Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Brendan O’Neill

In defense of Haley Stevens

The digital left has a new hate figure: Haley Stevens. She’s the Democrat who has put a bomb under the Michigan Senate race in today’s midterms by backing the Republican candidate Mike Rogers over the Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. “Traitor,” “racist,” “Islamophobe,” “bitch” – she’s had all that, and worse, from the Be Kind mob. I have a better word for her: hero. That’s what Stevens has done: shone a light on the Israelophobia that stinks up the modern left It takes courage to stand up to entitled potty-mouths of the modern left.

haley stevens
Bartek Staniszewski

Has Poland become a banana republic?

On Friday evening, policemen descended upon 12A Johann Christian Schuch Alley in Warsaw – the inconspicuous address of the constitutional tribunal, Poland’s chief judicial authority on constitutional law. Dressed in riot gear, they surrounded the tribunal to force through a solution to a constitutional crisis which has been unfolding since 2015. But far from solving it, this ham-fisted attempt to finally bring the situation to a close has only deepened it instead. First, some context. Back in 2015, the governing coalition – which included current Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s party, Civic Platform – elected five judges to Poland's constitutional tribunal when there were only openings for three.

Peter Watson

The stupidity of demanding an apology for slavery

In his big Commonwealth speech in Antigua today, King Charles III is now expected to speak with “unflinching honesty” and “sincere sorrow” about Britain’s role in the slave trade. He may stop short, however, of issuing a formal apology, which is bound to trigger another round of agonized media discussion. But Britain has nothing for which to apologize, and the never-ending “slavery apology” debate is facile and riddled with stupidity.  We can understand the concept of slavery better – and the arch ignorance that many people bring to the topic – by considering other important historical relics, less contentious than slavery now, but which equally elude our present-tense, present-day bias.

Roger Kimball

And my final prediction for the midterms is…

I’ll be weighing in again on the midterms early Wednesday. But since this is the season of prediction, prophecy, punditry and prognostication, I thought I would take my cards, which I have grasped here in my hand, and lay them on this virtual table. The only thing certain is uncertainty – except when we are talking about the experts I see that the latest New York Times/Siena poll has the following numbers for the Senate race: Alaska: D+2, Iowa: D+1, Michigan: D+11, Ohio: D+5, Maine: D+6, Texas: D+7. Amazing! The people who would respond to a pollster that uttered the name “New York Times” report their preferences in such a way that the Democrats are ahead in not one, not two, but all these tightly contested races. “Tightly contested?

Yesterday

Stephen Pollard

Why is the BBC so intent on sneering at America?

I’ve been geekishly obsessed with US politics since my early twenties, when I stumbled upon a speech by the then governor of New York, Mario Cuomo. I had never before heard such compelling oratory, the like of which no British politician would even try to match, even if they were capable.  It has been a 40-year passion. But this year’s midterms are among the most entrancing and exciting of all, with so many states in play and a feeling that the polls – which predict carnage for the Republicans – aren’t necessarily telling the full story. But for anyone who is looking for commentary and analysis of what’s going on, I have some advice. Go anywhere but the BBC.

John Fund: Can we really trust the midterm polls?
Freddy Gray

John Fund: Can we really trust the midterm polls?

31 min listen

In this episode of Americano, Freddy Gray and National Review columnist John Fund analyze the upcoming U.S. midterms, exploring how systemic polling flaws distort voter data, how JD Vance balances loyalty to Donald Trump against his 2028 ambitions, and how persistent inflation and cabinet family ethics scandals expose the administration to congressional oversight.

Saturday

Maximillian Garely

Poland’s constitutional squabble is the end result of ‘lawfare’

Karol Nawrocki was en route to Senegal when he instructed his flight crew to return to Poland. When he got back to Warsaw, riot police were surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal, the nation’s highest constitutional court. Shortly after midnight, the Polish President pushed his way into the court through a wall of people, confronting the judges whose authority he refuses to recognize. Poland’s left wing has spent over a decade accusing the nation’s conservatives of undermining the rule of law and judicial independence. With Prime Minister Donald Tusk back in power, they appear emboldened to employ the very tactics they once condemned.

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Bethany Elliott

Are the dirty tricks of Russia’s FSB getting even dirtier?

If your toilet is full of excrement that you don’t remember depositing there yourself, you may be the victim of a particularly unsanitary Russian intelligence operation. Or perhaps you’re just going mad. Or maybe that’s what they want you to think. That is the unsettling possibility confronting Finnish MPs, several of whom have, it was revealed earlier this month, reported break-ins at their homes. One found human waste in his lavatory; Ben Zyskowicz, of the country’s National Coalition party, suspects the hand – well, not quite the hand exactly – of Russian spies. At first glance, such reports could easily be attributed to Russophobia, paranoia or simply the poor state of Finnish plumbing.

