World

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Keir Starmer’s Palestine doesn’t exist

King Cnut is misremembered as a deluded fool who tried to subdue the sea. In fact, he was a wise and pious man who wished to demonstrate to his subjects the limitations of regal power. ‘You and the land on which my throne is standing are subject to me,’ Cnut admonished the tide. ‘No one has ever defied my royal commands and gone unpunished.’ When the waters began splashing at his feet, the monarch turned to the crowd and proclaimed: ‘Let all the world know that the power of kings is a vain and trifling thing.’ There was, Cnut said, only one true sovereign: ‘That King whose commands heaven, earth and sea obey, according to eternal laws’. Keir Starmer

Sam Meadows

Trump has bought Milei some time

As he stared up from the bottom of an increasingly deep economic hole, Javier Milei has been offered a ladder from the likeliest of sources: Donald Trump. The US president has called Argentina’s leader his ‘favourite president’, and he appears to be a fan of the sideburned iconoclast’s libertarian ideals. But in Argentina, Milei’s ideals are becoming increasingly worthless. Midterm elections are approaching, and the Argentine government has spent more than $1 billion propping up its currency. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a significant shot in the arm to Argentina when he said this week that the US ‘stands ready to do what is needed’ to support their economy.

Edmund Fitton-Brown

The United Nations is falling apart

As the world’s leaders and foreign ministers meet in New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) this week, recognition of a Palestinian state is being paraded as progress towards peace. In reality, it is nothing of the sort. It only confirms what has become increasingly obvious to anyone watching the UN over the past eight years: that the organisation is in a state of malaise and its secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, the embodiment of its decline. The UN is no stranger to dysfunction, which I saw first-hand as a security council counter-terror coordinator for five years. Every secretary-general has faced allegations of irrelevance, hypocrisy or incompetence. But Guterres stands

Tuesday

Matthew Lynn

Why Trump shouldn’t bail out Milei

At the OECD, the IMF, and at Davos, there will probably be a few wry smiles, and a sense of Schadenfreude. Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding libertarian President of Argentina who promised to destroy the economic establishment by cutting taxes and dramatically reducing the size of the state, is now facing a financial crisis of his own. The United States is offering to step in with a bailout, but why? Milei should sink or swim in the markets he champions. A rescue package from the Trump administration will prove a mistake.  It is turning into the toughest week yet for the Milei experiment. After setbacks in local elections, the currency markets

James Tidmarsh

French town halls are weaponising the Palestinian flag

As Emmanuel Macron took to the global stage to recognise Palestine at the UN, over 80 defiant left-wing mayors back home turned their town halls into protest zones, draping them with Palestinian flags in open rebellion against a government ban. They call it solidarity. In truth, it’s brazen political theatre. Outgoing interior minister Bruno Retailleau had rightly ordered prefects to halt this, declaring public spaces must stay neutral, not tools for the left’s divisive games. By turning their buildings into platforms for international causes, town halls betray the very neutrality that holds the Republic together In France, raising a Palestinian flag has become less about the Middle East than domestic

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Donald Trump right to link autism with paracetamol?

Donald Trump’s apparent suggestion that people could protect themselves against Covid by injecting themselves with bleach marked a low point in his first administration. It provided his critics with evidence that he was an erratic president trying to ride roughshod over scientific evidence as well as common sense. It is easy, therefore, to dismiss the American President’s announcement that government health warnings will henceforth be printed on packets of Tylenol – a brand name for paracetamol – telling pregnant women to avoid the painkiller for fear it will cause autism in their unborn children as yet another anti-scientific diatribe. The involvement of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr – a

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Is Charlie Kirk a Christian martyr?

