World

Saturday

Eliot Wilson

Is training troops in Ukraine a risk worth taking?

Defence Secretary John Healey has raised the possibility that British military personnel could be deployed to Ukraine to carry out training missions. On a visit to Kyiv this week, he spoke about a five-point plan for increasing the United Kingdom’s support for its beleaguered ally, one aspect of which would be to ‘make the training a better fit for what the Ukrainians need’. When he was asked whether that could encompass undertaking the mission in Ukraine rather than the UK, he was careful not to rule it out: ‘We will look wherever we can to respond to what the Ukrainians want. They are the ones fighting.’ Unfortunately, it’s not quite

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Le Pen’s success this year is a warning to the Tories

Nigel Farage was in fine fettle when he appeared on GB News on Tuesday evening. He boasted of his weekend in Florida, chewing the fat with Elon Musk, and made some characteristically bullish predictions for the future. A poll this month found that Reform has overtaken Labour for the first time and is now two points behind the Conservative party. ‘Reform has all the momentum in British politics,’ said Zia Yusuf, the Reform chairman, in response to the poll. ‘The British people want real change after years of failure and deception.’ Farage believes Reform’s momentum will reduce the Tories to also-rans come the next general election. Mocking the Conservatives’ belief

Thursday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

UK interest rates held, plus could Musk fund Reform?

10 min listen

The Bank of England has voted to hold interest rates at 4.75%. The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews joins Katy Balls and Freddy Gray to discuss the decision and what this means for the economy.  Also on the podcast they discuss how a potential donation from Elon Musk to Reform UK has rattled politicians across the political spectrum. Could Labour seek to reform political donation rules to limit donations from foreign owned companies? And is this a sensible move, or could those in favour of changing the rules face a charge of hypocrisy? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The remarkable courage of Gisèle Pelicot

Justice was served on Dominique Pelicot today when an Avignon court found him guilty of raping his ex-wife, Gisèle, over a ten year period, and enlisting more than 50 other men to molest her as she slept. From 2011 to 2020, the 72-year-old Pelicot drugged his wife of 38 years and invited men he had met online to rape Gisèle. She had no idea of the abuse that was being inflicted on her, nor why she was suffering from memory loss and blackouts. His depravity came to an end in 2020 when he was arrested for filming under a woman’s skirt in a supermarket. When police examined his phones and laptop,

Daniel Rey

Biden’s Cuba policy has been a disaster for the Democrats

Ten years ago this week, Barack Obama announced the historic US rapprochement with Cuba. Alongside Obama during years of secret negotiations was Joe Biden – then Vice President, and a trusted advisor on foreign affairs. But while Obama’s policies reduced Cubans’ reliance on the communist state, President Biden’s actions have done the opposite: spurring extreme hardship and a huge wave of migration to the US. Time and time again Cuba has had an outsized influence on US elections After four years of Donald Trump’s hardline stance, Biden entered the White House in 2021 with a pledge to ‘reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans and their families’. But

Benedict Rogers

The free world has abandoned Hong Kong

Forty years ago today, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and China’s Premier Zhao Ziyang signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, an international treaty designed to pave the way for the handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997. Meeting in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, leaders of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) regime promised to respect a ‘high degree of autonomy’ for Hong Kong and uphold the territory’s way of life, including its basic freedoms and the rule of law for at least fifty years from the time of the handover.  They lied – or at least, they broke their promises. Forty years on, that treaty –

Wednesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is the Chagos deal dead in the water?

Is the Chagos Islands deal dead? Ever since Keir Starmer and his foreign secretary David Lammy announced plans to hand the remote archipelago to Mauritius, the UK government has been accused of risking national security. The proposed agreement would end 200 years of British rule and impact the US air base on the island of Diego Garcia. While the deal would allow the base to continue for ‘99 years’, there are worries this is a long term strategic error and that Mauritius, a trade ally of China, could allow Beijing to spy on the airfield. It is looking very difficult for Starmer to push through the deal before Donald Trump

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron has become a liability for the EU

It’s been a year to forget for Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz. The German Chancellor’s coalition collapsed last month and on Monday he lost a confidence vote in parliament. Elections are now likely in February. The President of France has had a few election issues himself, as a result of which Macron is on his third prime minister in six months and his personal approval rating has sunk to a new low. Politically, economically and socially, Germany and France are in crisis and no one is benefiting more than Ursula von der Leyen. The president of the EU Commission, who was elected for a second five-year term in the summer,

Tuesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Are migrants ‘self-deporting’ in fear of Trump?

26 min listen

Springfield Ohio became a talking point in this year’s Presidential election after Donald Trump referred to Haitian migrants ‘eating the cats and dogs’. Steven Edginton, GB News US Correspondent has been to Springfield Ohio to speak to some of the migrants there, investigate some reports that migrants are fleeing America in fear of a Trump presidency, and find our from locals about how Springfield has changed since the arrival of around 15,000 Haitian migrants. 

