Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Fact check: Rupert Lowe on Joe Rogan

The American right has developed a morbid fascination with Britain over the past two years, particularly after Elon Musk began tweeting about grooming gangs. Some European influencers have found it lucrative to present Britain and parts of the continent as having "fallen," posting videos of crimes by immigrants and appearing on American podcast networks as weary ambassadors from broken countries to warn: "It could happen here." Yesterday The Joe Rogan Experience podcast released a two-hour interview with Rupert Lowe, leader of Britain's Restore party. Was Lowe there merely to create content – or is Restore a serious political party? Some of his statements suggest it’s the former rather than the latter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

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Both Iran and Trump need peace

The US military has launched a fresh round of strikes against Iran – the second in the past 48 hours – after President Donald Trump declared the fragile ceasefire agreement between the two sides was “over.” Trump said the latest attacks were in “retribution” for Iranian strikes on three cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump, in an angry tirade, referred to the Iranian leadership as ‘scum’ Trump added that if there were further attacks on shipping “it will get much worse!” The strikes hit a railroad bridge in Iran’s northeast, according to Iranian state media, as well as a military base in the coastal city of Bushehr, which is the site of the country’s only civilian nuclear plant.

Marine Le Pen’s return is a nightmare for French centrists

Marine Le Pen’s comeback has thrown France’s presidential election into disarray as rivals for the Élysée Palace scramble to revise their game plans. Before this week’s court ruling opened the way for Le Pen to enter the presidential race, other declared candidates on the left and right were counting on her lieutenant Jordan Bardella to be the right-wing National Rally’s candidate. Bardella has definite strengths, especially his handsome looks and appeal to young voters thanks to his massive following on social media. But his youth and inexperience, at age 30, are a handicap that opponents almost certainly were planning to exploit, especially in live television debates. Now it appears the Bardella scenario is off.

Why is the Iran war back on?

As the NATO summit in Ankara draws to a close today, it wouldn't be a Donald Trump summit without a few shocks. The ceasefire between the US and Iran has collapsed, and Trump has branded the Iranians "scum." But what does this mean for NATO and the rest of the world? Freddy and Owen Matthews discuss what the end of the US-Iran ceasefire means for Trump's presidency, why the agreement broke down so quickly, and what NATO's reluctance to provide military support to the US could mean for the wider conflict.

Why is the Iran war back on?
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Andy Burnham is Britain’s Biden

Watching Andy Burnham in Manchester, dressed in his T-shirt and jacket and pronouncing the return of a more old-fashioned, pro-worker left, I had a sense of déjà vu. I had seen this movie before, but with different accents. For the politician Burnham obviously resembles is not British at all – it is Joe Biden. Just like Biden, Andy Burnham’s self-image is based on the idea that those on the left are the tribunes of ordinary working people, not progressive elites. Like Joe Biden, Andy Burnham is a provincial throwback to an earlier time, just from the North West, not the Midwest. Just like Biden, Burnham rails against the "neoliberal" changes of the 1980s, which he blames for the economic problems of today.

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Trump has not forgotten about Greenland

If European leaders had a bingo card of all the fights Donald Trump could pick with them, at this week’s NATO summit in Ankara they would have won a blackout. Starting as he meant to go on, Trump used a joint briefing with NATO chief Mark Rutte this morning to reheat his litany of grievances with fellow members of the alliance. Trump today declared that he was "not happy with NATO because of what they did with Greenland" and their refusal, as he sees it, to help the US with the war in Iran. Greenland, the President said, was a "big problem for us," going on to claim – falsely – that "it’s not important for Denmark.

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How Trump inadvertently boosted Europe’s defense industry

With all the Hollywood drama and heart-pounding music of a Mission: Impossible trailer, NATO screened a short promotional film at its Ankara summit to showcase the military hardware it plans to buy to hit Donald Trump's defense spending target. One of the aircraft featured in the mini-movie was even an A400M – the heavy-lift plane that Tom Cruise clung to the side of in the fifth installment of his action film franchise. When the lights came back up, NATO’s Secretary General, Mark Rutte, shook hands, slapped backs and made clear that NATO had not only chosen to accept Trump’s mission to boost spending, it was now delivering.

