Europe

Boris Johnson has urged European leaders to hand $247 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets to Ukraine – but says he fears they “lack the courage” to do so, in an interview with The Spectator. The former British prime minister also warned that Trump is at risk of “morally polluting” himself if he caves to Putin’s demands in peace negotiations and encouraged his negotiating team to stop the “nauseating deals” they are discussing about joint business ventures.“I think Europe is at a very difficult point because Europe has got to do the reparations alone,” Johnson said. “And I'm worried that they lack the courage. They must do it. I think that's the only way to get the Americans to take Europe seriously.

No one ever tucked themselves up in bed to read a government document – at least not in the expectation of enjoying it. The standard format is one of hundreds of pages of impenetrable jargon yielding no more than nuggets of significant ideas. The Trump administration has admirably cut through that tendency to produce a National Security Strategy (NSS) that is worth reading: a coherent outlining of America’s strategic intentions on the world stage. Originally composed by Michael Anton, a brilliant mind who is sadly leaving the State Department, the document concisely lays out a Trumpian vision of America’s role in the 21st century.

Earlier this year, a striking 28-year-old woman, dressed head to toe in a vivid shade of crimson, stepped up to the podium at a conference in Hungary. “Ladies and gentlemen: hello Budapest. I’m so thrilled to be here again,” she began, adjusting the twin microphones and gently swiping a strand of long blonde hair from her forehead. “As some of you might remember, last year I gave here a speech as well, about the ‘great replacement,’” she continued, confidently glancing around the assembled audience. “I wanted the whole world to know that the ‘great replacement theory’ was, in fact, not a theory, but reality. White people are becoming a minority in their own homelands at an exceptionally fast rate.

With his owlish expression and affable manner, Nick Thomas-Symonds looks more like the academic that he was, rather than the political bomb disposal expert he has become. Brexit is the greatest political issue for a generation, yet Keir Starmer has chosen to put this softly spoken Welshman in charge of defusing it. The Cabinet Office minister, responsible for post-Brexit negotiations with the EU, is following in the footsteps of Olly Robbins and David Frost, but his lack of public notoriety says much about how things have changed as we approach the tenth anniversary next year of the vote to Leave.

Winston Churchill is one of Britain’s enduring symbols. His relentless drive, deep conviction and steadfast leadership means that he remains admired by millions around the globe. Yet for years, the political mainstream has been compelled to defend his memory from spurious attacks from the left, such as the British politician John McDonnell calling him a “villain.” Depressingly that threat – and the same pernicious desire to denigrate one of the West’s greatest heroes – can now be found on the right. Spawned from a sinister fringe of the ultra-MAGA movement, these views have been propagated to millions. Tucker Carlson hosted the pseudo-historian Darryl Cooper on his podcast in an episode that has attracted over 33 million downloads.

A year ago Donald J Trump was still roundly disliked by the French commentariat. Even the conservative Le Figaro newspaper held its Gallic nose in disdain, running a haughty article headlined "Trump, vulgarity runs rampant." The left still loathe the president of the United States but for the right in France he has become a role model. The same Le Figaro now writes approvingly of Trump and admits it got him wrong. "We expected an isolationist Trump, focused solely on American interests," it declared on Friday. "But in nine months, the president has established himself as a peacemaker in multiple international crises." The French perhaps more than any European nation have never got The Donald.

Was there a plot against President Trump at the United Nations? Upon his arrival, the escalator apparently stopped working. Next his teleprompter failed. Small wonder that Trump was in less than a concessive mood as he delivered his speech denouncing the UN itself as a colossal failure. The result was the kind of talk he would give to a political rally – except it was to an unreceptive, if not hostile, audience. Throughout, Trump made it clear that his estimation of his abilities is very different from his view of the UN. “I’m really good at this stuff,” he declared. “I’ve been right about everything.” As for everyone else: “Your countries are going to hell.

Yesterday, September 3, President Trump welcomed Karol Nawrocki, the newly inaugurated president of Poland to the White House. It was a stirring occasion, replete with a surprise military fly-over of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets flying in “missing man” formation to honor  Major Maciej “Slab” Krakowian, the Polish pilot who died in a crash in Radom, Poland, last Thursday.  Nawrocki, who narrowly won the presidency in June, is often described as “the Polish Trump.” It’s an accurate epithet. Nawrocki is as much a “Poland First” president as Trump is an “America First” president. The 42-year-old historian (Nawrocki holds a PhD in history) supports a list of policy initiatives that could have come right out of the MAGA playbook.

‘You want a ceasefire? I want your death,’ said Russia’s chief propagandist Vladimir Soloviev during prime time television, the camera zooming in on his face. His message was aimed at both Ukrainians and Europeans urging the Kremlin to stop the war. Soloviev, alongside a chorus of other Kremlin loyalists and military experts, has lately been gloating about how Vladimir Putin weathered western pressure and secured Donald Trump on his side. There will be no peace, they say, until Ukraine capitulates to Russian demands. Putin, as if to prove the point, announced yesterday that he had ordered the military to begin creating a ‘security buffer zone’ along the Ukrainian border – which is not quite the peace process Trump has been calling for.

I’ve struggled to ascertain from afar the true nature of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. Progressive media love to quote its supporters’ politically off-key comments, but no party can answer for a membership’s every daft remark; even the odd dodgy politician comes with the territory. Yet the country’s two mainstream but increasingly unpopular parties – a disenchantment Brits will recognise – portray the AfD as chocka with swastika-waving Nazis building scale models of Treblinka in their basements. After anti-Trump Democrats screamed ‘Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!’ until they were blue in the face last year, I can’t help but view the German elite’s hyperventilation with scepticism.