Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sam Leith

The real reason kids are giving up reading

Another day, another dispiriting survey about the crisis in childhood reading. Parents who earn more than $130,000 a year are the least likely of all social groups surveyed to read aloud every night to their children. So much for the sharp-elbowed upper-middle classes. Even when we factor in the possibility that the cash-rich and time-poor are outsourcing bedtime stories to nanny, it’s a less than encouraging finding. It tells us something about the dwindling importance of reading to the most successful among us.

Daryna Bondarenko

Ukrainians are struggling to keep going

Each time I fly back to Odesa, my hometown, to see my family, I notice how things have changed since my last visit to Ukraine. Which is to say, how much worse they have become. Take the bombing raids, which used to happen only at night. Now they take place in the daytime as well and have grown much more violent and unpredictable. The Russians send over a cocktail of drones, ballistic missiles and guided aerial bombs. You never know where they’ll hit – residential buildings, shopping centers, pharmacies, trains, you name it (“Russian Roulette” is the new, blackly comic Ukrainian name for it). The war, all the time, is getting closer to you and your loved ones. It used to be happening in another part of your region. Then in another area of your city.

Maximillian Garely

The DSA sincerely dislikes America

Like most evenings recently, I was scrolling X to fill some idle time. Within seconds, I came across a rather rage-inducing post by New York State assembly member and congressional candidate Claire Valdez. Invoking Mexico’s struggle against “empire,” she promised to carry that struggle into Congress. Her framing, focused around the thinly veiled disdain for “empire,” raises an obvious question. What role does America assume in this story? Is the American political community one that she, alongside her DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) comrades, wants to improve, or is it an adversary to be dismantled from within?

DSA
Scott Diel

Is Estonia really preparing for war with Russia?

“Prepare for war,” was the message from Estonian EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to the European Defence Agency last year. And Estonia has: its 2026 defense expenditure is 5.4 percent of GDP, the second highest in Europe. Citizens are advised by the government to keep an emergency supply of 21 liters of drinking water per person permanently on hand. A survival checklist has also been published, including ready-to-eat, high-energy foods, prescription medications, a bank card, cell phone with charger and a stock of ready cash. The country’s authorities don’t mince their words.

estonia

Friday

Freddy Gray

The truth about Xi and Trump’s summit – with Dr. Edward Howell

29 min listen

Freddy speaks with Dr. Edward Howell, an Oxford University lecturer in international relations, about the high-stakes summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, examining Beijing’s strategic desire for global parity, its covert role in enabling an anti-Western alignment alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, and the escalating geopolitical tensions surrounding Taiwan, trade and economic coercion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

edward howell
Brendan O’Neill

Spare us Macklemore’s smug braying about Free Palestine

Does Macklemore really want to “Save Gaza” or save his own lame career from the dungheap of history? Yesterday, the self-styled canceled rapper – he’s bloody noisy for someone who’s been silenced – announced that he’s going on tour. It’s called the “Free Palestine” tour. Of course it is. There’s no speedier shortcut to the moral high ground for a has-been half-celeb than on the Gaza bandwagon.  Macklemore became the Palestine movement’s holiest martyr when he was dumped from Ed Sheeran’s US tour after yelping “Free Palestine” at 90,000 Sheeran fans in New Jersey. Ivy League leftists idolize him. He’s the patron saint of the keffiyeh cult. “He’s been crucified by the Epstein classes!”, cried every lunatic on the internet.

Ian Williams

What’s the point of the Xi visit?

Moments before President Xi Jinping climbed down the steps of his aircraft to be greeted by Donald Trump, US marines were filmed on their hands and knees smoothing out the red carpet, Chinese officials looking down from the top of the steps. It was an uncomfortable image, ridiculed on social media for the symbolism of kowtowing to the emperor. But it set the tone for a summit which so far has been heavy on pomp and ceremony, rich in platitudes, but with very little in the way of substance. A strong diplomatic case can be made for political fawning – where the power dynamics are lopsided against you, and if there’s a chance of a reasonable payback.

Owen Matthews

The UN is no longer a forum for international peace

Should Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine, with its accompanying litany of horrific human rights abuses, disqualify it from a seat on the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC)? That’s what Poland’s feisty foreign minister Radek Sikorski called for yesterday in New York. The UNSC was meant to be a "guardian of peace, not to give immunity to aggressors" like Russia, Sikorski told Polish television. More, he called the legal basis for Russia’s permanent seat at the Security Council table – with its accompanying veto over all resolutions – "questionable" because Moscow took over the USSR’s old seat without a vote.  In moral terms, Sikorski has a point – and it’s one that the Ukrainians have been pushing for a while.

Thursday

Terry Barnes

Australia’s OpenAI hack is a wake-up call

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is someone who doesn’t appear on Donald Trump’s radar. Since Trump’s return to the US presidency last year, Albanese has adopted a “don’t wake the bear” policy, hoping the erratic American President will leave him, and Australia, alone. But the bear needs a prod, now it has emerged that the Australian government's healthcare scheme Medicare was hacked by an autonomous agent from one of the world’s largest AI companies, OpenAI. OpenAI says “our models took actions we did not intend.” The firm told the Australian government that the hack was unintentional, and there is no reason to doubt its assertion. But Albanese is furious, and it is hard to blame him.

openai
Freddy Gray

Is Abdul El-Sayed the next Obama?

Twenty years ago, as America fought in the Middle East, a junior Democratic senator from the Midwest, a forty-something man with a Muslim name, decided he was going to run for president. Against the odds, Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois, who’d dabbled in Marxist academia and whose father was born in Kenya, went on to become the first non-white commander-in-chief. Two decades on, as America fights another war in the Middle East, an even more unconventional Midwestern Democrat is rapidly advancing. Dr Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, whose father was born in Egypt, is currently the favorite to win his senate race in Michigan in November – even as Republican campaigners spend millions of dollars branding him a terrorist sympathizer.

Wednesday

John Fund

Mamdani’s followers are seizing Berlin

Last Sunday, Germany saw a tale of two election victories. The right-wing Alternative for Deutschland narrowly edged out the left-ish Social Democrats to come first in the backwater state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania north of Berlin. Massive media coverage focused on the AfD’s success, its allegedly extreme views on immigration and the danger it poses to Germany’s democracy.  The next day, the huge media contingent that had camped out in Schwerin, the state capital, returned to the capital of Berlin. It’s where most domestic reporters are based and from where international reporters fly home. Most chose to ignore the results of the Berlin state election held on the same day in which Die Linke (The Left), the legal successor to the East German Communist party, also came first.

Edward Howell

Xi has no interest in stabilizing relations with Trump

When Xi Jinping arrives in Washington today for a much-anticipated summit with President Donald Trump, the Chinese leader will want to show the world that this is more than just an act of reciprocity for hosting the US president four months ago. At a time of ongoing global disputes ranging from trade to the Iran war to the ever-elusive North Korea problem, Beijing will want to give the impression of stabilized relations with the global hegemon. Beneath the surface, however, China shows few signs of altering its worldview. This not only remains fundamentally in opposition to what it calls the “anti-China” West but crucially involves its support for western adversaries, including North Korea. The last time Trump and Xi shared a tête-à-tête was in May.

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s UN speech was a blasé affair

Donald Trump remains on a renaming tear. During his Tuesday morning address to the United Nations, he declared that his administration will now “officially” call artificial intelligence “super intelligence” and government documents – “and hopefully the worlds” – will substitute “SI” for “AI.”  SI has long stood for Sports Illustrated, but Trump went on to muse “let’s see if I have any power. Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. We’re gonna find out pretty soon.” Indeed we are. The truth is that Trump was appearing at a somewhat ticklish moment for him. The latest polls have his popularity somewhere between 29 to 32 percent. Gas and diesel prices are soaring. Hamburger hovers at around $8 a pound.

un trump
Cockburn

Trump pulls the plug on mainstream TV

The unveiling of President Trump's new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House yesterday was a curious affair. Trump cut a ribbon with the CEO of Lockheed Martin, who donated the helipad, and then attempted to address the media who were present. Viewers on TV could see what was happening – but they could only hear a low, ethereal whooshing noise. The main TV networks’ boom mics were nowhere to be seen – as ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News suspended their pool coverage of Trump, in solidarity with CNN and MS NOW, whose credentials were arbitrarily revoked by Trump on Friday afternoon. “He pretty much yelled into a static void for nine minutes and then left,” one of Trump's favorite reporters wrote on Instagram.

Monday

Freddy Gray

Is Trumpism unraveling? With Anthony Scaramucci

44 min listen

In this episode of Americano, Freddy speaks with former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci about his new book All the Wrong Moves, breaking down the systemic failures driving American populism, the economic fallout of foreign conflicts and rising national debt and his sharp critique of Donald Trump's political strategy and economic policies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Friday

Michael Gove

Can Reform reform?

Of all the uses to which Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne might put their money, there are few more innocent than giving it to a political party. Neither want, nor expect, preferment, honors or patronage. Both are idealistic by nature and philanthropic by habit. They have all the personal wealth they need to fund their lifestyles, and harbor hopes only for enriching Britain by their actions. I might not agree with all their ideas for how one might make this country stronger, or indeed how best to spend £72 million to improve our governance. But they have shown themselves a good deal shrewder than me in making money, and they should be entitled, within the law, to spend it as they wish.

reform
Freddy Gray

Peace in Ukraine – or more war in Eastern Europe?

"GREAT NEWS," hollered @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social yesterday. "Thanks to the bold leadership of my friend, Karol Nawrocki, President of Poland, major progress is being made toward establishing a US Army base in Poland." A lot is going on on Europe’s Eastern Front. The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared around the same time that Russia is planning "hybrid strikes using drones and missiles against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland.

ukraine
Dean Godson

Can Britain learn from Sweden’s immigration crackdown?

There is a decisive shift occurring in European politics. It’s happening across nations – and parties. It lies behind the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state election last weekend. And it is the underreported factor in Sweden’s recent general election. In almost every part of the continent, the politics of crime, security, migration and citizenship is driving governments to harden their borders and toughen their approach towards integration, especially when it comes to Islamism. On the center-right, the Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker has outlined that he plans to bring in a ban on what he calls political Islam.

Michael Simmons

Labour must go further and faster in the North Sea

John Healey stood in front of two giant robotic arms this week and promised to “make Great Britain growth Britain again.” The Chancellor also promised, borrowing a catchphrase from his neighbor in No. 10, to deliver “good growth in every postcode.” In the North Sea, 150 miles east off the coast of Aberdeen, lies the first big test of this promise. The 6,000-ton Jackdaw extraction platform is ready to start pumping gas from a field three miles below the surface. Twenty years after the Jackdaw field was first successfully prospected, it will, at the stroke of a ministerial pen, finally be allowed to operate. Industry bosses were told to prepare for a possible government handshaking visit on September 15.

Thursday

Paul Wood

The Houthis are complicating Trump’s already failing war

To lose one Middle East sea lane vital for the global economy may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. As every armchair strategist knows, Donald Trump has lost free passage through one strait: Hormuz. Last week he let another slip from his grasp, Bab al-Mandeb, taken by Tehran’s allies, the Houthis. More than a quarter of the global oil supply could now fall under Iranian control – and Trump's war is more doomed than ever.  For those confused about Middle Eastern waterways, a look at the map... The Strait of Hormuz, conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, is east of Saudi Arabia and south of Iran. All the way over on the other side of Saudi Arabia, on its western coast, is the Red Sea leading down to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

houthis
Freddy Gray

Steve Bannon: Tech oligarchs hid the AI extinction threat

23 min listen

In this episode of Americano, Freddy speaks with Steve Bannon – former White House chief strategist for Donald Trump – about the ideological convergence between national populists and progressive leftists as they confront the existential risks of unbridled AI, the suppression of internal whistleblower warnings by Silicon Valley elites, and the urgent necessity of cutting off Chinese access to Western microchips and capital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Freddy Gray

Peter Thiel, the Antichrist and the battle to control AI

Freddy is joined by Michael P. Gibson, co-founder of the 1517 Fund, to discuss the weekend's warnings about AI catastrophe from Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and others, and the Trump administration's insistence on a light touch. Freddy and Michael discuss why Michael thinks the warnings should be read alongside Anthropic and OpenAI's plans to go public in the next six to nine months; how the role of Silicon Valley villain passes to whichever lab has the strongest model; why data centers, and now AI safety, have become Democratic talking points ahead of the midterms; why Michael believes existing product liability law already does the job; and why Peter Thiel suspects a one world body to regulate AI, sold in the name of peace and safety, could be the project of the Antichrist.

ed sheeran
Brendan O’Neill

Ed Sheeran has done nothing wrong

So now we know what happens if you refuse to prostrate yourself before the Gaza cult. If you politely decline wearing the keffiyeh like a holy shroud and chanting “Free Palestine” on a mindless loop. They will destroy you. They will hound you like an infidel and seek your excommunication from polite society. Just look at what is happening to Ed Sheeran. The anti-Ed hysteria really is spinning out of control Pop’s Mr. Nice Guy, penner of bloodless ballads, is being ripped to shreds online. He’s damned as a “coward,” a “lowlife,” even as “complicit” in one of the great crimes of the 21st century. “Call off the rest of your American tour!” cry the frothing Ed-hunters. What sin did he commit to warrant such venom?

Tom Switzer

In Iran, America is being sucked deeper into an unwinnable war

Tehran knows it does not need to defeat the United States in a conventional war. It can instead exploit the vulnerabilities of America and its Sunni Gulf allies by opening up new fronts. With shipping in the Strait of Hormuz disrupted, Saudi Arabia has been transporting oil via the Red Sea and keeping global energy markets just about under control. But that alternative Red Sea route is now being threatened and the economic consequences are becoming considerably more serious. Iran’s mullahs are widening their war with the US not only through direct attacks, but through their Shia allies and proxies across the Middle East. Earlier this month, the Iran-backed Houthis seized strategically important territory across Yemen’s Red Sea coast.