World

Wednesday

Niko Vorobyov

Can Trump take down the cartels?

In December 1989, the United States invaded Panama. The objective was Manuel Noriega, a pineapple-faced general who’d risen to power in a coup d’etat and turned his small, Central American country into a pit stop for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine moving north. Noriega fled to the Vatican Embassy, where the US Army blasted heavy metal music until the opera-loving despot surrendered. The commander-in-chief has signed an executive order greenlighting military action against Latin American mobs The invasion of Panama took place when the war on drugs – at that time, crack cocaine – was a priority for the US government under George Bush Snr. Now, with the deadly opioid crisis and

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Joanna Pocock: Greyhound

36 min listen

Sam Leith’s guest for this week’s Book Club podcast is Joanna Pocock, whose new book Greyhound  describes two trips she took across America by Greyhound bus in 2006 and 2023. They talk about the literature of the road, that distinctively American and usually distinctively male genre, and the meaning of travel – and Joanna tells Sam how the America you see from a Greyhound differs from the one you see on television; and how dramatically it has changed even over the last couple of decades. 

Tuesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why are Trump and Putin meeting in Alaska?

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are due to meet in Alaska this week. On the table: a discussion on how to end the war in Ukraine. Trump has been pushing hard to end the war. What’s the significance of meeting in Alaska, what are the prospects of the war ending, and what are both sides hoping to achieve? Freddy Gray is joined by The Spectator’s associate editor Owen Matthews, who writes on the subject in this week’s magazine.

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Putin’s summer offensive is gaining momentum

Vladimir Putin is set to arrive at his meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday with additional leverage: his summer offensive has finally reached momentum. In recent days, Russian forces have breached Ukraine’s defensive line near Dobropillia, north of Pokrovsk, pushing up to ten miles deep into the western sector of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control. The advance, carried out mainly on foot and motorbikes, has yet to crystallise into a full-scale breakthrough, but it ranks among the fastest Russian gains of the past year – and comes at the worst possible moment for Kyiv. It was not drones, but endless infantry that allowed Russia to penetrate

Isaac Schorr

Trump was right to deploy the National Guard to DC

The last thing I heard before my ears started ringing was my left turn signal clicking. I was stopped at a red light on a Saturday afternoon, waiting to glide into my parking lot near the Waterfront Metro stop in Washington, DC when a loud crack suddenly deafened me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bullet-sized wound in my windshield.  Try – if you’re brave enough – walking around DC for a few hours and then uttering the words ‘this is a safe, clean and pleasant place to live’ without laughing or crying It wasn’t a windy day, and no cars had been passing by to

Monday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Will Zelensky’s appeal to Trump fall on deaf ears?

Over 1,265 days of full-scale war, Volodymyr Zelensky has delivered almost as many nightly addresses to the nation. Only a handful have been truly decisive. There was one just hours before the invasion when he asked, ‘Do the Russians want war?’ and vowed that Ukraine would defend itself. The next day, standing outside his office in Kyiv with his top officials, he told the world: ‘I’m here. We’re all here.’ And last weekend, when he declared that Ukraine would not surrender its land to the occupier – and that the war must end with a just peace: [Putin’s] only card is the ability to kill, and he is trying to sell the

Terry Barnes

Why Australia is recognising Palestine

In 1968, the American broadcaster Walter Cronkite told his national TV audience the United Stated was losing the war in Vietnam, causing then-president Lyndon Johnson to remark, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America’, soon after declaring he would not stand for re-election. As he moves to implement a total occupation of Gaza in his determination to extirpate Hamas and its soldiers of terror, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, risks a similar realisation. A week after an estimated 90,000 people joined a court-sanctioned pro-Palestine protest march across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, Australia’s Labor government announced that it will be voting to recognise a state of Palestine when the United Nations General

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

How Russia is preparing for Putin’s meeting with Trump

Amidst contradictory leaks and rumours coming from the US administration, no one is quite sure what to expect when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday – not even the Russian press. Nonetheless, they seem rather less convinced that Trump is about to stitch up the Ukrainians than the Western media. On every side there are cautions not to expect miracles Of course, there is satisfaction at the prospect of Putin’s first visit to the US since 2015. Facing a campaign intended to try and isolate Russia, Putin had just sent troops into Syria to reverse what seemed then the imminent collapse of the Assad regime, and

James Tidmarsh

Could the Arctic be key to ending the Ukraine war?

