World

Friday

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Matthew Parris, Ian Buruma, Hermione Eyre and Francis Young

34 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood reads his letter from the Vatican (1:17); Matthew Parris warns Conservatives from embracing causes that could lose them as much support as they would gain (7:31); reviewing Richard Overy’s Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan, Ian Buruma argues that the atomic bombs were not only immoral, but ineffective (15:35); Hermione Eyre examines the life and work of the surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun (23:03); and, Francis Young provides his notes on Shrove Tuesday (29:12).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Merz is caught in a defence spending trap of his own making

It’s not just in Britain that defence spending is top of the agenda. In Germany, too, the debate has turned to how the government can resurrect the country’s hollowed-out armed forces. Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU and the man pipped to become the next chancellor, is driving the discussion. But unlike the grudgingly positive response Prime Minister Keir Starmer has received for pledging to increase UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP over the next two years, Merz is blundering his way into an almighty row – and possibly a constitutional crisis.  The final vote in Sunday’s federal election had not been fully counted before Merz, whose

Thursday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer’s press conference with Trump was a triumph

Keir Starmer could not have dreamed of a better press conference with Donald Trump. Much of its success was not down to luck, either: the Prime Minister has meticulously prepared for these talks both in terms of substance and (very important) superficialities such as flattering the President. But instead of appearing to be a sycophant who just says whatever Trump wants to hear, Starmer ended up looking as though he was the one in control of the relationship. The President came into the press conference telling journalists that Starmer is a ‘very tough negotiator, however I’m not sure I like that, but that’s OK’. It was exactly the kind of

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The case for climate humanism

28 min listen

Robert Bryce, an energy expert and author of The Question of Power, discusses the state of global energy, electric vehicles, and government policies both in the UK and America. Freddy and Robert look at how government subsidies and mandates have driven automakers toward unprofitable EV production, what is energy humanism, and how foreign interference has shaped climate policies over the past decade. 

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The true meaning of Trump’s AI Gaza video

Donald Trump’s AI-generated vision of Gaza – complete with golden statues of himself, bearded belly dancers, and a triumphant song declaring, ‘Trump Gaza, number one!’ – landed like a slap across the face of polite Western discourse. The reactions were swift and predictable. Outraged commentators called it tasteless, delusional, the fever dream of a man obsessed with his own mythology. Newspapers mocked its crudeness, its cartoonish spectacle, its lack of realism. Yet, in all the ridicule, something crucial was missed. This wasn’t just Trump being Trump. This was Trump speaking Arabic again – not linguistically, but in the deeply symbolic, visually driven language of Middle Eastern power. The video was not a policy

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Chagos – the riviera of the Indian Ocean?

Keir Starmer seemed on unusually good form as he arrived in Washington last night. He cracked quite a good joke about the United Kingdom’s new ambassador to the United States, Lord Mandelson. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a charismatic statesman lurking behind the Prime Minister’s dreary exterior. We shall see. At any rate, assuming no bizarre media blow ups in the coming hours, the odds are that the Trump-Starmer meeting today will prove to be a success. Despite his reputation, Trump tends to like people, especially British PMs (he tried and failed with Theresa May) and reports are that he responded well to his long first telephone call with Sir Keir last month.

Henry Donovan

Russia is the big winner in Germany’s election

The real winners of Germany’s election are sitting in Moscow. Despite Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) technically claiming victory with a meagre 28 per cent showing, the truly remarkable surge belongs to the openly pro-Russian forces that now dominate the political landscape. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left party Die Linke (successor to East Germany’s communist SED) have emerged from this record 85 per cent turnout election with unprecedented strength: both unapologetically aligned with Vladimir Putin’s interests and fundamentally opposed to Germany’s Western orientation. That this Russification of German politics coincides with the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine feels less like coincidence and more like

Georg Löfflmann

How to fix Germany’s broken army

On 27 February 2022, three days after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was a historic turning point, or Zeitenwende, for European security. Scholz promised to transform German foreign and defence policy, and substantially modernise and rearm Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr. A key element of the Zeitenwende was the creation of a €100 billion special fund for an immediate increase in defence spending, as well as the promise to meet Nato’s target of spending 2 per cent target of GDP on defence by 2024. Two years on, with the dawn of the second Trump administration, it seems that Zeitenwende was only the

Colin Freeman

Ukraine wants its nuclear weapons back

Kyiv Had America and the Soviet Union ever fought the battle of Armageddon, it would have started from beneath a patch of muddy fields a few hours’ drive south of Kyiv. It’s here, in an underground base near the once-closed town of Pervomaisk, that Moscow housed 80 strategic nuclear missiles, all pointed at the US. Today it’s a museum, a dark tourism excursion, with a 120-foot long ‘Satan’ missile on display. Satan carried 10 warheads plus 40 decoys, and could have single-handedly flattened Britain. The only disappointment, for the Dr Strangeloves among us, is the base’s ‘nuclear button’ – not a red switch with a skull-and-crossbones, but a dull grey

Paul Wood

The strange beauty of the vigil for the Pope

Steady rain during the day stopped just before Monday’s evening prayers for Pope Francis in Saint Peter’s Square. A line of cardinals sat on a platform, an ageing politburo in black and scarlet. A couple of thousand of the faithful and the curious stood below. Vatican gendarmes, wearing kepis and carrying sidearms, directed people to their places. The Swiss Guard were not on duty. Their gaudy, striped uniforms would anyway have been too exuberant for the occasion, a tenth night in hospital for the Pope, dangerously ill with double pneumonia at the age of 88. Floodlights illuminated the great baroque façade of the most famous building in Christendom. Cobblestones glistened;

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Foreign aid cut, Pope in hospital and King pulls a pint

Home Before flying to Washington, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We have to be ready to play our role if a force is required in Ukraine once a peace agreement is reached.’ He told the Commons that Britain would raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2027, funded by cutting development aid from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of GDP. The government surplus for January, when much tax comes in, was £15.4 billion, the highest ever, but far below the £20.5 billion predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Average household energy bills will rise from April by £111 to £1,849 a

Charles Moore Charles Moore

What will Zelensky’s fate be?

