World

Saturday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How Marseille became France’s Narcoville

France’s Interior Minister is the tough-talking Bruno Retailleau. In his inaugural declaration a fortnight ago, he hammered out his three priorities: ‘The first is to re-establish order, the second is to re-establish order, and the third is to re-establish order.’ Standing behind Retailleau was Gerald Darmanin, the man he was replacing as France’s ‘top cop’. He was also tough-talking but, like the interior ministers before him, the rhetoric had little effect on the violent lawlessness that has reached into every nook and cranny of the Republic. The teenager was stabbed dozens of times, doused in petrol and set on fire Within a few days, Retailleau admitted that he had been

Stewart McDonald

Starmer needs to get serious about China

In the coming days, Foreign Secretary David Lammy will visit China and Chancellor Rachel Reeves is eyeing up a visit early next year for economic and financial dialogue. Whilst engagement is important, it’s not unreasonable to expect an understanding of the government’s strategic position on such a defining relationship before ministers board their flights. Does the government believe in deepening and expanding cooperation with China, or does it believe – as it appeared to in opposition – that China is a threat and must be dealt with as such? We are simply left guessing. As Starmer marks his first 100 days in office, the fact that there is little-to-no clarity

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Which campaign has the better ground game?

Republican strategist, and friend of Americano, Luke Thompson joins Freddy Gray to talk about the ground game of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. From postal voting, to party registration, to machine politics, whose is better? And what impact did Biden’s exit from the race have on the organised parts of the Democratic Party?  With Luke’s unique insight working on two current senate races, and as a longtime consultant to Vice-Presidential nominee J.D. Vance, they analyse the state of an election that continues to be unpredictable.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Jonathan Campbell-James

How will Israel retaliate against Iran?

When Iran attacked Israel last week with a barrage of missiles, one thing was certain: Israel would hit back hard. Ten days on, that response has still not come. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, has warned that the retaliatory strike on Iran will have an element of surprise. Israel’s attack, he said, ‘will be deadly, precise and above all surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results.’ A wounded Iran with the IRGC still in charge could prove more dangerous Gallant knows that this element of surprise is critical; without it, Israel may have insufficient conventional capability to land a decisive first-blow strike.

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

France is finally opting for austerity

After the binge, the bill? The new French government of Michel Barnier presented the main lines of its proposed 2025 budget on Thursday evening, promising to cut public spending by £50 billion while raising taxes across the board. It’s belated austerity for a state with a fiscal policy that has previously resembled dine and dash.  The intention is to reduce the deficit to 5 per cent of GDP next year, before trying to go below 3 per cent in 2029. Meanwhile, France’s debt of 3.3 trillion Euros will increase.   This is a punishment beating for the most successful and productive companies and individuals in France Like one of those

Sam Goodman

Britain could pay a heavy price if it fails to crackdown on Chinese EVs

The European Union has joined the United States and Canada in slapping tariffs on Chinese Electric Vehicles (EVs). It’s a rare moment of transatlantic unity – but where does it leave Britain? For now, the UK remains the awkward man in the room. It is the only G7 country not to have imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs (or, in the case of Japan, which already has arduous non-tariff barriers to deter foreign automotive companies from entering its markets.)  The European Commission has made it plain that they see Chinese EVs as an economic threat Many will rightly question the silence from Whitehall. The UK’s omission from a coordinated attempt to stem China’s

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is losing the fight to keep its teachers safe

It is a year almost to the day since a French schoolteacher was killed by a young Islamist. Dominque Bernard, a high school teacher in Arras, died almost exactly three years after another teacher, Samuel Paty, was slain in similar circumstances and by the same ideology. A memorial service this week will remember Bernard; on Monday, schools across France will observe a minute’s silence in honour of the two teachers. The silence is unlikely to be universally respected. It wasn’t last year, when a minute’s silence for Bernard was interrupted by 357 ‘incidents’ in the schools and colleges of France. A teenage girl struck a teacher who asked her to

Daniel Rey

How postal votes could deliver Donald Trump the White House

Watch or attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, and you may well see something surprising: an electronic billboard encouraging people to vote by post. It’s a big u-turn for Trump, who has spent years maintaining that postal votes are manipulated. Ahead of the 2020 election – which took place in the pre-vaccine era of the pandemic – Trump’s White House even blocked additional funding for the Postal Service, fearing that Democratic voters were more likely to avoid going to a polling station. Following the election, one of his many claims of voter fraud was predicated on supposedly corrupted postal ballots. ‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,’ Trump said So why the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Does the Guardian need reminding that Hamas are the bad guys?

The Guardian has found a new minority it wants to shield from offence. A new oppressed group it might shed some virtuous tears over. A put-upon section of society that urgently requires the warm, loving hug of Guardianista pity. And you won’t believe who it is. It’s the mad militants who invaded Israel on 7 October last year. I probably shouldn’t call Hamas gunmen ‘mad’ – the Guardian might accuse me of ‘demonising’ them. In possibly the most crackpot piece it has published this year – and that’s saying something – the Guardian has slammed a new documentary about the 7 October attacks for ‘demonis[ing] Gazans as either killers or

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Ron DeSantis’s climate bill has nothing to do with Hurricane Milton

Hurricane Milton has left more than two million homes and businesses in Florida without power and threatens to be a mortal threat for those in its path. But for some, the hurricane also appears to a very large stick with which to beat Florida governor Ron DeSantis for scrapping the state’s climate change goals. DeSantis’ detractors have to explain how a plan to achieve 100 per cent green energy by 2050 will keep Florida’s residents safe from hurricanes A bill, which DeSantis signed in May, removed climate change as a priority in state energy policy and cut the word ‘climate’ from several pieces of state legislation. It banned offshore wind turbines and