‘It is in Alaska and in the Arctic that the economic interests of our countries converge and prospects for implementing large-scale mutually beneficial projects arise,’ said Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s long-time foreign policy adviser and former Russian ambassador to the United States, at a Friday press conference in Moscow. His words pointed to Arctic economic cooperation being firmly on the agenda when Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. For Trump, a massively important commercial deal of this kind is his typical negotiating strategy. It’s the ‘Art of the Deal’ – offer something big, lucrative and tangible, then leverage it to unlock political concessions. It’s the template Trump

Sunday

Edward Howell

South Korea’s reconciliation plan with the North is doomed to fail

On both sides of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, loudspeakers blasting news, music, weather reports, wailing sounds, or anti-DPRK messaging have formed a regular part of life along one of the world’s most militarised borders. Yet the South Korean government’s decision to remove these loudspeakers, which commenced on Monday, sets a worrying precedent for the future. Not only have similar gestures previously failed to ameliorate North Korea’s bad behaviour, but at a time when Pyongyang shows no desire to improve its relations with Seoul and Washington, South Korea should not be naïve in thinking that these actions will be reciprocated in kind. North Korea has used

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The demonisation of Israeli ‘settlers’

In the UK today, hold the wrong view and you’re cast as beyond the pale. Brexiteers are bigots. If you oppose mass immigration, you’re a far right racist. Among parts of the political class and commentariat, these labels are considered the consensus. The political and media establishment have crafted a narrative in which dissent from liberal orthodoxy is indistinguishable from moral degeneracy. And it’s not just in Britain. Remember when Hillary Clinton branded swathes of Americans a basket of deplorables?  Many who find themselves on the receiving end of this treatment, often working-class, politically moderate folk, are stunned to discover that their legitimate fears have been transmuted into hate by

Saturday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Can ‘China Studies’ still be trusted?

It is generally agreed that Britain needs to improve its China capabilities. That a greater understanding of Chinese culture, history and language is needed in the UK was one of the few tangible findings from the government’s ‘China audit’, the bare bones of which were published earlier this year. But what happens when institutions responsible for building those capabilities are compromised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? That is the worrying question arising from a report published this week into the state of China Studies in British universities, which details a chilling pattern of spying, intimidation, harassment and self-censorship at the hands of the CCP. The report, by UK-China Transparency,

Friday

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Max Jeffery, Cosmo Landesman, Henry Blofeld, David Honigmann and Rachel Johnson

29 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Max Jeffery reports from court as the Spectator and Douglas Murray win the defamation cause brought against them by Mohammed Hijab; Cosmo Landesman defends those who stay silent over political issues; Henry Blofeld celebrates what has been a wonderful year for test cricket; David Honigmann reflects on the powder keg that was 1980s New York, as he reviews Jonathan Mahler’s The Gods of New York; and, following the Oasis reunion, Rachel Johnson reflects on her run ins with the Gallagher brothers.  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

How has John Henry Newman inspired Pope Leo XIV?

31 min listen

St John Henry Newman (1801-90) is perhaps the most influential theologian in the history of English Christianity. Yet, as Damian Thompson discusses with Fr Rod Strange – one of the world’s leading authorities on Newman – he was a divisive figure, though perhaps not in the way one might imagine. One of the founders of the Oxford Movement, Newman was widely acknowledged as the most gifted intellectual in the Church of England. In 1845 he converted to Rome and was eventually made a cardinal. Thus he had a unique viewpoint on Church doctrine and dogma. But what is Newman’s significance today? Although he is universally celebrated, conservative and liberal Christians,

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Could Britain learn from Japan’s ‘vigilante’ groups?

