests started as protests about a single issue, amendments to the

What do you call a global hub without an airport? Hong Kong. No other city can lay claim to this impossible status, for no global hub can exist without an airport. The closure of Hong Kong’s airport again today indicates how far the crisis in Hong Kong has gone, and how close one of the world’s greatest cities now is to a one-way ticket. For the fifth successive day, the world’s biggest flash mob has overrun one of the world’s busiest airports. The protesters have been peaceful – much more peaceful than anywhere else in the territory, where they have done their best to provoke the police as well as

Change, for some people, is difficult. Hearing voices on the BBC that differ from the Etonian baritone of old must rankle for some. Lauren Laverne, who took over Desert Island Discs (DID) is about as different from a stuffed shirt as one can imagine. Bright, lively, and witty, her fabulous north-east accent makes Laverne a timely and refreshing addition to Radio 4. Some of the more traditional radio critics have, in the past, expressed doubts about Laverne’s role as presenter of the iconic programme. But in The Spectator this week, Melanie McDonagh added her voice. “There’s no getting away from it,” wrote McDonagh, “Lauren is lightweight and uncerebral. Her capacity