World

Thursday

Elisabeth Dampier

Why the AfD is leading in the polls

Germany has a new government. It may also have a new government in waiting. On the same day that the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) announced they had concluded coalition talks to form a government, a poll showed the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the most popular party in Germany. A quarter of all voters now support the AfD. Since the election in February, the CDU has lost 5 per cent of its support. It’s easy to see where it all went wrong for the CDU. Having promised fiscal responsibility, moderate right-wing governance, and the return of controlled borders, the party has instead

William Moore

Trump shock, cousin marriage & would you steal from a restaurant?

39 min listen

This week: Trump’s tariffs – madness or mastermind? ‘Shock tactics’ is the headline of our cover article this week, as deputy editor Freddy Gray reflects on a week that has seen the US President upend the global economic order, with back and forth announcements on reciprocal and retaliatory tariffs. At the time of writing, a baseline 10% on imports stands – with higher tariffs remaining for China, Mexico and Canada. The initial announcement last week had led to the biggest global market decline since the start of the pandemic, and left countries scrambling to react, whether through negotiation or retaliation. China announced a second wave of retaliatory tariffs – to

Matthew Parris

What if Trump is just bonkers?

‘I wonder what he meant by that,’ King Louis Philippe of France supposedly remarked on the death of the conspiratorial politician Talleyrand. Whenever a person behaves in ways we had not anticipated, it is a Darwinian and often useful human instinct to suspect a rational motive, and seek it out. So it’s unsurprising that in the world of commentary a whole industry has now arisen in search of an ‘explanation’ of Donald Trump’s various démarches concerning, for instance, Gaza, Greenland and Canada. And now he’s trying to wreck world trade. Academic economists have been hauled from their ivory towers, business journalists from their statistical charts, public opinion pollsters from their

Martin Vander Weyer

Why it might be best if US stock markets go on falling

It gives me no pleasure to say I told you so. ‘If [Donald Trump] is prepared to cause mayhem in global trade as his first move, he’s even more dangerous than his detractors thought,’ I wrote in February. ‘British commentators of the “Why can’t we have visionary maverick musclemen like Trump?” persuasion should be careful what they wish for.’ And in November, ahead of the presidential election, I wrote that gold could have ‘more upside ahead’ while bitcoin holders would be wise to take profits – advice that looked wildly wrong in December but finally came right with gold at an all-time high and the cryptocurrency suffering its worst first

Louise Perry

Where the young rich flee to

If Elon Musk gets his way, and Mars becomes our newest New World, I had always assumed that the people who emigrated there would be rather like the Pilgrim Fathers – ascetic, homogenous, insular and highly religious. The sort of group that has historically had the psychosocial qualities necessary for withstanding a long voyage to a dangerous frontier. My money is still on the Pilgrim-types to lead the way, at least in the early waves. But I did wonder, while sitting in its airport last week, if interplanetary human civilisation might one day end up looking something like Dubai. Dubai operates rather like a space colony. It depends on desalinated

Charles Moore

Who’d be a bishop today?

In his recent interview with our American edition, The Spectator World, Donald Trump is reported to be faced by a picture of Franklin D. Roosevelt whenever he sits at his Oval Office desk. ‘A lot of people say, why do you have FDR?’ Trump says. His answer is: ‘Well, he was a serious president, whether you agree with him or not.’ He does not state what he particularly likes about FDR, though one might guess that his capacity to be elected president four times is an attraction. Surprisingly, perhaps, FDR is not anathema to all Republicans. He even appeals to their isolationist strand, because of Yalta. At that fateful conference,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Trump’s tariffs, a theme park for Bedford and a big bill for Big Macs

Home In response to President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘This is not just a short-term tactical exercise. It is the beginning of a new era.’ He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: ‘We stand ready to use industrial policy to help shelter British business from the storm.’ The FTSE100 fell by 4.9 per cent in a day, its biggest such fall since 27 March 2020. The government published a 417-page list of US products upon which Britain could impose retaliatory tariffs after 1 May. Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that, although in 2023 the UK imported £57.9 billion of goods from