A uniformed group of volunteers is planning to patrol the mean streets of Bournemouth in response to a recent surge in crime in the once sleepy south coast retirement haven. More than 200 have signed up so far, including ex-forces personnel. They will be equipped with radios, stab vests, and body cameras and have promised to be ‘non political and inclusive’. Given the widespread tensions surrounding migrant hotels (there are three in Bournemouth) this could be the start of a national trend, prompting the obvious question – do such groups work? The fact that officers are never far away, due to the extensive Koban (police box) system is crucial The

James Lewisohn

The sad tale of Denmark’s buxom mermaid

Hans Christian Andersen didn’t write a fairy tale called ‘The Ugly, Pornographic Duckling’, yet his stories often feature alienation, exile and the struggle for acceptance. ‘Ugly and pornographic’, meanwhile, is how Politiken newspaper’s art critic, Mathias Kryger, has described the ‘Big Mermaid’: a 14-ton, 13-foot tall, notably buxom statue which between 2006 and 2018 stood on Copenhagen’s Langelinie promenade – only a few hundred feet away Edvard Eriksen’s iconic 1913 ‘Little Mermaid’ original (itself based on an Andersen fairy tale). Andersen, who was teased for being tall and ugly as a child, might well pity poor ‘Big Mermaid The ‘Big Mermaid’ has now been exiled twice – in 2018 she was moved

Eliot Wilson

Why is Spain trying to pick a fight with Trump on defence?

When I joined the House of Commons Clerk’s Department 20 years ago, there was a helpful list of formerly common phrases which were no longer to be used. Among them was ‘Spanish practices’, that arch description often applied to irregular or restrictive workplace arrangements, which I suspect had hardly been spotted in the wild for a decade or more. It was an impermissible slur, of course, dating from the days of the first Elizabeth, but it came back to my mind yesterday. A contretemps with the notoriously intemperate and thin-skinned Trump might seem an attractive distraction The Financial Times picked up an announcement in the Madrid daily El País that

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Will the occupation of Gaza allow Israel to crush Hamas?

In a decision of historic weight, the Israeli government has formally approved a plan to expand its military operation and establish full control over the Gaza Strip. This has come despite the opposition of Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who raised pointed warnings during a meeting that began at 6:00 pm Israeli time last night and stretched late into the night. Tensions between Zamir and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surfaced throughout the protracted session, with several ministers directly challenging the chief of staff over his stance. Eventually, the Political-Security Cabinet voted by an ‘overwhelming’ majority to endorse Netanyahu’s proposal to defeat Hamas through a combination of military occupation, strategic disarmament,

Thursday

Terry Barnes

Melbourne’s mad plan to adopt an Aboriginal six-season calendar

Victoria’s capital, Melbourne, has a dubious meteorological reputation. Our weather is so predictably unpredictable that Melbourne can easily have four seasons in one day. At any time of year, a typical Melbourne day can start off beautifully until the clouds gather, the winds freshen and turn bitingly chill, and it’s time to haul in the washing as the rain starts to fall. The traditional four seasons of the calendar are apparently un-Australian Never mind that Sydney has a higher average rainfall. The reputation of Melbourne’s rapidly changeable weather is so entrenched it’s become a national joke. But that could all soon change. Melbourne’s Lord Mayor, Nicholas ‘call me Nick’ Reece,

Owen Matthews

What Putin wants from his meeting with Trump

With just a day to go until the expiry of his ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to halt the war on Ukraine or face dire consequences, Donald Trump has once more reset the clock. Trump intends to meet in person with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as soon as next week, the New York Times has reported. That summit will be followed by a second, trilateral meeting including Trump, Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Trump reportedly told top European leaders in a conference call on Wednesday night. The announcement came after Trump’s envoy, real state developer Steve Witkoff, met Putin for three hours of talks at the Kremlin. Trump