Kyiv We resemble pilgrims. Because of the war, no one can fly to Ukraine, and so we travel, romantically, by night train. ‘We’ means assorted European dignitaries, a thin sprinkling of Americans, and the media. I find myself sharing a cabin with a former president of the European parliament. The holy day is Monday, the third anniversary of the Russian invasion. We emerge, yawning and crumpled, into the sub-zero dawn. The collective object is to show our devotion to Ukraine’s struggle. This year, our numbers are swollen because of Donald Trump. (In a Polish service station near the border I noticed a magazine cover in which his face is superimposed

The Spectator

Keir Starmer’s welcome embrace of realism

Sixty-five years ago, a British Prime Minister acknowledged that a new world order was coming to pass and that it was time to lay down a burden the country could, and should, no longer shoulder. Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ speech in Cape Town signalled the eclipse of empire, the retreat of Britain from imperial pretensions and a new age of nationalism in Africa. Today, our own Prime Minister has trimmed his sails to catch a very different wind of change. He is navigating a new path – necessitated by the impact of Storm Donald from across the Atlantic. Sir Keir Starmer has indicated that Britain is willing to bear

Douglas Murray

What Europe gets wrong about the far right

The head of America’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (Doge) has written to all federal workers in the US asking them to explain in a brief email what they did last week. The exercise is intended to take no more than five minutes but has already lead to howls from many employees. How could anyone expect them to perform such a task? How can one explain the intricacies of supporting transgender opera among the Inuit in such short order? Happily, the new editor is not putting those of us on The Spectator’s payroll through any similar exercise. Nevertheless, something in the global vibe-shift perhaps impels me to mention a little of

Wednesday

Michael Evans

Why Macron is offering France’s nukes to Europe

President Emmanuel Macron has raised the nuclear card. He has offered to provide nuclear cover for Europe as fears intensify that President Trump is moving further away from Nato and from America’s historic obligations towards European allies. The idea of France, the fourth largest nuclear weapons power in the world, extending its nuclear deterrence is not new. Macron is just one of many French presidents who have contemplated providing a European dimension to France’s force de frappe. However, today the context is dramatically different. For the first time in Nato’s history, the US sided with Russia and not its European allies when the Trump administration refused to condemn Moscow for the

Jawad Iqbal

There is reason behind Trump’s AI Gaza video

Donald Trump really knows how to wind up his political opponents. That has to be the only rational explanation behind his decision to share on social media a video – apparently AI-generated – of what a US-owned Gaza Strip could look like in the future. It is 35 seconds of unadulterated visual idiocy, veering from the bizarre to the senseless. Why do it? What is the point, exactly? The video starts with the territory in ruins after the war with Israel, with the caption ‘Gaza 2025… What’s next?’ The US president is shown sharing a cocktail, topless and poolside, with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. These are not flattering

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The BBC’s Gaza farce takes another sinister turn

So the moral rot at the BBC appears to run even deeper than we thought. The storm over its Gaza documentary just got a whole lot worse. As if it wasn’t bad enough that this Israel-mauling hour of TV was fronted by the son of a leading member of Hamas, now we discover that the Beeb whitewashed the bigoted views of some of the doc’s participants. It omitted their Jew-bashing. This is as serious a breach of broadcasting ethics as I can remember. The film was swiftly mired in scandal Gaza: How To Survive a War Zone was first broadcast on BBC Two last week. The film was swiftly mired

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

What does Trump’s minerals deal mean for Ukraine?

Has Donald Trump’s heavy-handed negotiation style scored a win, or have the Ukrainians managed to wrench a victory of sorts from the jaws of defeat? Although the details are still unclear, Kyiv and Washington are confirming that a deal on mineral rights has been agreed, and that Volodymyr Zelensky will be on his way to the White House on Friday to sign on the dotted line. Trump has abandoned his ludicrously overblown demand for a $500 billion (£400 billion) return on what has actually been no more than $120 billion (£95 billion) given in total aid, through revenue from Ukrainian oil, gas and rare earth metals. Zelensky had understandably rejected

Matthew Lynn

Will Trump’s ‘golden visas’ threaten Rachel Reeves’s tax plans?

Fed up with Rachel Reeves’s tax rises, with the calls for wealth and mansion taxes, and the loss of non-dom status? For $5 million (£3.95 million), there is now a very easy escape route. President Trump has just announced a ‘golden visa scheme’, allowing investors an easy path to American citizenship. That is aimed at attracting global entrepreneurs to the US. But it could also pose a real threat to the British economy. The UK depends on a small group of taxpayers to keep its huge state machine financed It is certainly a dramatic move. Golden visas that allow citizenship in return for investment have traditionally been restricted to a