World

Thursday

David Blackburn

Sarko and Dave go to Tripoli

“This is your revolution,” said David Cameron to the mass of rapturous Libyans who welcomed both him and Nicolas Sarkozy in Tripoli this morning. Obviously this is a PR coup for the two leaders, who both face difficulties at home. But, although these were scenes of jubilation, both leaders were keen to say that the situation in Libya is still delicate. Gaddafi is still at large and there are reports that his supporters have drifted into the desert, where they are conducting a guerrilla campaign against rebel targets. This is of great concern to the National Transitional Council and its allies, who want to reopen Libya’s remote oil industry to

David Blackburn

Merkel & Sarkozy have only words

It was something of a mystery. Emergency conference calls about the future of the Eurozone were being made yesterday, but there was no news of those discussions. As it turned out, this was for the best of all possible reasons: there was no news to report. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy announced no new measures to alleviate the sovereign debt crisis; rather, they merely declared “solidarity” with Greece and assured the markets that Greece would not be forced from the single currency. Their words seem to have assuaged the markets for the moment, but only the most brazen optimist would bet on the rally being long lived. Tests of confidence

Wednesday

David Blackburn

The Euro-crisis heats up

Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and George Papandreou are in crisis talks about Greek debt. There are rumours that they are preparing an “orderly default” for Greece. But, officially, Merkel is still pressing ahead with implementing the existing Greek debt deals. This meeting also has a domestic context for Merkel. According to the FT, she is determined to stamp on the growing disquiet within her governing coalition over the Eurozone crisis and is pleading for calm resolve. It remains to be seen if she succeeds.  The danger of contagion within the Eurozone remains and concerns about the exposure of French banks persist, which is doubly worrying for Nicolas Sarkozy given the proximity

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Peter King Comes to Westminster

From the Department of Irony Overload: Congressman Peter King says he admires the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism efforts: King also praised the United Kingdom’s government for its work on stemming Muslim radicalization, noting that its “Prevent” strategy “offers a candid assessment of the problem and a model for effectively addressing and countering this problem.” The Prevent strategy is one part of the UK’s Home Office counterterrorism program, and focuses on preventative measures to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. Better late than never, I suppose and even a sinner such as Congressman King may be permitted a moment of repentance and all that. Still, the gall and the irony and

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Authenticity or bust?

Mitt Romney won the Atlanticist vote last night by saying he’d bring back a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. That’s a reference, obviously, to Barack Obama’s decision, soon after moving into the White House, to have the bronze removed. That decision caused a lot of bother. When the story broke, the Obama machine insisted that the bust’s removal was part of a routine changeover between presidents. But British hacks shouted ‘Anglophobia’ and pronounced the Special Relationship dead. The British embassy in Washington received masses of letters from Americans apologising for this great slight against Britannia. Never in the field of human history has so much been made

Clarissa Tan

Renminbi to the rescue

Italy is turning to deep-pocketed China in the hope Beijing will help stave off its financial crisis by making “significant” purchases of Italian bonds and investments in strategic companies, reports the FT. If true, this could help allay fears that Greece’s debt fiasco will engulf the entire eurozone; indeed, FT’s article late yesterday helped the euro and Wall Street stocks to recover, and European equities opened higher this morning. Once again, the EU crisis is helping cast Beijing in the role of saviour, even though the amount of Italian debt China will buy – if it buys any at all – is unclear. In July last year, China bought Greek

Monday

David Blackburn

Bernard Hogan-Howe named as new Met commissioner

Theresa May has named Bernard Hogan-Howe as the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Hogan-Howe was the early front-runner and a finalist for the role last time round. He is apparently highly respected within the police force and has been a successful chief constable in Merseyside. His appointment has come earlier than was expected: the talk at the end of July was of completing the process later in the autumn. This suggests that the government is keen to repair the damage to its relationship with the Met and the reputation of the police caused by the phone hacking scandal and the riots. This will be essential if the coalition is to deliver its ambitious police

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The randomness of al-Qaeda’s evil

After all the nerves and security in New York, Washington and London, the only attempted terror plot on the anniversary of 9/11 appears to have been foiled outside an arts centre in Gothenburg. The Swedish press says that the four people arrested on Saturday night are believed to belong to a cell linked to al-Qaeda. There are no more details yet, but it’s a reminder that the al-Qaeda threat has not gone away. Its Arabian Peninsular division is still active, responsible for the underpants bomber and the bomb bound for Detroit, intercepted in London. This is also a reminder of how chillingly random its attacks are. This matters because there

Sunday

Jonathan Jones

From the archives: “New York’s loss is also the world’s”

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Here is the article Matthew Bishop wrote for The Spectator in response: Spirit of the Blitz, Matthew Bishop, 15 September 2001 New York People walk a lot in Manhattan. Its streets are always crowded. But never before like this. An hour after the attack on the World Trade Center, thousands of New Yorkers – refugees in business attire – trudged north as downtown evacuated. Many were covered from head to toe in white ash. Most walked in silence, contemplating the fact that somebody they know is probably dead, and that in the next 24 hours they will

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In New York, the whole world remembers

New York There’s an eerie mood in New York right now, as the city prepares to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Al-Qaeda, or what’s left of it, likes anniversaries. The police have been on overdrive ever since a “credible” tip-off about an attempted truck bomb. Officers are everywhere. Armed guards patrol landmarks and cars from bridges and tunnels are being pulled over and checked. All this reinforces the sense of something alien to New Yorkers (and almost all Americans) until ten years ago: the threat of attack. A common threat has solicited a rather wonderful common response. Shop windows have displays of commemoration; companies take adverts

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Where does the Arab Spring leave Israel?

After decades where Arab politicians kept the truth of their constructive relations with Israel hidden from their publics and stoked anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment for domestic purposes, it is no wonder that Israel remains the focus of anger across the Middle East, even after the Arab spring turned attention elsewhere. Last night in Cairo anti-Israeli protests went further than anything seen before, as frustrations with the slowness of the democratic transition and misperceptions about the Egypt-Israeli relationship led demonstrators to attack and torch the Israeli embassy. There will be those who see in Cairo proof that the Arab Spring will unleash nothing but turmoil and conflict. I think it is

Siobhan Courtney

To be or not to be married?

My name is Siobhan Courtney and I am a very happily unmarried mother with a five month old son. But this week I’m annoyed – really annoyed. I and thousands of others have been given a slap across the face by Conservative ministers who have now changed their minds about giving cohabiting couples the same rights as married ones. Ken Clarke has rejected proposals put forward by the Law Commission under the last government. And it’s all pretty basic stuff. Childless couples would have been granted automatic inheritance rights if one of them died without a will, no matter how long they had been together. Couples who lived together for

Anthony Daniels

Prince of war

Why shouldn’t one of Liberia’s most infamous psychopaths become its president? Human rights are universal and indivisible, existing as they do in an unexplored metaphysical sphere in which the European Court of Human Rights plays the role of Christopher Columbus. So it is a wonderful thing to see the court’s discoveries accepted, applied and even extended in a country in which its writ does not yet run, namely Liberia, in West Africa. There, a man called Prince Y Johnson is running for president in the forthcoming elections. When I met him, a little more than 20 years ago, he was Field Marshal Brigadier-General Prince Y Johnson, but just as he

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Political Definitions

Bipartianship: the quaint idea, much loved by newspaper columnists, that the opposition should help an incumbent President win re-election. A curiosity of the American political system that reflects, indeed encourages, the belief that the President of the United States should be regarded as a regal father-of-the-nation figure and not, heavens above, as a mere politician. Appeals to bipartisan comity are politics as usual, disguised as tender nurturing of the national interest. This remains true even when there’s consensus on what the national interest may be.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama’s Re-Election Campaign Begins

And so they’re off: Barack Obama’s speech to Congress last night was the beginning of his re-election campaign. This is a jobs bill, he said. You should pass it. In case anyone doubted this he repeated the message more than a dozen times. The forcefulness of his tone appears to have delighted the liberal blogosphere. Democrats appear to believe This is the Obama we’ve been waiting for. Which only reaffirms the fact that this was a political speech disguised as a policy address. As David Frum says, it was all quite cunning. In fact, as Megan McArdle notes, a good deal of what Obama said is unobjectionable: extending payroll tax

Jonathan Jones

Rubio for VP?

Just under a year from now, Republicans will meet in Tampa, Florida for their National Convention, at which their candidate to take on President Obama will be nominated. So too will that candidate’s running mate: the man or woman hoping to oust Joe Biden and become the 48th Vice President of the United States. The choice of VP candidate will be one of the biggest decisions facing whichever of the Presidential hopefuls emerges victorious in the primaries. Right now, the clear favourite to be selected is Marco Rubio. The betting markets give him around a one-in-three chance of being chosen, making him at least four times as likely as anyone

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

A Tempest played so straight It’s soporific

The Tempest is back in town, and with a star like Ralph Fiennes in the lead, it’s unlikely that Trevor Nunn’s new production will need much help from the critics to get bums on seats. But although Fiennes brings a moving dignity to Shakespeare’s tale of a usurped duke plotting a magical revenge, he’s not enough to distract from an ensemble cast who seem drained of energy, in a production played so straight it’s soporific. The last major production of The Tempest to hit London was Cheek by Jowl’s all-Russian version, back in April. That was a riot of energy, no nuance of the language safe from ostentatious re-interpretation –

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Winning with Governor Moonbeam

Surprise: there’s some good news coming out of California! Governor Jerry Brown, enjoying his second tour in office, has taken to slapping down the kind of mollyocddling absurdities much favoured by that state’s woeful state legislature. Better still than a flourished veto pen are Governor Moonbeam’s reasons for despising the stuff sent to him by the legislature. To wit: If only more politicians in this country – in this government too – could be as sensible as this. Not every human problem deserves a law. Quite so.

Justin Marozzi

“Tripoli is our capital”

Tripoli East is East and West is West, as Kipling once reminded us, but in Libya at least the twain have certainly met. For the past six months Free Libya has been headquartered in eastern Libya, or ancient Cyrenaica. When Tripoli started sliding out of Gaddafi’s control on 20 August, the dribble from east to west began. It was given added oomph on Wednesday with the arrival in Tripoli of the interim prime minister Mahmoud Jabril. Now we’re going to see if Libyans can upset the gloomiest predictions once again. There have been all sorts of received wisdoms about Libya and the NATO campaign since the revolution kicked off in

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Obama’s field of dreams?

The striking thing about last night’s Republican Party debate was just how bad the leading GOP candidates are. Rick Perry, the new favourite, isn’t terribly bright. (“Perry is like Will Ferrell doing Bush, but on half-speed,” is how David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, put it.) Mitt Romney is an oily cheese merchant who keeps contradicting himself. And Bachmann is bonkers. With the USA in such a poor state, you might think President Obama would be in danger of losing the White House. But the Republican party is incapable of offering a coherent and sensible alternative. The most interesting candidates are Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, but they don’t seem