World

Monday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Marine le Pen is far from finished

The right rarely take to the streets in France, but thousands gathered in Paris on Sunday to hear Marine Le Pen pledge to continue the fight. The leader of the National Rally was convicted of embezzlement last week, and among her punishments was a five-year political disqualification. She told her supporters she was a victim of a ‘witch-hunt’ and they roared their agreement. Le Pen had assembled her MPs and supporters in the Place Vauban, in the shadow of the Hôtel des Invalides, built by Louis XIV as a retirement home for old soldiers. In the days leading up to the rally, some of Le Pen’s political adversaries had warned

Rana Mitter

China is wary of American intentions

In 2024, China exported three times more to the US than the US did to China, and President Donald Trump’s aim is to get this trade balance down to zero. On ‘Liberation Day’, Wednesday 2 April, Trump announced that Chinese goods coming into the US would now have an additional tariff of 34 per cent imposed on them, added to an extra 20 per cent imposed earlier this year. This means that those goods are now subject to an overall rate of 54 per cent. China has now lodged a complaint at the World Trade Organisation, declaring: ‘This practice of the US is not in line with international trade rules,

James Tidmarsh

Should Marine Le Pen step down?

It was a rally for Marine Le Pen billed as a rendez-vous historique. In the end, barely a few thousand people showed up on Sunday afternoon in Paris. In a city where more than a million marched after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and where hundreds of thousands protested against racism and police violence in recent years, Sunday’s rally for Marine Le Pen barely registered. The Rassemblement National had promised a great mobilisation to denounce Le Pen’s recent conviction and her five–year ban from public office. What it delivered was a media production surrounded by journalists and padded out by militants bussed in from the provinces. The rally failed to convince

Saturday

Sam Meadows

Javier Milei has cut poverty

Javier Milei has reduced poverty in Argentina. This week brought the publication of a tranche of government poverty figures, covering the period from July to December last year. Much had been made of the immediate surge in poverty that occurred in Milei’s first six months in office. The fall – down to 38.1 per cent from 41.7 per cent in the same period last year, when the country was governed by the Peronists – would seem to be a vindication of the chainsaw-wielding libertarian and his policies. But is there more to it than that? Milei came into office promising to shatter the country’s economic approach and bring the country’s

James Heale James Heale

Marine Le Pen: justice or lawfare?

14 min listen

Marine Le Pen, president of Rassemblement National (National Rally) was found guilty this week of embezzling EU funds to boost her party’s finances. The guilty verdict was widely expected, however her sentence was far harsher than even her strongest critics expected – part of which saw her banned from standing for office for five years, with immediate effect. Le Pen had been the favourite to win the next French presidential election in 2027. Pursuing Donald Trump through the courts was widely seen as backfiring as he went on to win the presidential election, and many have argued that there is a double standard with many more figures and parties facing investigation from

James Vitali

Israeli students aren’t troubled by ‘microaggressions’

Jerusalem’s Shalem College should have been brimming with life when we visited last month. But this leafy campus was oddly empty. The reason, of course, is that a large contingent of its students are currently serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as part of the war effort against Hamas. Away from campus, the young Israelis that we met on our trip were of similar age and appearance to the undergraduates I taught in Cambridge as a doctoral student. But the similarities stopped there. For these young people were about as different to their contemporaries in the West as it is possible to be. We met a girl in her

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Gavin Mortimer, Colin Freeman, Lawrence Osborne, Lionel Shriver and Anthony Cummins

34 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Gavin Mortimer looks at how the French right can still win (1:48); Colin Freeman interviews Americans who have fought in Ukraine and feel betrayed by Trump (11:01); Lawrence Osborne details his experience of last week’s earthquake, as he reads his diary from Bangkok (18:38); Lionel Shriver defends traditional, monogamous marriage (24:07); and, Anthony Cummins examines media satire and settled scores as he reviews Natasha Brown’s Universality (31:13).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

They think it’s all over for President Yoon – it is now

Yoon Suk Yeol, elected South Korea’s president in 2022, has been removed from office. The Constitutional Court in Seoul has upheld Yoon’s impeachment over his actions in the ultra-short-lived declaration of martial law last December. After lengthy deliberations the court delivered a decisive eight-zero verdict. A snap election must now be held within 60 days with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo serving as acting president in the interim. Yoon’s PPP (People Power party) accepted the verdict and the man himself issued a humble apology to the nation saying, ‘I deeply regret not being able to live up to your expectations. It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The truth about Israel’s ‘bloodlust’ in Gaza

Are we being lied to, or at the very least misled, about what’s going on in Gaza? It increasingly seems so. Israel is carrying out a genocide, cries the activist class. Its pummelling of Gaza is one of the most barbarous onslaughts against civilians in history, they say. New research suggests these feverish claims have no basis in truth. What Israel’s voluble haters call ‘mass murder’ is in fact a pretty normal war. Too many have made themselves the Lord Haw-Haws of Hamas Strikingly, Hamas appears to have quietly dropped thousands of deaths from its casualty figures. Its fatalities list for March 2025 dispensed with 3,400 names that were contained

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Trump has finally ditched Macron for Marine Le Pen

It’s official, the bromance between Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron is over. It had always been a rocky relationship but on Thursday it ended in a spectacular fashion. The French president, reacting to Trump’s decision to impose 20 per cent tariffs on all EU products, announced: ‘Investments to come or investments announced in recent weeks should be suspended until things are clarified with the United States.’ A few hours later the American president posted a message on social media in which he reflected on the sentence handed down to Marine Le Pen on Monday. Trump had commented little on her four-year suspended prison sentence and five-year political ineligibility for  misusing

Eliot Wilson

Nato must prepare for America’s withdrawal from Europe

Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, has a reputation for genial flexibility and an ability to evade trouble. During his record-breaking 14 years as prime minister of the Netherlands, he earned the nickname ‘Teflon Mark’. But while Rutte has previously demonstrated a rare ability to mollify Donald Trump, is the Nato chief in danger of being too complacent about what the president might mean for the future of the alliance? Rutte has no excuse for being caught unprepared: he came to the job at a highly challenging time, a month before Trump was elected to a second term as president. Rutte, more than anyone in Europe, knew the extent of

Paddy Stephens

Why did Trump throw Taiwan under the bus?

