World

Thursday

Matthew Lynn

Ursula von der Leyen and the EU owe Italy more than an apology

Italy’s hospitals have been overwhelmed. Its mortality rate is among the highest in the world. Its economy has cratered, its bond yields have soared. And it is starting to drown under the weight of its accumulated debts. But, hey, at least the EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen feels sorry about the way Italy has been treated, and is willing to apologise. But hold on. The truth is that Italy has been shamefully neglected by the rest of Europe and it is owed far more than a few crocodile tears.  Speaking to the European parliament today, von der Leyen, a woman who is achieving the almost impossible task of making Jean-Claude

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Leaked US document suggests Covid may be less lethal but more widespread

Have we been vastly underestimating the number of people who have been infected with Covid-19 and correspondingly overestimating its mortality? No one knows because we don’t know just how widespread this infection is in the population at large. But a leaked document from the US Department of Homeland Security suggests that the US government, at least, is working on the assumption that the virus is a lot harder to contain – but a lot less deadly – than is widely assumed. The document compares the likely outcome of two scenarios: one in which the outbreak is ‘unmitigated’ – i.e. life carries on as normal – and one in which the government imposes

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Bernard-Henri Lévy: I fear China will use coronavirus to become ‘Power Number One’

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a haunted man. The French philosopher, speaking to me from Paris, told me that when he was 20 years old, in 1968, a flu pandemic broke out across the world which killed an estimated one million people. ‘It was at least as serious as the pandemic of today but without the same reaction.’ He sees our response to the coronavirus in two ways, positive and negative. ‘It is good news that our respect for life has increased and that we want to save life first of all.’ He calls this ‘undeniable progress for civilisation. And for that we have to be really happy’. But the downside is ‘the

The Spectator

Trump has a point – the WHO has failed

The United States has long regarded itself as better prepared for a pandemic than any other country in the world, but it assumed the disease would be flu, rather than a coronavirus. This was a failure of imagination. The Sars epidemic showed the world that coronaviruses can lead to acute and fatal respiratory diseases. The Asian countries that suffered most from Sars updated their pandemic response kits accordingly, with mass testing and patient-tracing technology. Neither Britain nor America thought to do likewise. In Britain, we’re starting to admit to flaws in our pandemic response. Donald Trump is less inclined to do so, and is instead directing his fury at China

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Covid-19 is giving me hyper-focus on the beauty of spring

We know, because of the lack of widespread testing, that incidences of Covid-19 are under-reported. What is less well known is that they may be over-reported as a cause of death. In hospices and in care homes, I gather, where tests are not available, doctors are encouraged, if in doubt, to write ‘suspected Covid‑19’ on 1A of the death certificate, as the ‘primary cause’ of death. They do not wish to be accused of underplaying it. But they do not know they are right, because there have been no tests. A cough and a temperature can be enough to secure a Covid diagnosis, yet the cough could have many causes

Peter Jones

Movie-makers should look to the Athenians before cashing in on this crisis

Covid-19 has not yet reached its peak but already the moguls of the small screen are plotting how to monetise, with exquisite sensitivity, of course, the tragic deaths of thousands of people. They would be wise to listen to the Athenian lovers of tragedy. In 499 bc the powerful Greek city of Miletus on the coast of western Turkey (Asia Minor) raised a revolt against its Persian overlords. It failed and in 494 bc Persia took its revenge: the city was sacked, its women and children sold into slavery, and most of its men slaughtered. Just a year or so later, the poet Phrynichus turned this historical incident into a

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A lesson in survival from pre-21st century Marks & Spencer

When I wrote last week about business-to-business pain-sharing for survival, I was naturally thinking first about UK companies. I say ‘naturally’ because in every aspect of this crisis, ­national interest has, as it were, trumped trans­national co-operation. That’s particularly the case where medical supplies are concerned — as in the US President’s attempt to stop the Minnesota-based manufacturer 3M exporting respirator masks to Canada. But wider questions about global supply chains have been brought into focus by one vivid case: the wipe-out of fashion orders from factories in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam, whose operatives — low-paid but lifted by their jobs out of greater poverty — are the flagbearers of

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

Trump is desperate to find someone to blame for his coronavirus failings

If there is one thing Donald Trump likes more than patting himself on the back, it’s a convenient scapegoat to shift the public narrative. In what has become a daily ritual, Trump held a coronavirus news conference in the White House Rose Garden yesterday to announce a suspension of U.S. funding to the World Health Organisation. The reason for Trump’s decision: the WHO’s supposed lack of independence from China, which the president cited as a key factor in the global spread of Covid-19.  ‘The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable,’ Trump said. In the president’s mind and in the minds of many Republicans in Washington,

