How damaging could the Ukraine corruption scandal be for Zelensky?
The President’s top aide resigned after mounting pressure at home and abroad
Politics
Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
Friday
Fact check: are the NYT’s experts right about UK immigration?
Yesterday’s release of immigration figures by Britain’s Office of National Statistics didn’t make for particularly pleasant reading. While net migration had fallen to around 200,000 in the 12 months to June, much of this was down to an unusually high exodus of people, with 693,000 leaving the country over the same period. Many of those leaving were under the age of 30. That news, however, seemed to prompt something approaching gloating over at the New York Times, which published a piece yesterday headlined: “The British Public Thinks Immigration Is Up. It’s Actually Down, Sharply.” To labor the point, the piece was accompanied by a picture of anti-migration protestors in Scotland.
Are J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio heading for a clash?
The imbroglio over the Ukraine peace deal has revealed some interesting tensions within the Trump administration
The strange death of England
Whatever happened to Britain, or the UK, or England, or whatever they’re calling it? We can’t even agree on what it’s called. But what happened to England, the England that, if you’re over 50, you grew up learning about, the England that controlled the world, the England that ran the largest empire in human history at the end of World War One? Britain, which is an island in a pretty inhospitable climate, controlled literally a quarter of the Earth’s surface – and not controlled in the way the United States controls the rest of the world with an implied threat or with economic ties through trade, but with administrators and people sitting
Tucker plays the Joker to Piers Morgan
Tucker Carlson has a favorite stage persona: the last sane man in the world, now at the end of his tether
Thursday
Should Karoline Leavitt’s family be deported?
How will Americans respond when the idea of ‘mass deportations’ ceases to be an abstraction, and instead comes knocking on the door?
Wednesday
Trump blames Biden for shooting of National Guardsmen
His response had the rhetorical footprints of Stephen Miller
Fact-checking the Venezuela war hawks
Proponents of regime change are throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks
The Comey dismissal is a miniature constitutional crisis
Judge Currie’s order is an astonishing power-grab by the judicial branch
Tuesday
Why would Putin sign Trump’s peace deal?
Everything turns on security guarantees, which are so far undefined
The battle for Ukraine’s electric grid
More than any conflict in history, the Russia-Ukraine war has been about electricity
Monday
DoGE has had its day
DoGE has been DoGE’d. The once fearsome government efficiency office has been shut down eight months before its contract officially ends in July 2026. What was supposed to be an organization that exploded traditional ways of running the federal government has turned into a damp squib. It was established by President Trump on the first day of his second term in office. Headed by Tesla chief Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who resigned early on to run for Ohio governor), it struck the kind of fear into government bureaucrats that a visit from the Red Guards might instill during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Musk’s minions rampaged through government offices, whether it was the US Institute of Peace or the Wilson Center. The idea was that the bastions
Trump team warned over London’s Chinese super-embassy
So much for simple Chinese takeout. In his never-ending search for economic growth, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has finally alighted on the obvious answer: cozying up to the liberal-minded democrats of Tiananmen Square. The Prime Minister is expected to fly to Beijing in the new year, once the long-awaited Chinese super-embassy in the London neighborhood of Tower Hamlets secures planning approval next month. No wonder 2025 is the year of the snake, eh? But there now seems to be a wrench in the works, ahead of the mooted approval on December 10. For a group of American politicians are up in arms about the possible threat to global financial security.
Russia is willing to keep on fighting in Ukraine
At a time when western commentators are tying themselves in knots trying to parse the ongoing Ukraine peace discussions, the Russian media is suddenly strikingly united in its coverage. There is a common misperception that, like their Soviet forebears, the Russian press simply reproduces some standard party line, day in, day out. In fact, there is often surprising pluralism, with different newspapers having their own interests and angles. However, the Kremlin does impose its will when it comes to especially important or sensitive matters, with editors receiving tyomniki, informal but authoritative guidance from the presidential administration on lines to take and topics to avoid. When the press is speaking in one
Sunday
The global cottage industry gaming America’s culture wars
It is the 9/11 of the blue ticks, the Hindenburg of the grifters, the dotcom bubble of the slop-peddlers. The influencer industry has been left reeling by a new function on X which allows readers to see the location from which any given account is operating. The latest update makes it possible to establish when and where an X account was set up and whether it has changed its name since then. A sensible measure, you might think, but not if X is where you make your living and do so by inserting yourself into other countries’ internal politics. There are no firm figures on how many earn a crust
ISIS is stirring once more
Indications that the Islamic State (ISIS) has begun to employ artificial intelligence in its efforts to recruit new fighters should come as no surprise. At the height of its power a decade ago, Isis was characterized by its combination of having mastered the latest methods of communication with an ideology and praxis that seemed to have emerged wholesale from the deserts of 7th century Arabia. In 2014 and 2015, ISIS recruitment took place on Twitter and Facebook. YouTube was the favored platform for the dissemination of propaganda. The group’s videoclips of its barbaric prisoner executions, including the beheadings of a series of western journalists and aid workers and the immolation
Friday
Zelensky risks coup or civil war
Chief among concerns is how the military might react to a bad deal
Don’t count Bitcoin out
Bitcoin is crashing all over again, and it is taking the smaller crypto currencies down with it. It has fallen by a quarter from its highs, and there is little sign that the relentless selling is going to stop anytime soon. Plenty of people will be reheating arguments about how the digital currency is completely worthless and that the bubble was always going to pop one day. But Bitcoin has been through plenty of bear markets and it has always bounced back – and there is little reason to believe this crash will be any different. It is certainly a substantial fall. From a high of $114,000 a coin at
Will Mamdani and Trump turn the volume up?
Trump has a strange habit of playing nice when expected to be nasty
Thursday
Marjorie Taylor Greene: anti-Trump resistance hero?
It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was a time during President Trump’s first term when Steve Bannon fit the role – and relished playing it. Back then most days brought another media profile of the dark genius of the MAGA movement. The Guardian, New York Times and others were obsessed. Vanity Fair would send reporters to follow Bannon as he conquered America and, er, Europe. Documentary crews were perennially in tow. Indeed one documentary following Bannon around included a scene in which they followed him to the showing of another documentary about him from a crew who had similarly followed him around.