Prince Harry has lost his most high-stakes gamble

It was always going to go this way. Every gambler eventually loses, and the higher profile that loss, the greater the eventual humiliation. But today’s judgment that Prince Harry as well as his other high-profile litigants – including Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley and Baroness Lawrence – have lost their claims completely against Associated Newspapers for unlawful information gathering, thereby bringing to a deeply humiliating and unimaginably expensive end to their crusade against the British media, represents the end of the biggest gamble that this litigation-prone prince has ever taken. Anyone watching the trial will be unsurprised by the verdict.

Graham Platner’s defenders are the biggest losers of his implosion

Democrats are finally pulling the plug on Graham Platner, the failson whose juvenile addiction to schizophrenic online message boards, rad Nazi tattoo, anti-Israel rhetoric, mean drunkenness, infidelity and alleged abuse of women they believed would appeal to the white working-class men they loathe. But they’re only doing so after Politico revealed Monday that “A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections.

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Will the ‘anti-Trump playbook’ work in Britain?

Commentators were so busy fulminating against Trump’s FIFA shenanigans yesterday they mostly missed his intervention in the big story now roiling British politics. "They’re Running the 2024 Anti-Trump Playbook on Nigel Farage," the President posted on Truth Social, linking to an article on the National Pulse, an American media site founded by Farage’s old mucker Raheem Kassam. The point, now being repeated by Reform’s talking heads on TV, is clear. "They" – the SW1 elite – are trying to stop Nigel Farage, just as the Washington establishment mounted a ridiculously elaborate lawfare campaign to try to stop Donald Trump.

Should Paul Pelosi be on the road?

When President Trump refers to Nancy Pelosi as “Nervous Nancy,” you might assume he’s talking about her policies or leadership style. But maybe she’s just worried about her husband’s driving. Paul Pelosi was driving in Napa County Friday when he hit a parked car and briefly stopped before leaving the scene of the crash. The damage has been described as “major.” Deputies later found Pelosi’s convertible nearby with damage consistent with the hit. According to a statement released by the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, Pelosi told deputies he was aware he had hit something but “he did not know what he had hit, so he kept driving.” While reports cited a lack of alcohol in his system, he still faces possible misdemeanor charges of a hit-and-run.

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Trump reveals the limits of American power

Donald Trump’s quest for regime change in Iran has backfired horribly. The President misunderstood the resilience of the 47-year-old Islamic Republic of Iran, the strategic calculations of one-time ally Israel and the physical and political geography of the Strait of Hormuz. Vice President J.D. Vance appears now to be positioned as the public face of failure. The decision to launch the assault on Iran was underpinned by Israeli confidence that Iran’s leadership could be toppled and that the United States’ overwhelming firepower would produce shock and awe. It came in the immediate aftermath of plans to acquire Greenland, incorporate Canada, assert dominance over the Panama Canal and topple the then Venezuelan government. Cuba is no doubt next on Trump's list.

Anthony Scaramucci on Trump, Corruption & America at 250

Anthony Scaramucci on Trump, Corruption and America at 250

37 min listen

To mark the 250th anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Anthony Scaramucci joins The Spectator to provide his assessment of the health of the nation. As we approach the halfway point of the second Trump presidency, what's his impact been on America's reputation? Will the Democrats' attempts to emulate Trump help or hinder them? And why are American conservatives so obsessed with Britain – or rather, Britain's supposed decline? Declaring Trump "an aging queen" under whom "the spirit of hypocrisy lives on" in America, the former White House communications director joins Freddy Gray and Tim Shipman for this special Coffee House Shots/Americano crossover to mark the Fourth of July. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Germany is quietly falling apart

In Germany, the trains have stopped running on time, bridges have been shut over safety fears, and the country's largest carmaker, Volkswagen, is cutting a sixth of its workforce. The government's response amounts to a shrug, dressed up as reform. It seems like Germany is on a bad streak – and the AfD looks set to reap the rewards. Why does a country that still thinks of itself as Europe's engine room seem to have lost the ability to fix its own bridges? Take the railways, the infamous Deutsche Bahn. A few weeks ago, they ground to a total halt. Every train in the country stood still, because the radio system that lets drivers talk to signal boxes – a system that appears to date, in spirit if not in silicon, from the Kaiserreich – simply stopped working.

