All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Trying to predict what comes next in Syria after the toppling of dictator Bashar al-Assad is a fool’s errand. It is hard not to be moved by the jubilant scenes in Damascus but we have been here before: Assad’s downfall evokes images and memories of far too many other recent uprisings in the region. The
It’s bad manners to complain about a gift of any kind, and very bad manners to complain about a Christmas present that comes with epic historical significance. But the Trafalgar Square tree, supplied from the good people of Norway every year since 1947 as a thank you to Britain for looking out for them in
Readers need to be able to trust The Spectator. Every fact you read in the magazine must be true. And every opinion uncensored. On 21 May this year we published an article by the brilliant writer Gareth Roberts headlined ‘The sad truth about “saint” Nicola Sturgeon’. Gareth was reporting on the former Scottish first minister’s appearance
Is the fall of Bashar al-Assad really cause for celebration in Syria and across the world? UK government politicians have been trying to separate the relief of the dictator’s departure from any sense of celebration about what comes after. This afternoon in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Assad was a ‘monster’,
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Over the weekend, the rebels from the Syrian opposition claimed Damascus and president Assad had fled to Russia. Keir Starmer has welcomed the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s barbaric regime in Syria and called for civilians to be protected after rebel forces took control of Damascus. Freddy Gray speaks to Michael Weiss, an editor at The
Nigel Farage is not generally seen as one of nature’s diplomats. Yet the Reform leader is proving to be a formidable force in the international arena. This is most obvious in matters of transatlantic interest, with Donald Trump’s return offering Farage the chance to try and derail Labour’s Chagos Islands deal. But last week showed
Another day, another flurry of bad news on the fallout from October’s Budget. The BDO Monthly Business Trends indices – which pull together the results of all the main UK business surveys – show that confidence has fallen to the lowest level in almost two years, with output and employment down, and only inflation up.
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Following news that President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria has fallen, Natasha Feroze discusses what comes next with James Heale and Michael Stephens, senior associate fellow at RUSI. What does the Syrian conflict mean for Britain? Do we need to reconsider our counter-terrorism policy? And how will Britain’s historic relationship with Syria shape our path
There was nothing seriously unexpected in Rachel Reeves’s speech today to EU finance ministers. Most of it was non-committal flim-flam: ‘I believe that a closer economic relationship between the UK and the EU is not a zero-sum game. It’s about improving both our growth prospects.’ Making reference to ‘breaking down barriers’ and relationships ‘built on
One hundred years after the world’s major powers conceived the landscape of the modern Middle East, the tumultuous events unfolding in Syria have the potential to enact an equally profound reorientation of the region’s political dynamics. The Cairo conference of 1921, where Winston Churchill famously quipped that he had created the new kingdom of Jordan
The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is out in the Gulf, peddling infrastructure projects to Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. His Chancellor Rachel Reeves will be in Brussels, pitching for a better relationship with the European Union. Meanwhile, the government has been pushing for closer ties with China, while also angling for a trade deal
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna Italian police have arrested 12 alleged terrorists who are accused of plotting a Day of the Jackal style sniper assassination of Giorgia Meloni. Many more remain under formal investigation. According to investigators, the plotters aimed to install the sniper in a room in the Albergo Nazionale, opposite the Italian Camera dei Deputati
On Sunday, thousands of Syrians poured out onto the streets of Istanbul to celebrate the fall of Bashar al-Assad. The 3 million refugees living in Turkey were as surprised as anyone by the spectacular collapse of the regime. The celebrators were euphoric, waving flags and shooting fireworks. For years, many of them lived in fear,
It is salutary to remember that were it not for Ed Miliband, Bashar al-Assad might have been deposed 11 years ago. In August 2013, the former Syrian leader gave the West the perfect pretext for acting to get rid of him: it was the first occasion he was proven to have used chemical weapons against
There was one person missing in Paris on Saturday evening as France celebrated the resurrection of Notre Dame cathedral. The original guest list included Ursula von der Leyen – but the president of the EU Commission was a no-show. According to whom one believes, Europe’s most powerful politician didn’t take her place in the pew
With a change of government, you might have thought 4 July would see a lot of new brooms in Whitehall. Yet, for some mandarins, the dissolution of the last parliament seems to have been the cue to get all the paint brushes and toolkits out. Since the end of May, more than £130,000 was spent
‘The only certainty in war is human suffering, uncertain costs, unintended consequences.’ So said Barack Obama in a speech in 2015, defending the historic mistake of his Iran deal. What an irony it is then that ‘unintended consequences’ should apply once again to another of his failures, this time in Syria. Obama’s failure to enforce
