World

Tuesday

Robin Ashenden

Why should Zelensky be grateful to Trump?

A consensus seems to be forming, in certain quarters, that the debacle at the White House meeting on Friday – which played out before an incredulous world – was in large part Volodymyr Zelensky’s fault. Ukraine’s president is certainly paying a heavy price: overnight, Donald Trump has halted military aid to Ukraine. “We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution,” a White House official has said. Aside from the Republican politicians racing to side with Trump following the White House row, there have been voices nearer home. Presenter of the Triggernometry podcast Konstantin Kisin, who initially sided with the Ukrainian leader, tweeted out after

Monday

Mary Dejevsky

Peter Mandelson has become a liability

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Less than a month after presenting his credentials to President Trump, His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington was being accused by an MP in the House of Commons of ‘freelancing on US TV’. The UK armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, had earlier distanced himself from comments made by Lord Mandelson, saying ‘that’s not government policy’.  Both were referring to a typically mellifluous performance by Mandelson on ABC’s popular Sunday politics talk-show, This Week. The presenter was another master of fluent politics-speak, George Stephanopoulos, one-time spokesman for the Clinton White House turned media pundit, and the conversation flowed with amicable ease.  So where had

James Heale James Heale

Priti Patel attacks Nigel Farage over Zelensky comments

During the early days of the Gaza crisis, there was an unofficial refrain doing the rounds in the Foreign Office: ‘Foreign policy doesn’t win votes – but it can lose them.’ In recent days, the same could be said of Ukraine’s peace negotiations. The drama between Presidents Trump and Zelensky which played out in the Oval Office on Friday horrified Westminster. Both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch were quick to signal their support for Zelensky, aware that – three years after the war with Russia began – public support for Ukraine remains rock solid. It poses a difficulty for Nigel Farage That poses a difficulty for Nigel Farage. The Reform

Ed West Ed West

Why Britain isn’t standing up for Canada

In May 1940, days after the Dunkirk evacuation, the Churchill defender Andreas Koureas recalls how the great British war leader was, ‘informed by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, of more dreadful news. Roosevelt had no faith in Churchill nor Britain, and wanted Canada to give up on her. Roosevelt thought that Britain would likely collapse, and Churchill could not be trusted to maintain her struggle. Rather than appealing to Churchill’s pleas of aid – which were politically impossible then anyway – Roosevelt sought more drastic measures. A delegation was summoned for Canada. They requested Canada to pester Britain to have the Royal Navy sent across the Atlantic, before Britain’s

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

What’s the real reason some on the right hate Volodymyr Zelensky?

Perusing the Zelensky-bashing of the Very Online right, I found myself thinking: ‘This reminds me of something.’ The branding of Ukraine’s president as a ‘welfare queen’ who is draining America’s coffers. The libelling of Ukraine as a uniquely corrupt nation whose thirst for war threatens to damn all of mankind to disaster. The shameful blaming of Ukraine for its own invasion, as if Russia had no choice but to violently rebuke its uppity, vexing neighbour. Ukraineophobia and Israelophobia are both blights on the body politic Then it struck me: Ukraine is to the cranky right what Israel is to the mad left. Their Zelensky Derangement Syndrome creepily mirrors the frenzied

James Snell

The man with the ‘golden arm’, who saved two million babies

James Harrison, who died in his sleep at a care home in Australia last month at the age of 88, possibly did more good and saved more lives, pound for pound, than almost anyone else born in the last century. His blood plasma contained a rare antibody, Rho(D) immune globulin (called Anti-D), which can be used to prevent the blood of some pregnant women from doing damage to their unborn babies. But that is under-selling it. Anti-D is extremely rare (fewer than 200 people produce enough of it to donate their plasma in Australia) and the conditions which it helps with are common. Anti-D injections protect unborn babies from Rh

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The ‘goodies and baddies’ era of world politics is over

It’s hard to overstate just how shocking, how grotesque and shaming, was President Trump’s outburst against Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the Oval Office. Pop went the last soap-bubble of hope any of us had that US diplomatic policy for the next four years would cleave to anything other than the mad king’s personal whims and grievances. “Goodies and baddies” is exactly how liberal democracies do see the world The personal stuff – the petulance and bullying – is priced in with Donald Trump. But the wider drift of what’s happening is, in a way, more alarming. Historians and international policy experts seem to agree that we’re at an inflection point: the chapter

Jawad Iqbal

Keir Starmer has had his best week since becoming Prime Minister

Even Keir Starmer’s fiercest detractors (and there are a fair few) must concede that he has had a very good week on the international stage: the best by a long chalk since he entered Downing Street. The Prime Minister, derided by critics as a political plodder, lacking in ideas and charisma-free, is a leader transformed. The new Starmer is a man with a mission, imbued with the confidence to lead. This was very much in evidence when he met US President Donald Trump for talks in Washington earlier this week. Starmer approached the discussions in the manner of the barrister he used to be, carefully mastering his brief and solely focused on

Sunday

Alexander Larman

King Charles offers his support to Zelensky

This weekend marks perhaps the most turbulent 48 hours that Ukraine’s President Zelensky has ever experienced – and, given the events of the past three years, that is saying an awful lot. After his already notorious reception in Washington at the White House in Friday, and rather more emollient greeting by Keir Starmer in Britain yesterday, he has now visited Sandringham to see King Charles after attending a summit of European leaders at Lancaster House. Doubtless he is running on a mixture of adrenaline and righteous anger at his enemies – whether those of long standing or more recently acquired – but he is almost certainly in need of reassurance

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer has his work cut out bringing peace to Ukraine

Keir Starmer today attempted to make the debate about Ukraine’s future one primarily held by Ukraine and European countries. This came after Donald Trump had suggested at the end of last week that it was for the US and Russia to decide. In his press conference after the summit of European leaders in London, the Prime Minister said work was now beginning on a deal to end the war with Russia, led by European countries to then be discussed with the US to ‘take it forward together’.  He also dismissed suggestions that the US was an ‘unreliable ally’, and suggested that America was at least not opposed outright to the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Starmer’s summit is high stakes for Zelensky

There is only one story dominating the news this weekend following Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous meeting on Friday with the US President in the Oval office. After the Ukrainian president’s conversation with Donald Trump and JD Vance descended into a war of words, Zelensky’s trip to the White House was cut short and a planned minerals deal between the two countries went unsigned. Now the future of the Ukraine war has been thrown into doubt as talk grows that the US could halt all military help and a deal could be off the cards. The hope will be that European leaders can come up with a united response Since then, there

Edward Howell

Can South Korea fix its birth rate woes?

Month after month, it just kept plummeting. The South Korean birth rate last year earned the not-so-holy prize for being the lowest in the world. The demographic crisis faced by South Korea seems hardly the hallmark of the country’s self-proclaimed status as a ‘global pivotal state’. That said, the country’s fertility rate rose incrementally to a high of 0.75 births per woman in 2024, marking the first time in nine years that any such uptick has been seen. It is too early to say whether the tide is turning. Nevertheless, South Korea faces an unholy combination of an ageing population (with the over 65 year-olds accounting for 20 per cent

Nicholas Hopton

Will the Gaza ceasefire collapse?

The end of February, which coincides with the start of Ramadan, was meant to mark the conclusion of the initial exchange of Israeli hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. However, rather than engaging as planned on what should happen, how, and when in the second phase, the ceasefire appears to be stalling and the parties sliding inexorably towards stalemate or renewed conflict. So far, the ceasefire that started on 19 January, the day before President Trump’s inauguration, has defied the expectations of many. The conflict in Gaza stopped and more deliveries of humanitarian aid were allowed to reach displaced and desperate Palestinian refugees. Twenty-five Israeli hostages

