World

Hillary Clinton’s BBC interview in London is making headlines mainly about Russia, but students of the debate about transgender rights and self-identification should pay close attention to another moment in the interview. For Clinton, still the most prominent women on the left of politics in the world, said there are ‘legitimate concerns’ about the way the move to recognise transgender identities might affect women. Those concerns should he recognised, she told the BBC. Now, this isn’t technically ‘news’ in the sense that it’s not the first time Clinton has spoken about this topic of late. In a Sunday Times interview last month Hillary Clinton and her daughter disagreed about the gender

If you’re a regular podcast listener, you might have noticed a slight rebranding – we’ve rolled out a fresh look across our podcasts, plus, what was known as The Spectator Podcast is now The Edition. But fear not: underneath the fresh lick of paint, they’re the same podcasts that you know and love. So can anyone get Trump out of the Oval Office? It’s not that he’s such a brilliant president – he’s not – but that the 17 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination are all united by what Freddy Gray calls ‘a mesmerising mediocrity’. So is Freddy right? Lara Prendergast talks to him on the podcast, as well

The murder of Russian defector and fierce Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko was a radioactive wake-up call to many in the West about the nature of the Russian regime. Eight years later, the annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 were also rightly condemned around the world. It’s safe to say these events – and the ongoing allegations of Russian meddling in western democracies – have made it an interesting time to be a Russian in this country. Yet while this topic has been a rich vein of material for a comedian, the extent of hysteria about Russia’s involvement in every aspect of our daily lives is now

Armistice day this year marks one hundred and one years since the guns were silenced on the western front. Four years of commemorations of the ‘seminal catastrophe’ of modern times, the calamity from which other calamities sprang, has also meant a wave of ‘new’ accounts of varying quality, none more so than for the causes of the conflict. But a book that has ‘turned up’ on the origins of the First World War could dramatically change our thinking about what really caused the world to go to war. Written by a Serbian history professor, Vladimir Ćorović, between 1927 and 1935, The Relations of Serbia and Austria-Hungary in the 20th Century, was denied publication by

It’s half-way through Emmanuel Macron’s five-year mandate and French voters are glancing over the menu, bored of the president’s promises. Everything they’ve come to dislike about Emmanuel Macron is being confirmed and contrasted by the taller man on his right. Yes, the most serious threat to Macron right now isn’t Marine Le Pen but the growing popularity of his prime minister. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Edouard Philippe is arguably France’s best PM in living memory. And cruelly, he’s all the things Macron isn’t. Unpretentious, understating and authentic, he’s a six-foot-four Northerner of sharp wit who goes boxing twice a week. A proud father of three, he learned real-life

What exactly is the role of a bishop – Catholic or Anglican – in the modern West? They spend a certain amount of time in church, of course, but what they love best is a committee meeting. And ‘dialogue’ with various groups. Sometimes they combine the two and have ‘mutually enriching dialogue’ at committee meetings. On today’s Holy Smoke I meet a different sort of bishop: one whose most important dialogue is with armed warlords and their teenage mercenaries. He runs a hospital that is desperately short of doctors and medicine amid a humanitarian crisis in which over 200,000 people have died. And he has young men queuing up to

 Cape Town Last Sunday, when South Africa beat Wales to go through to the rugby World Cup final against England, was the last day of a black week in South African politics. The valiant Democratic Alliance, the official opposition, the proud liberal party that fought both apartheid and the abuses of the ANC, fell into strife and ignominy. Its leader Mmusi Maimane resigned and there was furious infighting about its governance and policies. Enemies of liberalism gloated. The election of the dominating figure of Helen Zille as the party’s chair was at the centre of the storm. Africa can prosper only if it follows liberal policies: clean and limited government,