World

Nicholas Farrell

Can Giorgia Meloni sweet-talk Trump on EU tariffs?

We are about to see how significant a politician Giorgia Meloni really is after she arrived in Washington yesterday evening for bilateral talks today with Donald Trump. Tariffs will be top of the agenda but they are also expected to talk about Ukraine. She then flies immediately back to Rome to meet Vice President J.D. Vance – a Catholic – on Friday, who is in Rome for Easter hoping to meet the Pope as well. Certainly, Meloni is the one leader of a major EU country Trump enjoys seeing Italy’s first female prime minister travels to Washington bearing the cross of the EU on her small but sturdy shoulders. For

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin’s cronies are enjoying needling the West

Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), is in many ways an uncomfortable and ephemeral spy chief, but an enthusiastic information warrior. In recent talks with the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, he accused Nato of threatening Moscow and Minsk by increasing the size and activity of its forces on the border – or rather, certain nations within the alliance: We feel and see that European countries, especially France, Britain and Germany, are increasing the level of escalation around the Ukrainian conflict, so we need to act pre-emptively. We are ready for this. Playing up a supposed ‘threat’ to Belarus is a way of threatening Poland and the Baltic

James Hanson

The case for chlorinated chicken

As a UK-US trade deal moves closer, an age-old fear is rearing its head once more: that Britain will be forced to accept imports of American chlorinated chicken. Ever since Brexit, politicians of all parties have decried the prospect. The Labour manifesto ruled it out and even Rishi Sunak promised farmers in 2023 that there would ‘be no chlorine-washed chicken… on the UK market. Not now, not ever.’ But here’s the thing: isn’t chlorinated chicken a small price to pay for a deal with our biggest trading partner? I have never understood the scaremongering that surrounds chlorinated chicken. First of all, washing poultry in chlorine-based solutions poses no harm to

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

The biggest threat to Trump is Trump

Although Republicans and Democrats have few things in common, there’s one American universal: we don’t like when you mess with our money. After Donald Trump’s erratic tariff tantrums have sent markets lurching, who knows how much stocks will have spiked or tanked between the typing of this paragraph and it seeing print. Some 62 per cent of Americans own stock; unsurprisingly, I do, too. A believer in the joys of denial, I’ve refused to even peek at my portfolio since the President’s ‘Liberation Day’. I guess not worrying my pretty head about my finances constitutes liberation of a kind. While never a Trumpster, I found the initial weeks of the

Ukraine

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine is looking like the loser in Russia-US peace talks

Ukraine’s worst nightmare is coming true: Vladimir Putin has presented the bill to end his war – and Donald Trump is forcing Kyiv to pay it. After 12 hours of talks with seasoned Russian diplomats in Saudi Arabia, the US delegation was so worn out and desperate for a win that they agreed to ease sanctions on Russia. In return, Moscow pledged not to bomb civilian vessels in the Black Sea and to halt strikes on energy and oil infrastructure if Kyiv does the same. But soon after the meeting ended, the Kremlin extended its list of demands. Volodymyr Zelensky says this isn’t what Ukraine and the US agreed to

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin’s duo are spinning ceasefire talks to Russia’s advantage

The delegation Moscow sent to ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia was clearly well-chosen. Grigory Karasin, for example, the former diplomat (including a spell as ambassador to the United Kingdom, 2000-5) and Sergei Beseda, head of the Federal Security Service’s Fifth Service, especially responsible for penetrating and subverting Ukraine. They certainly seem to be doing a good job of advancing Russia’s interests at the talks. After Vladimir Putin reportedly acceded to a month-long moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure (which both Moscow and Kyiv are already accusing the other side of breaking), the latest round of talks seem to have led to the acceptance of the other leg of this painfully

Eliot Wilson

The problem with Starmer’s peacekeeping plan for Ukraine

Sir Keir Starmer has been tireless in his diplomatic efforts to construct a ‘coalition of the willing’ and send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine. At the weekend, he hosted a conference call with 29 other world leaders, and on Thursday the defence secretary, John Healey, will convene a meeting of military chiefs at the MoD’s Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood ‘to put strong and robust plans in place to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security’. The Prime Minister’s commitment is firm and public. Along with likely partners France, Turkey, Canada and Australia, the United Kingdom is ready to contribute to a military force of up

China

America

Europe

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is France too weak to stop the violent attacks on its prisons?