James Snell

The troubling truth about ‘witchcraft’ in modern Britain

Witchcraft, and accusations of witchcraft, are returning to Britain. We might think of witchcraft as a thing of the past; sadly, this isn’t the case. In multicultural Britain, folk practices like witchcraft and sorcery are more common than you might expect. Alongside the practice of witchcraft, there is also its opposite: accusations that others, particularly children, are witches, or demons, or possessed by spirits. In the last decade in Britain, 14,000 social work assessments flagged possible abuse linked to faith or belief, which includes witchcraft, and also things like spirit possession, and claims about the presence of demons or the devil. Between March 2023 and 2024 alone, there were 2,180

Elisabeth Dampier

Why even parts of Berlin are moving right

‘Berlin is more East than West’, said Thilo Sarrazin. A member of the centre-left SPD, in 2010 he published Germany Abolishes Itself, a book which warned about the impact of mass immigration. It sold over one million copies in a year but it went down less well with his own party, which tried to kick him out for writing the book. In 2020, after three attempts, the party finally succeeded, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Over the course of those ten years, the SPD’s grasp on Berlin, which they had ruled since reunification, slipped away from them, as mass immigration not only changed the country but also its politics.

Saturday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Was Starmer’s love-in with Trump really such a triumph?

Opponents of Keir Starmer would be well advised to concentrate on his many real weaknesses rather than inventing non-existent disasters just to bolster their own prejudices. The British radical online Right spent the last 48 hours not only hoping for the UK Prime Minister to be humiliated by Donald Trump, but then pretending he had been even when he clearly hadn’t. The reality is that Starmer’s visit to Washington DC was very successful, at least in the short-term.  As well as establishing an unlikely public rapport with Trump, the Prime Minister advanced a promising dialogue on tariffs and trade and got the President to endorse his Chagos Islands deal. British

Friday

Jawad Iqbal

Zelensky made a fatal mistake in going toe-to-toe with Trump

What possessed the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in a verbal wresting match in the White House? It makes almost no sense as a diplomatic strategy. It is well documented that the US president, notoriously thin-skinned and egotistical, likes to be showered with compliments and treated as an all-knowing, all-seeing master of the political universe. All that Zelensky was required to do was behave in a simpering manner while the cameras were rolling, before moving on to the substantive negotiations behind the scenes. Indeed, only 24 hours earlier, Sir Keir Starmer provided a useful primer on how to go about pandering to Trump in order

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Trump: To help Ukraine, Europe must help itself first

Fresh off the back of a summit with Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, the President of the United States granted The Spectator’s US Editor-at-Large Ben Domenech an exclusive interview in the White House. One of the most pressing topics discussed by Starmer and Trump was support for Ukraine in its efforts to resist Russia’s invasion – and America’s threat to throw in the towel as Europe’s peacekeeper. It was time for Europe, Trump told The Spectator, to step into the breach. Trump’s inability to resist promoting the superiority of American support for Kyiv aside, he is correct ‘They have to step up, but they also have to get equipment,’ the President said. ‘They

Matthew Lynn

Will Labour MPs scupper a US-UK trade deal?

A UK-US trade deal is on the table. On a surprisingly successful trip to Washington, US President Donald Trump made it clear to the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that a trade agreement with the United States was close. “We could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs won’t be necessary,” Trump said after his meeting with the British delegation. “We’ll see.” Britain’s dire economic performance means that the UK is hardly in a position to turn down a deal With our economy in dire trouble, Britain needs this agreement more than ever. There is just one problem: Sir Keir will have to take on

Steerpike Steerpike

Trump: Joe or Hunter Biden left cocaine in the White House

Back in 2023, when Joe Biden was President of the United States, there was something of a drugs scandal in the White House, when the Secret Service found a gram of cocaine in the West Wing. An investigation was launched, but while Secret Service officials trawled through their security systems and indexed ‘several hundred’ people who entered the White House, they were unable to identify a suspect. There was ‘insufficient DNA’ on the bag in question and an FBI lab was unable to retrieve any fingerprints. A mystery indeed. Who could have left the cocaine there? It’s clearly something that has been on Donald Trump’s mind since he’s returned to