Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

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.

midterms
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.

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.

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

Today

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.

election

Tuesday

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.

bolsonaro

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.

ukraine
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.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Is Abdul El-Sayed racist?

In his failed 2020 presidential campaign, "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg famously scored 0 percent with black voters in multiple polls.⁠ Abdul El-Sayed, in his bid to be senator for Michigan, is not doing quite so badly. But the evidence suggests he does have an issue with African-American voters, who make up around 12-13 percent of his state’s electorate. In the Democratic primary, his opponent Haley Stevens carried the black vote by large margins, and a Fox News poll suggested he enjoys only about 75 percent support among black voters, which is weak compared to, say, the 87 percent of black Michiganders who voted for Kamala Harris. In a very tight race against Mike Rogers across the state, these numbers could make all the difference.

abdul el-sayed
John Power

Is AI a bubble?

The news is full of speculation that we are about to see a bursting of a “bubble” in AI. “Will the AI bubble pop?” asks the Sun. The New York Post predicts that the entire market is about to “burst,” with a market correction to follow. But it isn’t just tabloids getting carried away – the IMF is concerned about an AI correction, as are luminaries from the financial world such as Ray Dalio and Michael Burry. Burry, who famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis, has denounced Anthropic and OpenAI (the creators of Claude and ChatGPT) as “bubble companies.” And there is already some evidence in the stock market of worries about AI infrastructure spend.

Gavin Mortimer

The dark horse who stands to benefit from France’s riots

Marine Le Pen is the political winner from the anarchy that erupted in France at the weekend. A poll conducted in the 48 hours after the nationwide riots found that the leader of the National Rally is the only figure whose approval rating has increased. Le Pen is now up to 38 percent, a popularity not seen since Francois Mitterrand enjoyed widespread support in the 1980s. According to Frédéric Dabi, one of France’s leading political scientists, Le Pen is regarded as “the representative of the party of order, the party of those who can no longer tolerate the chaos.” Her nearest rival is Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the far-left La France insoumise, the party that much of the country holds responsible for stoking disorder in recent weeks.

John Fund

Vance’s delicate 2028 dance

J.D. Vance is clearly trying to thread a needle as he prepares to run for the Republican presidential nomination next year. On the one hand, the Vice President doesn’t want to appear too eager for the job. He insisted last week he might choose not to run because “we’ve got four little kids” at home. On the other hand, he told 2WAY's Mark Halperin Monday, “I think if I run, the President will endorse me.” But he left himself an out: “Because the President’s endorsement is so dispositive, you could absolutely see a scenario where the President says, ‘You know what? We need to let like this race play out and not preemptively prejudge the results.’” Vance himself has to perform a balancing act.

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Tuesday

Peter Napier

What I saw in the French riots

It’s the third week of the student-led protests in Lyon, and the second that my university has been blockaded “in solidarity.” When clouds of tear gas drift onto my street on Saturday, it’s an almost routine sight. My neighbor across the road is sitting by his window, eating potato chips, pointing out some of the more family-friendly placards to his toddler. Smartly dressed shoppers move through the crowds with scarves as improvised gas masks. I decide to make myself some porridge.   I am interrupted by a series of heavy thuds. Out of my window I see a group of balaclava-clad men taking turns to launch themselves at my neighbor’s front door. It eventually gives way, and they rush into his stairwell. The toddler begins to cry.   Time to leave.

lyon french riots
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Who will condemn Saudi Arabia’s Islamic barbarism?

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia executed a Bangladeshi man and woman over an “indecent act” inside a mosque in Mecca. While the Saudi interior ministry hasn’t specified the “indecency,” and some reports suggest that the two had kissed within the parameters of the Islamic worship place, the kingdom mentioned “adultery” as the offense in its prisoner list sent to the Bangladeshi consular general. Nonetheless, for any extent of “indecency” to be deemed a crime worthy of capital punishment is a barbaric affront to humanity.

Andrew Cockburn

Is a robot running the Fed?

We recently learned that Donald Trump has been taking guidance from Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot best known for enabling nude images of real women. As TIME magazine reported: In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy… He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the US captured Maduro… the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.

Monday

Owen Matthews

Putin can smell Washington’s desperation

Donald Trump has staked a big chunk of his political credibility on finding peace in Ukraine – and by doing so in partnership with Vladimir Putin, and on the Kremlin’s terms. But is Putin ready to play ball and help save Trump’s backside, politically and economically? The answer is yes: Putin will probably play along with small gestures like partial ceasefires and prisoner releases. But when it comes to the big stuff like actually stopping what Putin calls his "special military operation," the Kremlin is likely to stick to its guns and ignore Trump’s special pleading while it continues pulverizing Ukraine’s cities.

donald trump russia
Elon Musk
Robert Bryce

In Texas, it’s Musk vs Talarico

Here’s an update on the state of Trumpism in America: last month, the richest man in world history threw $158 million into a last-ditch attempt to rescue the worst candidate for US Senate in American history.  It’s part of what one US media outlet is calling “Elon Musk’s massive Texas rescue mission.” But even a trillionaire’s fortune may not be able to rescue the execrable Ken Paxton from defeat on November 3.  That $158 million donation followed a $10 million gift in August from the “Elon Musk Revocable Trust” to a political action committee closely tied to Paxton.  If Paxton, the sitting Texas Attorney General, loses to Democrat James Talarico, historians will remember it as a massive defeat for Donald Trump and Trumpism. Why?

Friday

Freddy Gray

The winter of Trumpian discontent

We seem to be fast approaching the winter of Trumpian discontent. The midterms are just weeks away, the mood within the White House is strained, and knives are being drawn on Pennsylvania Avenue. There’s the fuss over Katie Zacharia, the somewhat verbally challenged White House press secretary, and the surprisingly tough treatment meted out to her by Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night. There’s the apparent volte-face over the fate of Nidal Malik Hasan, as Donald Trump declared that Hasan’s execution will not in fact be live-streamed. "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad," said the Commander-in-Chief. "But this event will not be streamed.

Graham Keeley

After years of socialism, is Spain about to turn to the far-right?

Good-looking and always smartly dressed, Vito Quiles sports a wristband with the red and gold of the Spanish flag. It is ubiquitous among Vox supporters. He has made a name for himself in Spain by supposedly reporting on the hate figures for the far-right: migrants, housing rights protesters, students and far-left leaders. He confronts these figures to create provocative content online. Quiles, who has 1.5 million followers on Instagram, is part of a small but growing number of right-wing agitators who are attracting young people to Vox, a far-right party which less than a decade ago was regarded as a political joke.

Jack Smith
Roger Kimball

Jack Smith’s plot against the republic

Six hundred and thirty-nine thousand. Thanks to the indefatigable Chuck Grassley, we now know that that’s the number of individuals whose names Special Counsel Jack Smith hoovered up for Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice when Joe Biden occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (“Occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” it may almost go without saying, seems more accurate than saying “when Biden was president.”)  Senator Grassley has been terrier-like in pursuing evidence of wrongdoing by people like Jack Smith, Merrick Garland and their many confrères in the deep state, which is to say, the Democrat State. Grassley had earlier shown that nearly 5,000 GOP donor checks, mostly for piddly amounts, had been collected as “evidence” by Garland’s minions.