Sam Leith Sam Leith

How narcos transformed Colombia

41 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast, I talk to the reporter Toby Muse about the vast, blood-soaked and nihilistic shadow economy that links a banker’s ‘cheeky little line of coke’ to the poorest peasants in Colombia. Toby’s new book Kilo: Life and Death inside the Cocaine Cartels traces cocaine’s journey from that unremarkable-looking shrub to its entry into a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise, interviews farmers, prostitutes, pious assassins and cartel capos – and along the way describes how it has transformed Colombia’s whole politics and way of life.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France won’t be fooled by Macron’s radical reinvention

A couple of hours before Emmanuel Macron addressed France on Sunday night I received a meme on WhatsApp from a French friend. It was a game card for ‘Macron’s Aperitif Bingo’, the rules for which were simple: swigs of a drink of your choice would have to be downed every time the president said a certain word or phrase during his latest declaration about his ‘war’ on coronavirus. ‘War’ incidentally was two swigs, while ‘shortage of masks’ was three and ‘sacrifices’ was four. I imagine that by the end of the president’s speech quite a few players were somewhat unsteady on their feet. One suspects that Macron would not have

Tuesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Stories from countries turned upside down

36 min listen

This six-part series is the latest addition to Spectator Radio. Each week, our panellists from around the world select a story that gives you an inside look at what’s happening outside their windows, presented by Kate Andrews. In this episode, Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie asks how much Trump knew about coronavirus before deciding to act; Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli reports from Rome on the strings attached to the EU’s coronavirus rescue deal to Italy; and the Hong Kong Free Press’s Jennifer Creery highlights concerns that local police are using the crisis to clamp down further on pro-democracy protestors.

John R. Bradley

Saudi may have won an oil truce – but a greater conflict now looms

For the first time in months, the coronavirus panic was briefly demoted as the main news story on Sunday when OPEC and oil-producing non-OPEC nations agreed a deal to cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day – initially to stabilise and then hopefully increase prices. It is the most dramatic production cut in history and of course not unrelated to the pandemic itself. Last month, demand collapsed as the global economy began to shut down but Russia shot down a Saudi opening proposal fearing it would give a boost to the American fracking industry. The kingdom’s de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threw a characteristic hissy fit

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron has lost the coronavirus war

France is to be locked down until 11 May, and possibly longer. Whether the credibility of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency can survive that long is now in question. Macron’s state broadcast on Monday evening was billed in advance as Churchillian but this president does not do inspiration. His message was defensive and grim, with elements of incoherence. Even normally complaisant French pundits are scathing. If he lifts the confinement, he risks a second, lethal wave of infection. If he doesn’t, the economy will collapse entirely Macron’s promise of support to France’s desperately overwhelmed hospitals was denounced as ‘too late’ by nurses interviewed immediately after the broadcast. Patrick Bouet, president of the national

Sunday

John Keiger John Keiger

Britain should brace itself for a new world order after coronavirus

How will states perceive themselves and each other after the pandemic? This is not just a matter of narcissism; it is fundamental to international politics. Such ‘soft power’ is, as Joseph Nye argues, crucial to the clout of countries on the world stage; it allows them to convince rather than coerce in achieving their objectives. Whether it be the British model of democracy, French culture or good governance, these values complement a state’s hard power of armies, bombs and bullets. In today’s information age it is not ‘whose army wins, but whose story wins.’ States may claim that they dealt effectively with coronavirus domestically or internationally, but when this is all

Saturday

Daniel DePetris

It’s time for Obama’s revenge on Trump

With Joe Biden now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, there is one president Americans will be seeing a lot more of in the months ahead—and his name is not Donald Trump. In the three years since he vacated the White House, Barack Obama has largely kept to himself. The former commander in chief is following the golden-rule of his own predecessor, George W. Bush: let your successor govern the way he or she wants to govern, and don’t constantly criticise those decisions or be a nuisance from the sidelines. Obama is keeping to that script, with some notable exceptions—his defence of the Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic legislative achievement,

Constantin Eckner

Does Germany need China more than Europe?

‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’ is the expression of the moment when it comes to summing up how countries are addressing the coronavirus crunch. Germany is no exception. Even before the pandemic, the country’s economy was heading towards a mild recession, according to plenty of projections. But once the virus spread across the Hubei province, Germany’s manufacturers started to get hit in a painful spot: their supply chains. The early supply shock stemming from reduced production capacity in China again exposed Germany’s dependency on its trade relations with the economic giant in the east. For years now, Germany has been leaning on China for cheap supply and as a market for its

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

A simple way for Keir Starmer to help Labour reject Corbynism

It’s over then. After almost five years, Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader has come to a close. Corbyn ended as he led: with the petulance and ill grace that has characterised his political career. As Corbyn slopes to the backbenches to resume a life of fruitless campaigning, Keir Starmer steps up to replace him. He faces a mammoth task: rebuilding Labour as a credible electoral force. This is necessary for both party and country. All of us, wherever we stand on the political spectrum, need a functioning opposition. But make no mistake: if Starmer is to make Labour palatable once more, both politically and indeed morally, he will need