Friday

Tim Shipman

Is Andy Burnham preparing to call a December election?

What is the purpose of a Budget? To stabilize the national finances? To kickstart economic growth? If you’re John Healey, it may be to show the markets that you’re fiscally responsible and the public finances are safe in your hands. If you’re Andy Burnham, the goal is to show the public that you’re trying to do something about the rising cost of living – and to convince Labour MPs that they were right to give you the job. But Burnham also has big plans to transform the country and this was a Budget more about tinkering than transformation. Yes, defense will get £5 billion more by letting the National Wealth Fund borrow off the public balance sheet to invest in defense companies.

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Freddy Gray

Don’t expect calm after the midterms

US technology shares have been sliding again today. The drop, as the Financial Times puts it, marks "a continuation of a volatile month for the sector as investors fret about the sustainability of the debt-fueled AI infrastructure boom." Elon Musk has been raising the alarm. Alphabet (the parent company of Google) has reported some disappointing news, as have Meta and Amazon. The great fear is that all the circular financing which has sustained the AI boom – tech companies lending money to themselves through various "vehicles" – is about to be exposed, and that institutional investors (pension funds and so on) will start to panic. The trillions spent on AI data centers and computing power could start to freeze up. All eyes turn, then, toward Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Matthew Lynn

Is this the real reason Christine Lagarde is leaving the ECB?

She wants to speak freely about the upcoming presidential election in France. Or she may have a tempting offer from the World Economic Forum or some other global body. Christine Lagarde will no doubt be able to come up with a plausible explanation for her decision to step down early as President of the European Central Bank. And yet there is also no escaping an awkward fact. She is also quitting a sinking ship – and at the worst possible time.

Thursday

Lukas Degutis

In pictures: Murdoch’s World

On Wednesday night, The Spectator welcomed readers and guests to our home in Manhattan for Murdoch's World: The empire that changed news, our second event in our new series of New York discussions, debates and interviews. I was joined by Lachlan Cartwright, founder of Breaker Media and former New York Post reporter; Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon; and Jim Rutenberg, writer-at-large for the New York Times and key chronicler of the Murdoch family. We discussed how Murdoch built one of the most influential media empires in history, his relationships with presidents and prime ministers, and whether he really made and broke political careers – or simply knew how to back the winners.

Blake Neff

How politics became Jerry Springer

In the fall of 2017, Virginia was going through its quadrennial tradition of giving the nation an electoral check-in on the president by holding an off-year gubernatorial election. The nation’s mood was, to say the least, heated. Four months earlier, at a baseball field in Alexandria, a radicalized and mentally imbalanced left-wing activist had nearly killed House whip Steve Scalise and three others in a shooting. So it was with some recklessness that Latino Victory Project, in an ad supporting Democrat Ralph Northam, ran with the message that his Republican opponent Ed Gillespie (a moderate) wanted to hunt and murder brown children.

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Spectator Editorial

The presidency is J.D. Vance’s to lose

Donald Trump has so dominated the news over the past decade that it is hard to imagine American politics without him. Yet now we are in the last 27 months of his presidency. And as this year ends and the next approaches, the national conversation turns toward the looming election cycle of 2028 and the vital question of who comes next. The Democratic nomination seems destined to be a complicated struggle between various factions and candidates. The outgoing Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is a figure of ridicule yet strangely unsquashable. He remains the betting favorite. Senator Jon Ossoff, this magazine’s last cover star, is a contender. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a telegenic and increasingly influential force – and Kamala Harris just won’t take no for an answer.

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Geoffrey Cain

The Democrats vs AI

Simon Cameron, the Pennsylvania party boss who served as Abraham Lincoln’s first Secretary of War, has long been credited with the rule that an honest politician is one who, when he is bought, stays bought. His War Department handed out contracts to friends so freely that the House of Representatives censured him for it. By then, Lincoln, fed up, had already named him an emissary to Russia. Cameron was a crook, and his friends at least got their contracts. America’s technology giants have helped pay for Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom and have gotten nothing from it. The Democrats, favored to take the House of Representatives in the midterms, have promised subpoenas.

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Roger Kimball

Beware the false electoral prophets

As the 2026 midterm election jamboree entered its final days, the punditocracy has been treated to a couple of cathartic and possibly clarifying shudders. As I write, Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic Senator from Michigan, is scrambling to retrieve her standing after she told an interviewer that she favored having the deep state harass people who supported Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda. She didn’t put it quite like that, of course. What she said was: “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration?’ I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.’ I want that deterrence message sent.” “Deterrence,” eh?

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Kylian Mbappé is right about Mao. So why has he apologized?

Kylian Mbappé, one of soccer’s biggest stars, has made an abject apology after being dropped by Chinese brands for apparently joking about the country’s former ruler Mao Zedong in an online video. Mbappé, who plays for Real Madrid and captains the French national team, is a big name in China: his face features on Chinese train station billboards and posters, as well as a range of products. He made the mistake of appearing to refer to the revered Mao in less than complimentary terms. You don’t need to be a historian to know that Mao was mad and bad, a dictator whose oppressive rule led to mass starvation, but his Communist party successors don’t like anyone pointing this out.

mbappe mao

Monday

Catherine Ellis

Is time up for Brazil’s Bolsonaro dynasty?

Brazilian politics is a soap opera that never runs out of plot twists: bitter rivalries, corruption scandals and colorful characters who keep rewriting the script. But Lula da Silva’s comeback was remarkable even by Brazilian standards. It brought an end to a dramatic cliffhanger, where the veteran left-winger won a fourth term as Brazil’s president. Just three weeks ago, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva looked vulnerable. His rival Flávio Bolsonaro had beaten him in the first round, raising the prospect of a right-wing turn in South America’s largest country. Brazil looked set for a shift towards tougher security measures, tax cuts and closer ties with Donald Trump’s administration.

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Saturday

Tom Gross

Can Netanyahu win again?

Next Tuesday, Israel holds elections for the first time since the appalling attacks of October 7, 2023. After such a sadistic onslaught, which happened on Benjamin Netanyahu’s watch, many pundits predicted his political days were numbered (though it’s worth noting that neither Roosevelt nor George W. Bush were expected to resign after Pearl Harbor and 9/11 respectively – indeed both were subsequently re-elected.) But Israel is tiny, and in per-capita terms, the loss of life on October 7 was 12 times worse than 9/11 was for the US; 89 times worse than the Bataclan massacre in Paris, 140 times worse than 7/7 in London.

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Friday

Freddy Gray

Brace yourselves for Gulfgate…

Russiagate was, famously, something of a damp squib. Donald Trump was never a secret Kremlin asset. Moscow did not internet-brainwash the American public into electing him. It was mostly mad bunkum, which the desperate and deluded media pushed relentlessly for months just because they could not accept the idea that a brash, rude real-estate television tycoon was now their Commander in Chief. But now, with the midterms upon us and a Democratic majority in Congress beckoning, we’re about to have what could be a far more explosive sequel. My working title is Gulfgate: This Time It’s Serious! Yesterday, Vanity Fair published what appears to be a huge story about Jared Kushner, the US President’s son-in-law.

jared kushner gulfgate

Thursday

Ash Bhardwaj

Ukraine is much weaker without access to Starlink

The full-scale war in Ukraine began with fast, armored advances that covered hundreds of miles in weeks. Then drones began finding tanks and other vehicles in their hideouts, destroying them before offensives could get going. By 2024, both sides had largely given up on armored warfare. A 19-mile-wide “kill zone” now straddles the front line, with drones spotting and striking anything that moves. The front line has barely shifted. Ukraine recently found a way to get tanks back into the fight, raising the prospect of a new phase in the conflict. But those innovative tactics could be under threat, following interruptions to Ukraine’s use of the Starlink satellite network.

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Nicholas Farrell

What do Italy’s rioters want?

“Facciamo come in Francia!” shouted the masked and hooded rioters on Sunday in Milan and other major Italian cities, notably Turin and Bologna. “Let’s do like in France!” By far the worst violence was in Milan around the Duomo where about 3,000 rioters fought running battles with police and sacked and looted countless high-end shops. Most of the 200 rioters arrested in Milan on Sunday, plus the 70 odd on Saturday during similar though less destructive scenes, were Italian citizens who are the children of immigrants, according to media reports. They are known in Italian as “di seconda generazione.” Around 60 of those arrested were foreign nationals. Eighty percent were teenagers under the age of 18, some as young as 12. Far-left white activists were a small minority.

Cockburn

Ramaswamy’s bad political instincts strike again

Vivek Ramaswamy is unpopular. Particularly so this week, over a malicious attack ad against his Democratic opponent for the Ohio governorship, Amy Acton. The ad, which surfaced online on Monday before eventually being claimed by the campaign, features Acton’s estranged mother, Dorothy, decrying her daughter as a liar and mentally unwell. It was already a matter of public record that Acton and her younger brother have been estranged from their mother after Acton was allegedly raped by her stepfather at age 12.  As National Review reported, “Court records confirm many key parts of Acton’s account of her life,” including contemporaneous accounts of the abuse.