A wave of violence is sweeping France as gunmen attack the country’s prisons. In some cases, vehicles belonging to prison staff have been set alight and in other incidents bullets from AK47s were sprayed at the gates. In the eastern city of Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at his home. The violence began on Sunday evening and is ongoing: overnight three vehicles were set ablaze outside Tarascon prison in the Côte d’Azur region, and a fire was started in an apartment where a prison guard lives close to Paris. Graffiti was also sprayed on the wall. No one has been hurt but the coordinated attacks, carried out the length

Eliot Wilson

J.D. Vance’s disdain for Europe has never been clearer

Being vice president of the United States is a strange role. John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s understudy for his first two terms, dismissed the office as ‘not worth a bucket of warm piss’, but it was the first incumbent, John Adams, who put his finger on its one transcendent quality. ‘I am vice president. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything.’ That nod to ‘everything’ makes Vice President J.D. Vance important. By the next presidential election in November 2028, Donald Trump will be 82, and unless he defies any rational reading of the 22nd amendment, he cannot continue as president. That places Vance in the pound seats

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe’s annual migrant crisis is just getting started

Irregular border crossings into the European Union dropped by 31 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to 33,600. The figures, released by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, appear to show that the EU is getting a grip on illegal immigration. The gangs in charge of the people-smuggling trade are becoming ever more sophisticated and cunning But figures can be misleading. The biggest fall in irregular entries was the Western Balkan route, down 64 per cent on the same period in 2024. This is largely attributable to the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen Zone on 1 January this year. As a result, more

Yesterday

Philippe Sands

Philippe Sands: 38 Londres Street – On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia

58 min listen

Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, whose new book 38 Londres Street describes the legal and diplomatic tussle over the potential extradition of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet. Philippe tells Sam why the case was such an important one in legal history, and presents new evidence suggesting that the General’s release to Chile on health grounds may have been part of a behind-the-scenes stitch-up between the UK and Chilean governments. He sets out some of that evidence and pushes back on our reviewer Jonathan Sumption’s scepticism about the case. Here’s an old case, but not yet a cold case. Produced by Oscar Edmondson

Pieter Cleppe

Is Brussels finally cracking down on NGOs?

Over in Brussels, a scandal has erupted over the role of ‘non-governmental organisations’, or NGOs, in European Union decision making. In a new report, the European Court of Auditors, the EU’s in-house financial watchdog, has criticised the European Commission’s ‘opaque’ monitoring of how EU funds are distributed to these organisations. Between 2021 and 2023, the EU dished out €7 billion to 90 NGOs through various funds, focused on environmental policy, migration or science. According to the Court of Auditors,  30 of these NGOs received more than 40 per cent of EU funds between 2014 and 2023 – some €3.3 billion. That may only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NGO funding. The auditors warned

Tuesday

John Foreman

Of course Britain’s military chiefs should be meeting with China

It’s quite something when the Chinese Ministry of Defence is more transparent than its British equivalent. Despite the Prime Minister on assuming office promising ‘transparency in everything we do’, a flying visit to Beijing last Wednesday by the UK chief of defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, only emerged via a Times scoop a day later. Official silence from an habitually opaque UK MoD about the first such visit for 10 years ceded the information advantage to China, allowing it to paint a rosy, false picture that Radakin had discussed deepening engagement and cooperation with his Chinese equivalent, General Liu Zhenli. This in turn prompted outrage from UK China hawks who accused Radakin of engaging in ‘a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has a US-UK trade deal inched closer?

13 min listen

As Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs keep shifting, leaving countries scrambling to react, there has been some good news for Keir Starmer and the Labour government. Speaking to UnHerd, the US vice-president J.D. Vance spoke up the UK’s chances of securing a trade deal. While this would be a win for Starmer, questions remain over the substance – from agriculture to food, what would be included? And can we really believe it will happen? The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls and deputy US editor Kate Andrews join Patrick Gibbons to discuss.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Britain really going to get a trade deal with the US?

Donald Trump loves Britain and loves the King; therefore we can expect a trade deal. That is the gist of J.D. Vance’s interview with UnHerd. Whether that means anything in practice is another matter. Evidently, the President’s love and affection was not enough to spare us from a 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US (and 25 per cent for cars). While Trump changed his mind last week and delayed most tariffs for 90 days there was no delay to the introduction of the 10 per cent tariffs, which will apply to all countries. All that happened as a result of last Thursday’s pullback was that Britain lost

Jane Stannus

Why have Canada’s conservatives backed euthanasia?