The wind of change is sweeping through the Upper House. What with Labour’s plans to expel the last hereditaries and Gavin Williamson’s effort to boot the bishops too, soon the House of Lords will be devoid of any colour. How will the sketch writers cope eh? Today brings more bad news for traditionalist lovers of
How perfect was it that Amnesty International’s report on Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza landed on the same day that the war in Syria got even bloodier. As Islamist rebels swarmed Hama in the west of Syria, a city of a million souls, days before they seized Damascus itself, the virtuous of Amnesty had only one
On Saturday afternoon, US intelligence officials leaked an assessment: the Assad regime, which has ruled Syria for over half a century, could very well collapse in a manner of days. As one official told CNN, ‘Probably by next weekend the Assad regime will have lost any semblance of power.’ It turns out that Washington was giving Assad too
‘Go woke, go broke,’ runs the catchphrase. Now, at last, we are presented with the welcome opportunity to put this proposition to the test. A new exchange-traded fund has been launched in the US whose unique selling point is that it will refuse to invest in companies which use Diversity Equity and Inclusion criteria in
The obsession with ‘toxic masculinity’ shows no sign of abating. As reported this weekend, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has warned of ‘the misogyny increasingly gripping our schools’. In response to this threat, the government is to issue guidance for teachers to look out for signs in the classroom of ‘incel culture’ stemming from the ‘manosphere’.
Yesterday we woke to the astonishing news that the rebels from the Syrian opposition had taken Damascus and President Assad had fled. The joy is huge and infectious, even if tempered with trepidation. In 2007, I was assured by a soldier in Damascus that the Ba’athist regime had the solidity of rock. That could be
Well, well, well. In a rather curious turn of events, it now transpires that Rael Braverman – husband of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman – has started campaigning for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. How very interesting… Farage took to Twitter to announce that Braverman had not only been canvassing for the party on the streets
The Iranian-dominated Shia arc has collapsed. The keystone to the arc was Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the partnership that his father Hafiz al-Assad forged with the Iranian regime in the 1980s. That alliance gave Tehran for decades its only state-level Arab ally, one that shares a border with Israel. It was also critical in enabling supply of Hezbollah and providing forward bases and freedom of movement for Islamic Revolutionary Guard personnel.
Deputy PM ‘welcomes the news’ that the Assad regime has fallen Rebel forces in Syria have captured Damascus, and Bashar al-Assad has reportedly fled the capital, ending a regime that begin in 2000. On Sky News this morning, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told Trevor Phillips she ‘welcomes that news’, but stressed that a political
The Kremlin’s involvement in Syria’s civil war was always, first and foremost, about posing as a great multi-regional power rather than actually being one. Vladimir Putin’s deployment of a single squadron of warplanes to Hmemim airbase in Syria in 2015 brought a gun to a knife-fight. The Assad regime had been fighting insurgents with poison
Iran’s Axis of Resistance is falling apart. Israel has significantly degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities and decapitated its leadership. Hamas has been left decimated in Gaza. The regime of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has collapsed. Intact for now are the Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Such a situation is not only a product
After 13 years of war that began with street protests during the heady days of the Arab Spring and morphed into one of the bloodiest civil conflicts in the Middle East’s recent history, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian strongman, collapsed in just over a week. Sunni rebels – some of them former jihadists
The astonishing and abrupt fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus is a moment of historic importance for the Middle East, in which the shifting of tectonic plates can be plainly felt. But which plates in particular? And what are the immediate implications? Firstly, it is important just to contemplate the dimensions of what has just
Gradually, and then suddenly, the regime of Bashar al-Assad has collapsed. This century’s most evil tyrant has fled Syria, and Damascus has fallen to the opponents of the regime. Across the country, a new political reality reigns. In towns and cities across Syria, the regime’s torture chambers are being opened, and the prisons liberated. Men
So here we are again – another well-known BBC presenter is facing a growing list of allegations of misconduct, tarnishing the image of the state broadcaster. This time around it’s MasterChef presenter Greg Wallace. In the depressingly familiar pattern of previous scandals, we’ve learned that concerns had been raised repeatedly with the BBC, but no meaningful action
It is 00.40 pm, 26 September 1983. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the duty commander in charge of monitoring the Soviet Union’s early warning satellites designed to identify American missile attacks, is carefully checking his panels. Suddenly, the alarms roar into loud action. The word ‘Launch’ flashes onto his screen in large red letters. For the next 15 seconds, one of