Things could have been very different. Since the distant days of the first Trump presidency, Taiwanese tech companies have been shifting production from China to Taiwan due to US tariffs and tech controls aimed at China. For the US, that strategy has borne some fruit. Most countries tend to trade the most with their close neighbours. But in February, for the first time in over two decades, Taiwan’s top export destination for goods was not China and Hong Kong, but America, thousands of miles across the Pacific. It was a tremendous victory for America on the frontline of the US-China rivalry. Instead, the arrival of that milestone was greeted with

Robert Taylor

Javier Milei is deluded about the Falklands

Javier Milei might be a Thatcherite economically, but when it comes to the Falklands he’s about as Thatcherite as a bunch of striking miners. In a speech this week to mark the 43rd anniversary of the Falklands war, Milei announced that he would not only fight for as long as it takes to gain sovereignty over the Islands, but that he would persuade the Islanders that becoming Argentinian was actually in their interests. Yes, really. ‘We hope that the Malvinas people will one day decide to vote with their feet for us’, he proclaimed. ‘That is why we seek to make Argentina such a power that they will prefer to

Andrew Tettenborn

Is Hungary right to quit the ICC?

When Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, who is nobody’s fool, offered Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a state visit to Budapest last year, he knew a storm would follow. Netanyahu has now arrived in Hungary – and the backlash has duly followed. Orbán has vowed not only to ignore the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas; he has said his country will withdraw altogether from the ICC. During a joint press conference yesterday with Netanyahu, Orbán said the ICC had become a ‘political court’. Netanyahu hailed Hungary’s ‘bold and principled’ decision to withdraw from the court.

Edward Howell

South Korea must pick its next president wisely

Over 100 days since his impeachment trial commenced, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol was unanimously voted out by the country’s constitutional court earlier today. This is the man whose presidency will be remembered for his infamous declaration of martial law on 3 December last year. For his detractors, today is a jubilant occasion and a day of celebration. For Yoon’s supporters, however, the court’s verdict predictably was a moment of melancholy. The clock is now ticking, as the country has 60 days to call a general election. Not only is South Korea’s political polarisation anything but ebbing, but voters must carefully consider just how beneficial a pivot in political

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump’s tariffs: madman or mastermind?

29 min listen

President Donald Trump has announced sweeping new tariffs, including a 10 per cent duty on all UK exports to the United States, as part of his ‘Reciprocal Tariffs’ plan aimed at addressing trade imbalances and bolstering American manufacturing. This move is expected to impact approximately £60 billion worth of UK exports, with sectors such as automotive and Scotch whisky facing significant challenges. The UK government, while relieved to have avoided higher tariffs imposed on other nations, is now navigating the potential economic repercussions and exploring avenues for negotiation. ​ Freddy Gray speaks with William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), to analyse the implications of Trump’s tariff announcement

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The BBC isn’t even pretending to be impartial about Trump

If, for some unfathomable reason, you missed Newsnight last night, do make sure you see, somehow, the interview between presenter Victoria Derbyshire and the former deputy assistant to Donald Trump, Sebastian Gorka. Derbyshire has had it coming for a long time. She believes it is sufficient, when interviewing somebody who takes a Trumpish view of the world, simply to screech her idiotic objections and prevent the interviewee from speaking at all. This happens every time a supporter of Trump is allowed on to her show. She is as bad as Maitlis, except without the charisma. Gorka refused to stand for it and told her three times to shut up –

Andrew Lilico

Trump doesn’t understand how trade deficits work

After Donald Trump’s Liberation Day, the US now imposes far and away the highest tariffs of any developed country in the world. In the process of doing so Trump has completely rejected the cornerstone of the World Trade Organisation: the ‘most favoured nation’ principle whereby tariffs have to be the same on all countries you don’t have an explicit trade agreement with. He has also cast aside the US’s system of free trade agreements – for example, imposing tariffs on Australia despite there being a decades-old Australia-US agreement removing tariffs. His reasons for doing this reflect his dissatisfaction with the way the international financial order has worked for many years.

James Snell

Israel is playing a dangerous game in Syria

As Donald Trump’s tariffs dominate the headlines, in the Middle East, Israel is stepping up its campaign against Syria. Israeli air strikes hit targets across the country, including the T4 airbase in Homs, last night. The latest campaign which has been conducted over the last few months – involving dozens of air strikes and the deployment of troops – is a big escalation. The strikes in Syria overnight were intended to deter Turkey from making use of bases inside the country. The bombings were to ‘convey a message to Turkey,’ an Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post. Turkey has made much of its closeness to the new leadership of Syria. It had an uneasy relationship with the now-dissolved

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Japan has been stunned by the Trump tariffs

Virtually the whole world is waking up to the reality, not threat now, of President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, but in few places will the sense of shock and resultant anxiety be greater than Japan, where a whopping 24 per cent has been slapped on exports to the US. The Japanese, who have grown used to a decent relationship with successive American administrations and a whopping trade surplus, will have many sleepless nights ahead. The reaction here has not been one of anger or resentment – more stunned bemusement. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who did his best to cozy up to Trump on a recent summit in Washington (he presented Trump