This feels deeply inappropriate, I thought, as I started watching Erika Kirk’s hagiographic eulogy. I am watching a grieving widow in order to analyse her performance, and pass judgement on her message. Her husband was brutally murdered just ten days ago – let her grieve. Don’t use her as journalistic material. But anyone who chooses to speak of the most serious matters, in whatever circumstances, is subject to criticism. Being a victim of some terrible act of violence is no exemption. Victim status does not authorise one to tell a nation what the essence of Christianity is, for example, and expect one’s account to be unchallenged. Her forgiveness of her

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Private Eye’s shameful Charlie Kirk article

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a peculiar phenomenon has re-emerged: the casket caveat. Instead of simply condemning the dreadful murder of a young man, many eulogies to Kirk are laced with qualifications. Clods of faint praise scattered over a fresh grave. ‘It’s regrettable that he was shot, no matter how much of a bastard he was,’ is the sentiment – or ‘We gather in solemn remembrance of a man who, though admired by many, really had it coming.’ A piece on Kirk’s murder, under the pseudonym ‘Lady Liberty’, drips with insinuations Such weasel words have proliferated since Kirk’s murder, often tarted up as balanced commentary, but reeking of

Monday

Terry Barnes

Australia could regret its decision to recognise Palestine

When it comes to major decisions certain to anger Donald Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking safety in numbers is a wise idea. For that’s what the joint decision by Britain, Australia and Canada to recognise a state of Palestine actually is. It isn’t a bloc of Anglosphere nations showing a united front to Trump and Netanyahu; rather, it is their huddling together in an attempt to deflect the wrath of the Israelis and Americans. Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese foreshadowed the possibility of Palestinian recognition several weeks ago, giving him something to announce today in New York as the UN General Assembly yet again deliberates on the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Forget Palestine – when will Starmer recognise Britain?

Who does Keir Starmer think he’s kidding? There he is in that glossy video imperiously decreeing there should be a State of Palestine, yet he can’t even hold the British state together. Under his half-hearted purview our borders have become more porous, our state machinery has become more enfeebled, and the country has become the laughing stock of the civilised world. Forget playing fantasy states overseas, Sir Keir: fix the one you run. Here’s my question for the PM: when will you recognise the British state? Here’s my question for the PM: when will you recognise the British state? We have become a nation where you risk being branded far

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Charlie Kirk and America’s fifth great awakening

Political Islam is a powerful global force. Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Shia theocracy are different yet successful strands of the same impulse to govern according to the will of Allah. Political Christianity, by contrast, has in recent decades, even centuries, taken a back seat when it comes to public affairs. With some exceptions, Christians have broadly interpreted Jesus’s message to ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’ as an injunction not to muddy the holy pursuit of justice with the worldly pursuit of power.  At Charlie Kirk’s memorial yesterday, the world witnessed something different: not just a Christian politics but a political Christianity. Republican party campaigns have long had

Jonathan Sacerdoti

What will Keir Starmer’s Palestine declaration achieve?

Keir Starmer has justified Britain’s declaration of Palestinian statehood by insisting that it will keep open the path to a two‑state solution and ultimately lead to peace. He has emphasised that Hamas could play no role in such a state, and seems to assume the move would position Britain as a key player in shaping the future of the Middle East. Is any of this accurate? Hamas welcomed the move, as did Husam Zumlot, the PLO representative in London, who went on television to say that Starmer’s declaration (made in concert with Canada and Australia) was simply recognition of an already existing fact. He even described historic Palestine as ‘the

Neal Pollack

America pays tribute to Charlie Kirk

In an exhilarating, often exhausting and unprecedented moment in American history, thousands of mourners gathered in an Arizona football stadium on Sunday afternoon to honour slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Attendees included dozens of members of Congress, half the cabinet, President Donald Trump, Vice-President J.D. Vance and the former shadow president, Elon Musk. They remembered Kirk as a husband, a father, a friend, a devotee of freedom of speech, a lover of classical Greek and Roman philosophy, and, perhaps most significantly, a warrior for the Christian God – belief in whom animated Kirk’s every utterance and action. Kirk’s memorial – or, as many speakers called it, ‘revival’ – was perhaps

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron is abandoning France’s Jews by recognising Palestine

France will today officially recognise the state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. In justifying his decision, Emmanuel Macron said that recognition ‘is the best way to isolate Hamas’, adding: ‘Now is the time to act – not tomorrow, not in ten years. If we don’t move, the conflict will only deepen, and the hope of peace will vanish.’ Some are cynical about the timing of the President’s decision. ‘Emmanuel Macron is into performative politics,’ says Pierre Lellouche, who was a (Jewish) minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government. ‘He’s going to New York to make people forget the chaos reigning in France’. Macron’s declaration flies in

James Sunderland

Starmer risks repeating Britain’s Palestine mistake

Britain has formally recognised a Palestinian state for the first time. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his announcement yesterday keeps ‘alive the possibility of peace’. Given Britain’s history in the region the move is deeply symbolic, even if it is unlikely to change the reality on the ground. Britain will recognise a country with whose past it is deeply enmeshed and correct a historical injustice. But Starmer would do well to learn from Britain’s involvement with Palestine a century ago: promises and words are cheap, a viable two-state solution will require more. Seventy-seven years after the last High Commissioner left Palestine, his vision of two states for two peoples

Nicholas Farrell

Stromboli is at war with goats

Those in charge of Sicily have at last swung into action after a quarter of a century of inactivity to cleanse the tiny volcanic island of Stromboli in the Ionian Sea of its plague of goats. There are well over 2,000 extremely agile, stubborn and aggressive, semi-wild goats on Stromboli (human population 500) whose active volcano is visible in the night sky from mainland Italy 30 miles away. The Stromboli goats devour anything that is green and has roots and clamber into trees and onto the flat roofs of the houses to defecate and urinate. The islanders use their roofs to collect rainwater, their only source of fresh water. The

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

David Lammy: A Gaza ceasefire ‘lies in tatters’

Keir Starmer is set to announce the UK’s official recognition of Palestinian statehood later today. In July, the Prime Minister had said that the UK would recognise the state of Palestine if Israel did not improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza and commit to a long-term peace process. Speaking to Trevor Phillips on Sky News this morning, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said that Israel’s attack on Qatar and its highly controversial ‘E1 development’ plan to divide the West Bank show that Israel is not committed to ‘two states’. Phillips noted that the UK government had set conditions for Israel, but not Hamas. Lammy said the government has been ‘crystal clear’

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Where is the outrage over the aid trucks hijacked in Gaza?

Unicef has confirmed it in black and white: armed men in Gaza hijacked aid trucks at gunpoint, stealing ready-to-use therapeutic food meant for thousands of severely malnourished infants. According to the UN, at least 2,700 children have been deprived of life-saving nutrition as a result. And yet, the world barely blinked. When Israel takes military action, the scrutiny is immediate and unforgiving. When images of hungry children emerge from Gaza, they are broadcast with relentless urgency, almost always with the implicit or explicit framing that Israel is to blame. But when terrorists intercept UN aid trucks, seizing food for their own infants in need, that story scarcely registers. This incident reveals not

Iram Ramzan

The mullahs’ grip on Iran is failing

Mahsa Amini was killed by Iran’s morality police on 16 September 2022. Her only ‘crime’ was wearing ‘improper hijab’. The 22-year-old Kurdish woman’s death galvanised the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests that shook the Iranian regime. Three years on, the anger behind the protests remains. On the anniversary of Amini’s death, residents of Tehran chanted ‘Death to the dictator’ (referring to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei) from rooftops and windows, and shopkeepers in Mahsa’s hometown of Saghez, in Kurdistan province, went on strike.  This week, I’ve been speaking to Iranian exiles in Britain. For Ellie Borhan, a 43-year-old Iranian exile and activist, Mahsa’s death marked a turning point. ‘Something switched on

Geoff Hill

Starmer recognises Palestine. Where next?

Sir Keir Starmer will recognise Palestine as a country despite objections from both the US and Israel. Yet when it came to independence for Scotland, the three main parties at Westminster were against the idea at the 2014 referendum, and none have called for a similar vote in Wales. How, then, to decide which ‘two-state solutions’ deserve our support? In 1974, the government of Cyprus was overthrown in a coup, and plans to merge the island with Greece followed. That might have worked, given Greek Cypriots made up 80 per cent of the population, but the Turkish minority, already marginalised, feared expulsion. Just five days after the coup, Turkey invaded