Edward Howell

Why North Korea is cutting off all roads to the South

If you visit South Korea, you may be startled at the presence of road signs pointing towards Kaesong and Pyongyang: two destinations that many of Seoul’s visitors will rarely have frequented. The latter – informally known as ‘Pyonghattan’ for its high-rise buildings – needs no explanation. The former was once the capital of dynastic Korea from the 10th to 14th centuries. One millennium later, it would become a special industrial region of North Korea, and home to the infamous Kaesong Industrial Complex, a now-closed joint economic development with South Korea. Yet soon, the roads and railways linking the democratic South to the authoritarian North will be no more. On Tuesday,

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Meeting the Chagos islanders of Crawley

Departing Gatwick train station, with nine minutes till Crawley, I tried to get in the head of a Chagossian. In 2002, Tony Blair gave everyone from the Chagos Islands British citizenship, permitting 10,000 Chagossians to live wherever they liked in the UK. About 3,500 have chosen Crawley. And what a weird thing to do. They took a 6,000-mile Air Mauritius flight to Gatwick airport to start a new life, then settled just a mile from the runway. Why so close? I was visiting Crawley to meet these people I didn’t understand, to find out what they made of our government handing over their islands to Mauritius. On the train I

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Sue Gray resigns and the Chagos Islands are handed back 

Home Sue Gray resigned as chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister. She will become Sir Keir’s envoy for the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. She was replaced by Morgan McSweeney, 47. James Lyons, a former political journalist who has more recently worked for the NHS and TikTok, was brought in to take charge of strategic communications. Sir Keir paid back more than £6,000 for gifts and hospitality, including six Taylor Swift tickets, four tickets to the races and a clothing rental agreement with his wife. More people in the United Kingdom died than were born in the year to mid-2023, according to the Office for National

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour’s new approach to China 

The Foreign Secretary David Lammy will touch down in Beijing next week to pay his respects. Next year, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, is expected to do the same. We haven’t seen this level of deference to the Chinese Communist party since 2019. Back then, Philip Hammond heaped praise on his hosts. He endorsed their Belt and Road initiative – of Chinese-funded infrastructure spanning the globe – and promised British co-operation ‘as we harness the “Golden Era” of UK-China relations’. The calls from Tory China hawks to label Xi’s empire ‘a systemic threat’ hold little sway with the new regime That was the high-water mark of Anglo-Chinese collaboration. George Osborne and

Wednesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

How bad will Hurricane Milton be?

‘Astronomical’; the ‘strongest storm in a century’; ‘nearing the mathematical limit for a storm’ – the increasingly fraught descriptions of Hurricane Milton are coming through thick and fast even before it has struck Florida. But how strong is Milton really? The hurricane has been recorded as a category five hurricane – the highest classification – with maximum wind speeds of 180 mph. But it is still out to sea. By the time it makes landfall at the end of the week it is forecast to fall to category three. As for the ‘strongest storm in a century’, it may turn out to be the strongest hurricane to hit Tampa Bay

James Snell

MI5 must stop Russia

The semi-regular speeches given by the heads of Britain’s intelligence services are always described as a ‘rare intervention’, and yesterday it was the turn of Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, to issue one of these periodic warnings about the safety of the nation. McCallum noted that although his favourite subjects (terrorism, Russia, Iran and China) have featured in prior ‘rare interventions’, some things have changed. The ‘shifts underneath present the most complex and interconnected threat environment we’ve ever seen’, he said. We are living in a more dangerous world and our enemies are working together. They share the same goal: bringing more murder and mayhem to Britain. We must not forget the spectre of Islamist terrorism

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

My friend, Amy Wax, the pariah

Spectator TV viewers may recall that in last week’s Americano podcast, Freddy Gray interviewed the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, whose wrist had just been smartly rapped by the administration for her unfashionable generalisations about race and sex. While Professor Wax spoke ably on her own behalf, Amy, as I know her, has been a friend of mine for several years. These scolding financial and reputational sanctions have been in the works for almost as long, so now seems an apt juncture at which to lay down my own marker. Unlike so many of her half-hearted defenders, I’ll put myself firmly in her corner without holding my nose.

Fiona Bruce

How I keep Question Time audiences under control

Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love – or it’s supposed to be. William Penn, good Quaker that he was, wanted his city to be a place of religious and political tolerance; a haven for those who’d been persecuted for their beliefs. There are quotations inscribed on walls everywhere about the power of love, selflessness and charity. Given how vicious and divisive this presidential election is, the message seems lost on both parties. I flew out to Philly this week for a special Question Time episode, the first time the programme has been to the US since 2008. One of our panellists has had to pull out at the last

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why MI5 is so worried about Russia’s GRU

Ken McCallum, head of the Security Service (MI5), has warned of the serious threat to Britain posed by the Russian and Iranian intelligence agencies. McCallum said in a speech yesterday that the Russian GRU was on a mission to generate ‘sustained mayhem on British and European streets’, deploying ‘arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness’. That the GRU is being highlighted demonstrates both how the threat to the UK is evolving, but also the changes underway in Russia’s intelligence agencies. Officially, since 2010 the GRU has been known as the ‘GU’, but everyone from Putin down still uses the old name. The GU, or Main Directorate of

Matthew Lynn

Are bankers still welcome in Paris?

In the wake of the UK’s departure from the European Union, French president Emmanuel Macron made a big effort to woo London’s bankers and hedge fund managers across the Channel. Macron wanted to use Brexit as an opportunity to turn Paris into the key hub for European finance. Trust me, he told Britain’s bankers: I’m one of you and will look after you. Those who did make the move may now be regretting their decision. France’s credibility as a welcoming place for top earners is on the line France’s prime minister Michel Barnier is pushing through a tough budget after discovering a ‘black hole’ in the finances that might even