Wednesday

Henry Donovan

Merz’s new coalition is bad news for Germany

Today, the CDU’s Friedrich Merz has signed a coalition agreement with the Social Democrats. In doing so he has formalised the most spectacular betrayal of centre-right voters in modern German history. The document might as well be written in red ink, given how thoroughly the SPD has dominated the negotiations despite suffering their most catastrophic electoral defeat since the Wilhelmine era.  In a press conference announcing the agreement, a stuttering and visibly uncertain Merz thanked the leaders of the SPD for the ‘great work’ of the past weeks. This is not how an election winner proudly presents his new government. There was fear in his voice. This is precisely the outcome the far-right

Freddy Gray

Trump shock: is there method behind the madness?

A ‘black swan event’, as defined by the risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb in 2007, is a surprise occurrence that has a major impact on the global financial system and is rationalised after the fact as something that ought to have been expected all along. The 9/11 terror attacks are one example, the Covid pandemic another – shocks that rocked the world and made us wonder if freedom works. Since Wednesday last week, however, the gods of the marketplace have been wrestling with a new and more mind-boggling creature: the ‘orange swan’, a cataclysmic Donald Trump-induced happening that is at once entirely predictable and baffling, an event that is rationalised

Michael Simmons

Xi escalates China's trade war with Trump

China has announced it will impose 84 per cent tariffs on US goods imports from tomorrow, as the war of words and levies between the world’s two largest economies escalates. The new measures –  50 per cent on top of the 34 per cent already imposed by Beijing’s finance ministry – are a like for like increase for the 50 per cent increase levied by Trump overnight, taking the US’s total tariff on Chinese goods to 104 per cent. The FTSE100 – which was already down more than 2.3 per cent this morning – plunged even further to 3.6 per cent following the midday news.  Beijing had vowed a ‘firm

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is looking terrifyingly vulnerable to Trump’s trade war

The Irish government has spent a lot of time trying to reassure voters that they have little to fear from any economic realignment with America. Now it is openly acknowledging the uncomfortable truth: that more than any other EU member state, Ireland is in a remarkably precarious position following Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs. Internal government economic models have indicated that the Irish economy could lose 60,000 jobs in the next 12 months as a direct result of Trump’s trade war – with many more losses expected to follow. The reasons for Ireland’s unique and perilous exposure are varied. It is heavily reliant on US tech and pharmaceutical companies which have

Damian Thompson

Was Simeon of Jerusalem the first Christian in recorded history?

28 min listen

In Luke’s Gospel, an ancient inhabitant of Jerusalem named Simeon meets Mary and Joseph when they bring Jesus to be presented at the Temple on the 40th day after his birth. He has been promised that he will not die until he has seen Christ, and as he takes the baby into his arms he utters the words, ‘Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.’  This prayer, known down the centuries by its opening

Tuesday

Alexander Kolyandr

Russia can't escape the fallout of Trump's tariff war

When Donald Trump unveiled his table of tariffs in Washington last week, there was one country that was conspicuously absent from his list: Russia. The White House’s argument was that there was no point slapping tariffs on trade with Moscow because the existing sanctions in place against it meant there was negligible bilateral trade going on between the two countries. Despite this, the global trade war that has erupted will still impact Russia, threatening to undermine Moscow’s economic stability, stifle its already slowing growth and amplify its strategic dependence on Beijing. Trump’s trade realignments will further marginalise Russia as an energy supplier The White House’s justification for excluding Russia from

Ian Williams

China won't win its 'fight to the end' against Trump

China has accused Washington of ‘blackmail’ and said it will ‘fight to the end’ after Donald Trump threatened overnight to impose an additional 50 per cent tariff on Chinese imports. At the same time, President Xi Jinping is seeking to present himself as a responsible champion of the international trading system and defender of globalisation against the Trump wrecking ball. Neither position bears scrutiny; the latter is almost laughable, since it is Beijing’s persistent disregard of international rules that has fuelled the anger in America in the first place. It all smacks of desperation and not the ‘super economy’ of CCP propaganda As part of its strategy, the Chinese Communist

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas has a history of using ambulances for war

Before the facts had even settled, western media outlets rendered their verdict: Israel was guilty. Guilty of deliberately targeting ambulances. Guilty of murdering humanitarian workers. Guilty because in the court of international opinion, Israel’s guilt is the default setting. Only later did the complicated reality emerge. Israeli forces near Rafah, acting on intelligence that Hamas operatives were exploiting ambulances for military purposes, opened fire on a suspicious convoy. People were killed, including members of the Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defence. But rather than approach the incident with caution and historical awareness, media outlets like the New York Times and Sky News rushed to enshrine a narrative of Israeli barbarism – a

Jane Stannus

Canada is more conservative than politicians think

Finally, some good news for Canada’s Conservative party. For the first time since the federal election was announced, a poll last week showed them in the lead, and polls over the weekend show them closing in on the Liberal party. They’re not where they were, but it’s progress. In early January, the much-loathed Trudeau was stepping down, both Liberals and the New Democrats were highly unpopular, and the Conservatives, with a no-nonsense economic platform were considered a shoo-in for the next election. But thanks to Canada-US tensions over border security and tariffs, Liberals have been topping every poll since the beginning of the election campaign. The Conservative’s Pierre Poilievre is staying

Monday

Freddy Gray

Has Trump stopped the oligarchy?

21 min listen

Global financial markets are experiencing significant declines following the announcement of new tariffs by President Trump. These tariffs led to widespread panic among investors and sparked debates about their potential impact on the economy.​ In this episode of Americano, host Freddy Gray is joined by Joe Weisenthal, co-host of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, to discuss the ramifications of these tariffs. They delve into the immediate market reactions, including a brief $4 trillion surge driven by a misinterpreted news clip, and analyse the underlying motives and potential consequences of the administration’s trade policies.

Cindy Yu

What does it take to be 'an old friend of the Chinese people'?

38 min listen

The term ‘old friend of the Chinese people’ might seem a colloquial, almost sentimental, phrase to appear in official diplomatic language, but in the Chinese context, those words have a very specific meaning. Most often, they refer to high profile foreigners whose actions have helped the Chinese Communist Party in one way or another. The most famous of these is Henry Kissinger, who led the way for American rapprochement with China. That the CCP gives various foreigners this honour is revealing of China’s priorities over the decades, but also of its attempts to co-opt foreign forces to its cause. Think back to the United Front strategy, which we looked at

Philip Patrick

Trump is bending Japan to his will

‘National crisis’ was how Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba described the fallout from President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs in a speech on Friday. That was strong language from the normally measured Ishiba, but was borne out by the bloodbath in the Nikkei stock exchange over the last few days of trading. Stock markets around the world have been battered, but Japan’s has been one of the worst. It plunged 2,600 points to close down a whopping 8 per cent today, the third largest fall on record. Amongst the worst casualties were the Mizuho Financial Group, whose shares fell 10.6 per cent, and Mitsubishi, whose stock plunged by 10.2 per cent.

Brendan O’Neill

Is Israel wrong to see Labour MPs as hostile actors?

Israel’s denial of entry to two Labour MPs is a truly shaming moment. Not for Israel, which, like all sovereign states, is perfectly at liberty to permit or deny entry to anyone it chooses. No, for Labour. That our ally, the Jewish nation, is so wary of Britain’s ruling party that it felt compelled to banish two of its representatives should generate some serious soul-searching in Labour. The flap over Israel’s ejection of the MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang has been mad. It’s the hissy fit heard around the world. Leafy London is up in arms. ‘I am outraged’, thundered Emily Thornberry on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Israel will