Ian Williams Ian Williams

How to avoid another Chinese spy scandal

As the fallout continues from the latest China spy scandal, it is hard not to conclude that Labour’s policy on Beijing – as far as one can be identified – adds up to appeasement in the vain hope of some economic crumbs from the Emperor’s table. It will certainly be seen by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a green light for stepping up what Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, has described as ‘a sustained campaign on a pretty epic scale’. ‘National security is the most important issue of our times,’ said Keir Starmer at the time of 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a few weeks before the general

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why Ukraine killed Igor Kirillov

Another one down. This morning, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of RKhBZ, Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops, was heading out of his block of flats in Moscow’s Ryazansky Avenue, accompanied by his aide, when a bomb placed inside an electric scooter exploded. Both men were killed in the latest Ukrainian assassination operation targeting Russian officers accused of war crimes. The timing was hardly coincidental. The 54-year-old Kirillov has been under British sanctions since 2017, both because of RKhBZ’s activities (including supporting the Syrian use of chemical weapons) and also his role as a propagandist, spreading such falsehoods as the claim that Ukraine hosted secret western biological warfare laboratories. However,

Nicholas Farrell

What Labour can learn from Giorgia Meloni

What else can you do but laugh? Former human rights supremo Sir Keir Starmer has done a deal to tackle illegal migrants with Giorgia Meloni – who is called ‘the heir to Mussolini’ by many on the left and in the media. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was in Rome at the weekend with a team of civil servants and police chiefs to put the finishing touches on the deal with Italy’s Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi. The deal will create what the Home Office grandiosely describes as ‘a new taskforce with Mafia-busting style tactics to seize the ill-gotten gains of criminal people smuggling gangs’. Cooper also took part in a half-hour chat

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

What’s the truth about the New Jersey drone sightings?

What is going on with the drones buzzing over New Jersey in the United States? Reportedly ‘the size of cars’, sometimes flying low in formation, these mysterious semi-identified flying objects have been sighted in their thousands every night – and only at night – for weeks. They might not even be drones. Are they alien spaceships? Are they from Russia or China? Are they just planes? Are they even anything at all? I’ve watched a number of videos purporting to show these invaders. ‘What is that thing? It’s freaking huge!’ one awestruck observer can be heard over footage of what looks like a commercial passenger jet.  It’s increasingly hard to

Lee Cohen

Trump, monarchy and the waning power of Hollywood

Donald Trump has yet to comment on the Prince Andrew ‘Chinese spy’ story, and online sleuths are already trying to join the vague dots between Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Duke of York. But the real story about Donald Trump and monarchy is the extent of his admiration for the British crown. At the big reopening of Notre Dame cathedral, other heads of state seemed desperate to make their impression on the President-elect. Yet for Trump, what really mattered was his encounter with the Prince of Wales.   ‘I had a great talk with the prince,’ Trump told the New York Post. ‘He’s a good-looking guy,’ the President-elect went on. ‘He

Eliot Wilson

Keir Starmer has dropped the ball on Ukraine

Has Keir Starmer dropped the ball on Ukraine? Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian former foreign minister, certainly thinks so. Kuleba, who stepped down from his post in September, had few kind words to say this week about how Starmer’s Labour government had dealt with Ukraine in the five months or so since coming to power: The Conservatives were coordinating with the Americans but they did not restrict themselves to just following the Americans. This is the change that came with Labour. They took a position they would follow the Americans. It is stirring and laudable to promise to support Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ The immediate cause of Kuleba’s

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

German politics is a mess

The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in parliament yesterday. It’s almost certain now that Germans will head to the polls for a snap election on 23 February. What is less certain is whether this will bring about the change so many of them crave. Of 717 Bundestag deputies only 207 expressed their ongoing confidence in the German Chancellor, the vast majority who did so being members of Scholz’s own party, the Social Democrats (SPD). This didn’t come as a surprise since he intended to lose the vote: Scholz’s ruling coalition collapsed last month, leaving him to run a minority government. The only way out of this stalemate

Monday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Israel is right to cut ties with Ireland

Everything that has gone wrong in modern Ireland is summed up in the fact that it is winning praise from Hamas and criticism from Israel. Last week Ireland was gushed over by that army of anti-Semites that carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, while being spurned by the Jewish homeland that was the target of that barbarous assault. Listen, if you’re getting love from racist terrorists, and rejection from their victims, it’s time for some self-reflection. Israel cited Ireland’s ‘extreme anti-Israeli policies’ for its decision It was the Irish government’s decision to join South Africa’s ‘genocide’ case against Israel at the International Court of Justice that

James Heale James Heale

Could the local elections be cancelled?

14 min listen

Labour will reveal plans today to re-design local government, with district councils set to be abolished, and more elected mayors introduced across England. The plans could be the biggest reforms of their type since the 1970s, but with the May 2025 local elections set to be Labour’s first big electoral test since the general election, how will they be impacted? Local government minister Jim McMahon didn’t deny that the elections could be affected, or some even cancelled. Reform UK have called foul – what’s going on? James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls. Also on the podcast: rumours abound that a Chinese spy could be named in Parliament

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron is powerless against his enemies

So farewell Michel Barnier, the man who will now be best remembered not as the suave face of the EU in the Brexit negotiations, but as the most hapless prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic. That is assuming his successor, Francois Bayrou, isn’t ousted in under three months. The French media has been full of stories over the weekend as to how Bayrou pressurised Macron into making him premier. The President’s first choice was his defence minister, Sébastien Lecornu, a loyalist from top to toe, who was informed of his elevation shortly after Barnier’s government had fallen. Having worked his way through three prime ministers this year,

Sunday

Kevin Toolis

The impossibility of escaping from Assad

‘The mullahs are moody,’ said Aisha, a female university student, explaining her daily nail varnish run in with the aging female crones who guard the entrance to Tehran’s University of Arts.  All female students had to pass through a daily ‘modesty’ check to reach their classes. But the line on what was acceptable – nail varnish colour, make-up, a tuft of exposed hair peaking beyond the compulsory scarf and hijab – varied daily on the whim of the mullahs fighting for power in Iran’s closed theocracy. Some days red nail varnish was okay and other days the same colour was forbidden and Aisha was barred from attending her classes. The only