There’s two weeks left before Canada’s federal election, and we’re dying over here. Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney seems more and more likely to walk away with the top job, while Poilievre is busy bowing and scraping before the sacred cows of the left. This week, Poilievre decided, for some reason, to pledge to keep euthanasia legal. He said his government would not expand the eligibility for assisted suicide, but that people would ‘continue to have that right.’ This makes no sense. Canada’s euthanasia regime is the brainchild of the Liberal party, forced upon Canada by an activist Supreme Court with a majority of Liberal appointees, and it developed

Matthew Lynn

Is Donald Trump ready to weather a US recession?

A recession now looks even more certain for the United States than it does for the UK. Output has flattened. The chaotic implementation of Donald Trump’s tariff regime has left businesses bewildered. And consumers will soon be facing huge price rises. Of course, the States might well emerge in better shape at the end of it. The trouble is, President Trump has done nothing to prepare the voters for the pain ahead – and he will find a downturn very tough politically.  It is probably one of the less controversial calls Goldman Sachs has ever made. The bank’s chief executive David Solomon argued yesterday that the ‘prospect of a recession

Paddy Stephens

Does Taiwan have a free speech problem?

These are jittery times in Zhongzheng, Taiwan’s Westminster. The island’s most important supporter, the United States, is now led by a man who resents, rather than is grateful for, the island’s enormous high-tech exports to the US. A few commentators wonder out loud whether Taiwan has become too economically dependent on America. There’s another large economy nearby that would happily boost ties. Then there’s the military drills. The two Chinese characters for ‘Liberation’ have dominated the front pages here recently: some in reference to Trump’s tariffs bonanza, others referring to two days of surprise live-fire exercises by the People’s Liberation Army around the island. The median line in the Taiwan

Monday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How the kebab mafia took over the French high street

Last week, the police in Britain launched a three-week operation codenamed ‘Machinize’. It began with nearly 300 raids on nail salons, vape shops and barbershops, which in recent years have become a common sight on British high streets Thirty-five arrests were made and 97 people suspected of being victims of modern slavery were placed under police protection. More than £1 million was frozen, money the police believe is ‘dirty’, generated by Albanian and Kurdish gangs that control much of Britan’s organised crime such as drugs and prostitution. They also are heavily involved in the people smuggling business, a fact noted in 2022 by Dan O’Mahoney, then the Clandestine Channel Threat

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas is exploiting the freedoms it wants to destroy

In any sane world, it would be dismissed as grotesque fantasy: Hamas – the Iranian-backed terror group responsible for the 7 October massacre – petitioning British courts to lift its designation as a terrorist organisation. But this is one of those times it seems the entire world has gone mad.  For here we are, in Great Britain, witnessing Hamas, aided by British lawyers, seeking to launder its blood-soaked record under the false banners of ‘liberation’ and ‘resistance’. This is not mere absurdity. It is a direct assault on the integrity of British democracy – and on very survival of western civilisation. While our principles of justice rightly insist that all

Sunday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Dozens dead after Russian strike on the city of Sumy

Two Russian missiles loaded with cluster bombs hit the city centre of Sumy this morning – on Palm Sunday, when Ukrainians traditionally go to church ahead of Easter. At least 32 people were killed, including two children. More than 80 were injured. The deadliest hit was on a trolleybus, pictured above. After the strike, a Russian military blogger calling himself ‘Terem’ posted this: ‘My opinion as a good Christian – the Russians must destroy these people. They are preventing us from building the Third Rome… they must pay with their blood. The end justifies the means.’ The attack on Sumy comes just a week after another Russian Iskander missile, also

Jim Lawley

Why Spain is cosying up to China

‘You’ll be cutting your own throat,’ US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned countries thinking of aligning with China. The remarks were made just before Spain’s prime minister, socialist Pedro Sánchez, arrived in Beijing on Thursday with a delegation of ministers, seeking to boost trade, attract investment, and to position Spain as the EU’s chief interlocutor with China. Bessent’s threat came as no surprise. President Trump had just lifted global tariffs above 10 per cent for 90 days for everyone except China, which instead now faces a staggering 145 per cent rate. Bessent’s message couldn’t have been clearer: any friend of our enemy is an enemy. To an extent the hostility

Jason M. Brodsky

Can Trump reach a nuclear deal with Iran?

On Saturday, Iranian and American diplomats met in Oman to discuss a nuclear deal. The talks were a clash of styles, tone and substance. In the past, talks in locations like Vienna allowed the international press to watch the Iranian and American delegations leaving and arriving at different hotels. This time, the discussions are hidden away from prying eyes and journalists inside Muscat’s palaces.  Iran’s foreign ministry began by seeking to tightly control and dominate the early media narrative. Iranian diplomats told media outlets that the talks took place in a positive atmosphere. These Iranian expressions of optimism were commonplace during the Iran nuclear deal revival negotiations from 2021 to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why do the French hate J.D. Vance so much?

At the start of the month, J.D. Vance delivered the address at the Heritage Foundation in Washington for the premiere of a documentary. ‘Live Not By Lies’ is based on the book by Rod Dreher, who is a friend of the American Vice President’s. Vance informed his audience that backstage Dreher told him of a recent interview he had given to a French newspaper. Broadcast on Le Figaro’s online channel, Dreher was described in the tagline as an ‘American intellectual and friend of J.D. Vance’. As Vance joked, maybe that ‘was meant to tarnish [him] in that country’. It may have been. France does appear to have an axe to

Edward Howell

North Korea will never give up its nuclear ambitions

Earlier this week, Kim Yo Jong proclaimed that North Korea has no intention of abandoning its nuclear weapons. ‘If the US and its vassal forces continue to insist on anachronistic denuclearisation… it will only give unlimited justness and justification to the advance of the DPRK aspiring after the building of the strongest nuclear force for self-defence,’ she said, adding that North Korea’s nuclear status could ‘never be reversed by any physical strength or sly artifice’. This may have been stating the obvious, but this declaration by Kim Jong Un’s vitriolic sister dashed any optimistic hopes that the arrival of a new administration in Washington could lead to Pyongyang treading one

Saturday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Tariff turmoil: the end of globalisation or a blip in history?

17 min listen

Globalisation’s obituary has been written many times before but, with the turmoil caused over the past few weeks with Donald Trump’s various announcements on tariffs, could this mark the beginning of the end for the economic order as we know it? Tej Parikh from the Financial Times and Kate Andrews, The Spectator‘s deputy US editor, join economics editor Michael Simmons to make the case for why globalisation will outlive Trump. Though, as the US becomes one of the most protectionist countries in the developed world, how much damage has been done to the reputation of the US? And to what extent do governments need to adapt? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Merz’s coalition treaty is an empty, promise-free shell

It took just over six weeks for the new German coalition to form. That is very quick: in the past it has often taken months for parties to come to an agreement after elections. So what has made this process so smooth? I would like to think it was a sense of urgency, but I suspect it’s more to do with the programme being easy to agree on. The coalition treaty put together by the CDU and SPD parties is decidedly non-committal and unimaginative – a far cry from the change voters were promised. The 146-page document had barely been released on Wednesday before one of its architects warned that

Dwayne Ryan Menezes

Orkney could be Britain’s gateway to the Arctic

Orkney is a charming archipelago of some 70 islands and skerries – 20 of which are inhabited – ten miles north of mainland Scotland. It’s closer to the Arctic Circle than it is to London. It is also at the heart of the wider geographic and cultural Nordic region, with Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands to its west and Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland to its east. North Ronaldsay, its northernmost island, is nearer to Tórshavn than it is to Glasgow, and to Bergen than it is to Dumfries. As Arctic shipping routes become more navigable, Orkney’s strategic location between the North Sea and the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap may make

Friday

Nicholas Farrell

How Italian communists tried to indoctrinate King Charles

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna On the final day of their state visit to Italy the King and Queen were in Ravenna to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the area in 1945 by the British Eighth Army. What they probably did not realise is that Ravenna is a left-wing stronghold in a region – the Romagna – which was the birthplace of Italian revolutionary socialism at the end of the 19th century. Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist before he invented fascism, was born elsewhere in the region. From 1945, Ravenna, like everywhere else in red Romagna, was run by the Italian communist party – the PCI – until the fall

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Lindsey Hilsum Edition

34 min listen

Lindsey Hilsum is the International Editor for Channel 4 News, where she has worked for over 25 years. Having started her career as an aid worker in Latin America, she transitioned to journalism, and she has now reported from six continents for over three decades. She has covered many major conflicts including Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and across the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Her third book I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line is out now. On the podcast Lindsey tells Katy Balls about starting out her career in Guatemala and in Kenya, what it was like being the only English-speaking journalist in Rwanda