Trump brings the thunder for America’s 250th birthday

Who ever let a spot of rain get in the way of a good time? Donald Trump’s July 4 festivities were delayed by several hours due to the threat of thunderstorms. On the National Mall, Secret Service agents did their darnedest to urge some of the President’s more avid supporters toward shelter: in the Blacksonian, the Commerce Department, the IRS. Many were reluctant, despite the blackening skies and flashes of lightning in the distance. “It’s not a debate, keep moving,” agents said. Confusion filtered through the crowd as to whether the night’s celebrations were canceled or merely delayed. Attendees milled aimlessly around the Washington Monument grounds, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as “The metric system can’t measure freedom.

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Trump’s America is losing its mojo

The heat is on. The R&B group Kool and the Gang may be co-headlining the historic "A Capitol Fourth 250th Weekend Celebration," but that isn’t doing anything to cool the flaring political tempers in Washington during a record heatwave. Instead, the two-week-long "Great American State Fair" on the National Mall to celebrate American emancipation from British tyranny has turned into the birthday party gone wrong. The first sign that things were going awry for the party planners came a few weeks ago with the clumps of algae that began clotting the reflecting pool in central DC, which President Trump had tasked a company called Green Water Solutions to renovate. The company was true to its name. Green Water produced green water.

A golden age… for Trump

"You can do two things," Donald Trump told reporters as he stood beside the new retrofitted Air Force One on Wednesday. "You can low-key it, or you can show it." He always does the latter. The presidential plane is, as everyone knows, a $400 million present from Qatar. The famous light blue hull is gone. It is painted in Trump’s preferred color scheme – navy blue, red, gold stripes. The Air Force says it spent less than $400 million implementing "security upgrades." And the aircraft began active service this week and will be used by the President until the end of his second term at least. It’s hard to know if Americans really care about their Commander-in-Chief flying around in a jet given to him by a sheikh who didn’t need it.

Are American workers just ‘settlers?’

Is the United States a capitalist country, where bosses exploit workers, or is it a great empire, where colonists exploit subject peoples? American socialists and social democrats were never quite able to decide. “There are people who are very big into diversity but whose views end up being not particularly sympathetic to working people, whether they’re white or black or Latino,” Bernie Sanders told GQ magazine in 2019. Yet he would also say that: “When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto. You don't know what it's like to be poor. You don't know what it's like to be hassled when you walk down the street.” In 2026 Sanders is an emeritus figure, and the “imperial” idea has won out.

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In praise of the American Loyalists

As the United States marks 250 years since the country's unilateral declaration of independence, most of the Fourth of July celebrations have focused on the rebels. But Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson have hogged the limelight for too long. What about the American Loyalists, those who defied the intense social pressure and stayed loyal to the British Crown? Loyalists were often bad writers who simply lacked the flair of radicals such as Thomas Paine In popular imagination, the American Revolution was a contest between the Americans and the British. In reality, however, only about 40 percent to 45 percent of the colonial population joined the rebellion. Around a fifth stayed loyal. The rest backed neither side.

Can the Kremlin afford to fix Russia’s oil crisis?

For a country that pumps roughly nine million barrels of oil a day – the third highest of any country in the world – Russia has managed to achieve something genuinely remarkable: it cannot keep its own gas stations stocked. More than half of its regions are now reporting shortages, the consequence of a Ukrainian drone campaign that has struck with increasing frequency and precision at the refinery infrastructure on which the country's civilian economy depends. The sometimes hours-long lines that have appeared – even in Moscow, for what may be the first time in the war – carry a symbolic weight that no amount of official reassurance from the Kremlin has managed to dispel. How this has come about is obvious enough.

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The confessions of J.D. Vance

There were many reasons why 2016 was a strange year. One of them was the halfhearted effort by people on both sides of the Atlantic to try to understand why voters had voted the "wrong" way in the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election. The book that was touted as an explainer for all of this was Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir by someone called J.D. Vance about his upbringing in rural Ohio. After the election of Donald Trump, Vance’s description of family breakdown, de-industrialization, poverty and drug abuse was said to explain why so many Americans had voted for Trump. There was much that was patronizing about all this – mirrored in France by the attention paid to Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims.