Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Emmanuel Macron is an embarrassment to France

France’s under-15s can carry on using social media after a parliamentary ban was struck down by the Republic’s constitutional council on Friday. The ruling is a humiliating blow for Emmanuel Macron, who had championed the legislation from the beginning. It had won the backing of both parliament and the Senate last month but the Council had other ideas. In rejecting the Bill, France’s highest constitutional authority judged that it “places a disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression and communication.” Macron heard the news as he enjoyed the surf at his seaside retreat on the Riveria, a break that has already provoked the ire of many. Should the President be gallivanting on a jet-ski when so much of the country is ravaged by destructive wildfires?

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Nancy Mace paints it black

During her abortive run for governor of South Carolina, Nancy Mace’s signature policy was to remove a tax on boat loan interest – appropriate enough for someone who always seemed to be trimming her sails to catch the wind.  After January 6 the newly minted Congresswoman declared that Donald Trump had no future in the GOP. But after his fortunes revived, she refashioned herself as a Trump loyalist and was a key figure in the effort to oust the then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. A rather monomaniacal focus on transgenders in women’s bathrooms and women’s sports followed, coinciding with the peak of public interest in that issue from 2021-23.

Nancy Mace

How Russia and China are helping North Korea dodge sanctions

If you were Kim Jong-un, you’d be pretty happy right now. North Korea’s third supreme leader is not only the hermit kingdom’s most successful leader – he is also the richest. With the sanctions-stricken country having amassed over $20 billion in foreign currency earnings as of last year, Kim is at his most emboldened since he took power in December 2011. As more North Korean artillery, missiles, and manpower head in Moscow’s direction to aid its war against Ukraine, Kim knows that for now, North Korea can count on its Cold War patrons of Russia and China for brotherly support. Pyongyang’s neighbors offer a crucial helpline in circumventing international sanctions and ensuring the Kim regime continues to reap rewards. North Korea is no stranger to evading sanctions.

Jason Arday’s death is dreadful – and enraging

Behold the human wreckage of the cult of diversity. The tragedy of Jason Arday is that he was both built up and destroyed by the ruthless machinery of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). The academy made him into the golden boy of its philistine project of “decolonization” and gave not one thought to what the consequences might be if his thin story unraveled, as it inevitably would. No one can deny it now: wokeness makes false gods and real tragedies. Journalists found a story and they told it. It was the academy and Arday’s colleagues who failed to do their jobs The death of Arday is not only dreadful – it is enraging. It feels like a catastrophe foretold.

The tragedy of Jason Arday

Simon Baron-Cohen, the distinguished Cambridge autism specialist, has been speaking movingly about his friend, Jason Arday, in a BBC radio interview. Baron-Cohen said the last contact he had with Arday was hours before he was found dead at an address in south London yesterday afternoon: “He really wasn't coping. He was being subjected to relentless scrutiny... ridicule, discrediting every detail of his life... He wasn't coping with the loss of his career, the loss of his reputation. He felt he couldn't go on.” Jason Arday was a victim, but not in the way that his political champions suggest Baron-Cohen went on to talk about him as “an incredibly kind and gentle and caring and generous man”.

What really happened to Karoline Leavitt?

Freddy is joined by Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, for a tour around the houses of Trumpworld. Karoline Leavitt has resigned as White House press secretary, officially to spend more time with her young family, and Washington is busy deciding whether to believe it. Freddy and Jacob discuss who might replace her and what the exit says about the mood inside the West Wing; why Trump's approval rating has sunk to a level last seen under Nixon in 1974; whether the wars in Ukraine and Iran are edging the world toward something larger; and why Jacob thinks a presidency that broke every rule about who can reach the White House may end up clearing the path for AOC. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.

What really happened to Karoline Leavitt?

AOC, the radical for normies

According to the prediction betting markets, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now favorite to be the Democratic nominee in 2028. Given that the Democrats are strongly expected to win back the presidency, that suggests the 36-year-old congresswoman from the Bronx has an extremely good chance of being America’s first female Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, she’s now also neck-and-neck with Marco Rubio in the "Presidential Election Winner" market, on 13 percent. Vice President J.D. Vance, it should be added, remains the clear leader on 23 percent. But AOC’s popularity is surging as the Democrats prepare for their big comeback moment as the midterm elections approach.

Nigel Farage has been strengthened

Nigel Farage has been reelected as the Member of Parliament for Clacton. He resigned last month to force a contest in his seaside constituency following a series of news stories about his financial affairs. The central claim is that before becoming an MP in 2024, Farge received £5 million from a crypto investor and failed to declare it to the parliamentary authorities once he was elected.  The people who have been most embarrassed by this bizarre by-election are the liberal left The Reform UK leader decided it was better to go to the voters than wait for some anonymous parliamentary inquiry to determine whether he had breached the rules. None of the main political parties ran a candidate against him, attempting to portray his by-election as a vanity project.

AOC and the dishonest business of egg freezing

"All of these men often times who are saying, ‘oh if you haven't had a kid by 30 like you're done,' it's just not supported," said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a video uploaded to her Instagram Story on Sunday night. The 36-year-old congresswoman has announced to her audience of 9.6 million followers that she, like a growing number of American women, has decided to freeze her eggs. She continued, "Don't trust the people writing abortion laws, that don't even understand the first thing about a woman's body, to tell you about how many eggs you have at what age.

aoc egg freezing
DETROIT, MICHIGAN - AUGUST 7: People attend a Michigan Democrats Unity Rally for Democrats who won their Primary election on August 7, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan. The rally brings together Michigan Democrat U.S. Senate Nominee Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan gubernatorial nominee and current Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and others. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

The truth about the Democratic base

Tuesday evening saw the second polling upset in as many weeks in the Midwest. In Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, David Crowley beat democratic socialist Francesca Hong by half a percentage point. It was a margin that bore almost no relationship to the polling which had Hong ahead by an average of 20 points. A week earlier, Michigan told the same story: though extreme left candidate Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary by 48.5 percent to Haley Stevens’s 47.5 percent, his one-point margin was significantly less than the ten-point margin the polling average had it at. Across the country, socialist candidates are finding – at the primaries stage – that they are not the slam-dunk choice of the Democratic party grassroots.

Let cyclists pee in public

Demi Vollering, Juliette Berthet and Célia Gery are phenomenal athletes. They are all in the FDJ United-SUEZ cycling team and all competed in the Tour de France Femmes. Vollering even won it. So you would think they would be inspirational for millions of people worldwide, and especially millions of young girls who now know that they too can be badass cyclists one day. UCI just throws out so many fines for urine infractions – to men and women Except that four days ago, Vollering, Berthet and Gery were fined CHF100 (about $120) by the UCI (International Cycling Union), the world governing body for cycle racing. What had they done? Dastardly pro cycling tactics?

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Mike Lindell’s sleepless night

Mike Lindell is not ready to rest his weary head. The MyPillow magnate stepped aside from his bedding business to run as a Republican for the governorship of Minnesota – and earned President Trump’s “COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT.” Sadly for him, primary voters in the Land of 10,000 Lakes didn’t heed his call to arms: with 95 percent of the vote counted, Lindell trails Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth by over 45,000 votes. Lindell was infamously subject to defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic for claiming they had rigged the 2020 presidential election against Trump. Naturally, he smells foul play in his own defeat. Earlier this morning, Lindell told a huddle of press that there were “problems with the computers.

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Is America ready for the new realities of war? With Steve Hsu

25 min listen

Freddy speaks to physicist and Spectator contributor Steve Hsu about the uncomfortable realities of modern warfare. Why are cheap missiles and drones so difficult and expensive to intercept? Freddy asks Steve about just how depleted America’s missile stocks are, and if the West can rebuild its defense industry quickly enough. They also discuss China’s dominance of critical supply chains, the vulnerability of energy infrastructure and shipping, the strategic threat posed to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, and why missile defense may be losing its long-standing race against missile technology. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano https://www.youtube.com/watch?

America's hidden missile vulnerability | with Steve Hsu

Francesca Hong’s defeat won’t stop the DSA

So, at time of writing, it looks as if voters don’t want to cancel Thanksgiving – on balance, at least. Come November, however, few Democrats will be expressing gratitude for their party’s vote-tabulation systems. Francesca Hong, it seems, will not be America’s first avowedly socialist state governor. She appears to have just lost an extremely tight primary to David Crowley, a Milwaukee County executive, in the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin. Her failure does not mean that Democratic voters are returning to the establishment’s preferred path The long-view – and already ubiquitous – reaction to this news is to mark it down as a major blow for the Democratic Socialists of America and their bid to take over the Democratic establishment.

Francesca Hong

Meet Farah Ahmed, Jason Arday’s colleague

After the Jason Arday disaster, here is new evidence that things have gone deeply wrong at Cambridge University. We can reveal that a former supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, now banned as a terror group, has been appointed assistant research professor of education at Cambridge, in the same faculty as Arday. Farah Ahmed has explicitly attacked “western education” as a “threat” to Muslims, condemned democracy and integration, and criticized British schools for teaching pupils that child marriage is wrong. During her time at Cambridge, she has written that the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.

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Is Donald Trump becoming the new Jimmy Carter?

One day President Trump wants to dial down hostilities with Iran. “We’re low-keying” the conflict, he said Sunday. A day later, though, he was keyed up. After Tehran demanded reparations from Washington as part of its attempt to resurrect June's Memorandum of Understanding, Trump said on Truth Social that it was the Iranians who should: Compensate America for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands of others killed in combat. Now it is Trump who has become a hostage of Tehran The problem is simple. For all his bluster about staring down the mad mullahs, Trump is on the run.

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What is the point of the new ‘Muslim NATO?’

Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, rather excitedly proclaimed a new defense agreement – the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement – between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey as the beginnings of a “Muslim NATO” last week. He proceeded to call on Muslim countries to set aside their differences and join them. The key clause – that an attack on any one of the three countries would be considered an attack on them all – is virtually the same as NATO’s much-vaunted Article 5, widely regarded as the underpinning of that alliance.

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Tucker, Hunter and the new center

“We’re from the same place… I went to school with your high-school girlfriend,” Tucker Carlson reminds Hunter Biden at the beginning of their interview.  Much like Donald Trump, Hunter and Tucker style themselves as establishment insiders gone rogue. Hunter wrote Carlson’s son a letter of recommendation that was later found on the infamous laptop, Tucker recalls. “You and I both know the Epstein class very well,” says Hunter, ruefully adding that he was afforded “incredible privileges” because of his father.  At one point Tucker motions to a picture on the wall of his great-grandfather with Teddy Roosevelt. Their chat, released on YouTube yesterday, comes across as a sort of family affair.

Americans deserve burrito abundance

It’s a tough time to be in the business of burrito-making. The price of beef is on the rise. A farm supplying Taco Bell’s shredded lettuce was linked to the spread of cyclospora – a parasite whose laxative effects have been, for at least two people in Michigan, fatal. The latest salmonella outbreak, traced to jalapeños from Mexico, has driven Chipotle and Qdoba to announce recalls. And now, a $20 burrito has become a symbol of GOP infighting. It’s tainted, through and through. The argument began when Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, wrote on X: “One of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability: ‘A burrito shouldn’t cost $20.

The $20 burrito has become an unlikely point of contention in Republican politics

Fact check: the many claims of Jason Arday

Jason Arday has resigned from his post at the University of Cambridge, but as the story rumbles on and new revelations about him emerge by the hour, The Spectator thought it would be useful to create a comprehensive reference guide of all the outlandish claims made by our modern-day Walter Mitty. Arday claimed that he went to both South America and West Africa to install water points Athletic prowess Arday claimed that he once ran 600 miles between Edinburgh and London in six days for charity, an accomplishment which would put him in the upper tier of world ultra marathon runners. He also claimed that he ran run 30 marathons in 35 days. On the 21st marathon he suffered from an epileptic fit and fractured his leg after falling down.

jason arday

Gun massacres are becoming all too regular in Thailand

At least seven people have been killed in a mass shooting at a school in Nonthaburi, north of Bangkok. Details are still coming through, and conflicting numbers have been released, but so far it appears that five teachers are among the dead. The suspected gunman, a 14-year-old student, seemingly shot himself in the head. More than 30 people are reported injured, with at least nine in a critical condition. The shooter’s grandparents were also found dead at their home, where the suspect is believed to have resided. The firearm, a handgun, apparently belonged to the grandfather. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has already promised a new firearm control law in the wake of the tragedy.

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Is Scott Bessent America’s most important diplomat?

The most important American in the world right now might not be Donald Trump. It could be Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, who is exercising America’s financial muscle in highly interesting ways across the world. This week the US joined the Japanese government in an intervention to prop up the yen – the first time America and its ally have done so since 1998, at the height of the Asian financial crisis. Financial analysts have been critical of the move, especially Bessent’s promise to do "whatever it takes" to support Japan’s currency and his willingness to lift the $60 billion cap on the emergency facility. The fear is that, at a time when Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh remains eager to tighten the balance sheet, Bessent is taking on more debt.

How Black Lives Matter created Jason Arday

Jason Arday, I miss you already. The resignation of the Cambridge professor, sporting Adonis, charity-fundraising extraordinaire and credibly accused fantasist has brought to a close the most delicious silly-season story for some time. Cambridge traded academic rigor for phony virtue. It chose political expediency over the pursuit of truth On Wednesday night, Arday announced he was stepping down from his positions at the University of Cambridge and Jesus College, after a trickle of plagiarism allegations, as well as questions over his extracurricular achievements and his wild claims of violent intimidation, became a flood. That’s not how he put it, mind.