The Week

Milei stakes his claim

When Argentinian leaders are struggling at home, it’s never long before they bring up the Falkland Islands, said The Wall Street Journal. An ardent admirer of Margaret Thatcher, President Javier Milei used to take a conciliatory approach to the issue,...

A presidency in chaos

“Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy,” said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The US is “still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth”, and the president – indulged by a “supine” Congress – still has far-reaching powers....

A royal return

To the surprise of the nation and the delight of the tabloids, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex revealed last week that they were moving back to Britain. Harry and Meghan, who duly flew in on Wednesday, will base themselves in a private property outside...

Drill, baby, drill?

On Monday, a “monster boat” carrying 230 illegal migrants arrived in Dover, said Sue Reid in the Daily Mail. The 15-metre vessel, “longer than a doubledecker bus” and containing “enough passengers to fill an airliner”, was the biggest ever to reach...

A solar revolution

What’s happening? China has been the world’s biggest polluter since 2006, but in recent years, it has emerged as a clean energy superpower. Huge swathes of China – from the mountain plateaus of Tibet, where the sun shines brighter in the thin air, to...

The Fifa scandal

The most powerful man in football, Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, faced a furious backlash last week after it emerged that he was seeking to create a £15bn commercial subsidiary that would control the rights to the World Cup. Under the deal, a 20%...

Europe in flames

More than 375,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in France and Spain in the past fortnight owing to the major wildfires raging across southern Europe. In France, more than 42,000 hectares (420km2) have so far been burned in the Gironde...

Rewiring the UK

“Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again,” declared Andy Burnham on Monday, as he addressed the nation for the first time as Prime Minister. Flanked by supporters outside No. 10, the new Labour leader said he was “acutely...

The battle for Clacton

“He wanted a ‘people versus the establishment’ fight to burnish his tarnished credentials as a political outsider,” said Rachel Sylvester in The Observer. But Nigel Farage’s cynical attempt to divert attention from his “dubious”, undeclared £5m gift...

An election gamble

What happened Nigel Farage dramatically resigned as MP for Clacton-on-Sea on Tuesday, in order to fight a “people versus the establishment by-election” that would stick “two fingers” up to his critics. In a video statement, the Reform UK leader...

No. 10 heads north

“I am going to give Britain the circuit-breaker it needs,” promised Andy Burnham on Monday as he outlined policy priorities in his first major speech since returning to Westminster. At the heart of his pitch is a plan to deliver what he called “the...

Exit Starmer

“The victory needed to be big,” said Martin Farr on The Conversation, and it was. In the contest dubbed “Makerfield or Breakerfield”, Andy Burnham last week comfortably prevailed. Governing parties rarely win by-elections, and “certainly not on...

To a trillion and beyond

Back in 2001, his plan to start a rocket company seemed so misguided, his friends urged him to abandon it. Last Friday, Elon Musk listed SpaceX on the Nasdaq at an initial valuation of $1.77trn. The largest flotation in history, it blasted Musk into...

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The SNP scandal

Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, appeared “for 20 excruciating minutes” at the High Court in Edinburgh on Monday, said Tom Peck in The Times. His earlier guilty plea meant there was little prosecuting to be done. “What we saw,...

Trump’s $1.8bn slush fund

Donald Trump has been much preoccupied by his place in history of late, said Noah Shachtman in The New York Times. It’s one of the reasons he’s ignoring his terrible approval ratings and focusing on his architectural legacy instead. The way things are...

Next in line?

The living dead

“It’s fair to say the reset speech didn’t quite do the trick,” said Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. On Monday morning, Keir Starmer gave what had been billed as a make-or-break address in which he pledged to put Britain at “the heart of Europe”, and...

Runners and riders

The mood in the Labour Party was “febrile” ahead of this week’s elections, as the party braced for a “historic drubbing”, said Geraldine Scott in The Times. Before a single ballot had been counted, Keir Starmer’s rivals were brazenly jockeying for...

The rise of the Greens

Until a few months ago, most voters couldn’t have picked Zack Polanski out of a line-up. Now, the Green Party leader – who was elected in September – is so mobbed by crowds, he travels with a bodyguard, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. He gets...

Labour’s vetting row

Keir Starmer cut a lonely figure at PMQs on Wednesday as he faced a fresh onslaught of questions about his appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. The scandal blew up again last week, when it emerged that the Government’s security...

The ousting of Orbán

Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule over Hungary came to an emphatic end on Sunday, when he suffered a landslide election defeat to Péter Magyar, leader of the upstart centre-right Tisza Party. Magyar, who ran on a pledge to rid Hungary of corruption and...

The far side of the Moon

The case against Meta

“It is hard to overstate the importance of this case,” said The Observer. In a Los Angeles courthouse last week, the jury in Kaley GM v. Meta et al. reached a verdict. The 20-year old plaintiff had sued the parent companies of four social media...

Trump’s peace deal

“Amid the fog of war and the propaganda being pushed by all sides”, it’s hard to tell what’s going on with the Iran conflict right now, said Abubakr Al-Shamahi on Al Jazeera. On Tuesday, Donald Trump claimed that Washington was speaking to the “right...

Crisis in the strait

“Forget regime change, a nuclear deal and the rest of America’s ever-changing objectives in Iran,” said The Economist. Three weeks in, this conflict has come down to one issue: control of the Strait of Hormuz. The number of ships passing through this...

Trump’s war on Iran

Why is America at war with Iran? When will the conflict end? Two weeks after the launch of the joint US-Israel campaign, the answers to these questions remain no clearer, said Lee Siegel in The New Statesman. Donald Trump’s declared goals change all...

Operation Epic Fury

A seismic moment for the royal family

Days after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in Norfolk, on suspicion of misconduct in public office, MPs backed the release of files relating to his appointment as a UK trade envoy in 2001. The Government promised to comply with the motion as...

Too weak to fight?

World leaders and military chiefs gathered last Friday for three days of speeches and talks at the Munich Security Conference. A dominant theme of the forum was the need for Europe to strengthen its defences against Russian aggression. President Macron...

Starmer clings on

For a moment this week, No. 10 thought it was all over, said Patrick Maguire in The Times. The wave of outrage over the latest revelations about Peter Mandelson’s links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein seemed poised to sweep Keir Starmer from...

The Epstein files

Some three million pages of documents were released from the “Epstein files” last week – and, in a way, this vast dump by the US Department of Justice serves Donald Trump best of all, said Edward Luce in the FT, at least in the short term. It is not...

Blocking Burnham

Labour’s internal divisions were thrust into the open this week after Keir Starmer blocked Andy Burnham from returning to Westminster. The Greater Manchester Mayor needs to become an MP again to be eligible to stand for the party leadership, and senior...

Trump’s threats

Donald Trump addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos as tensions over Greenland threatened to trigger a full-scale rupture in transatlantic relations. The US president, who’d insisted before the summit that there would be “no going back” on his...

Iran in f lames Will the regime be toppled?

“Help is on its way,” Donald Trump told the people of Iran on Tuesday as he urged them to keep protesting and “take over your institutions”. The US president had earlier declared that America was “locked and loaded”, ready to intervene militarily in...

Trump’s power grab

I never thought I’d feel nostalgia for the Iraq War, said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian. But it turns out that the runup to that conflict, when America did at least strive to convince the world of the righteousness of its cause, was the “good old...

The faces of 2025

JANUARY Seventeen-year-old Luke Littler becomes the youngest darts world champion in the history of the sport. Justin Trudeau bows to pressure to resign as Canadian PM, ending his nine-year stint in power. Two months after being criticised in an...

Is Europe really in decline?

Pity Europe, said Michael Ignatieff on Substack. According to the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy, the continent is facing “civilisational erasure” as a result of unchecked migration and a “loss of national identities and...

Farage’s £9m windfall

Reform UK has received a record £9m donation from Christopher Harborne, a British-Thai cryptocurrency mogul, according to the latest quarterly declarations to the Electoral Commission. It’s the largest-ever single donation by a living person to a...

The Budget fallout

What happened The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, accused Rachel Reeves of lying to the public so that she could fund increased welfare spending with tax rises in last week’s Budget. Reeves faced calls from the Conservatives, the SNP and Reform UK for her...

Pushing for peace

After days of frantic diplomacy, Donald Trump claimed this week that his negotiators had made “tremendous progress” towards ending the Ukraine War. The Ukrainian leadership indicated that it had accepted the “core terms” of a US-backed peace plan – and...

Labour gets tough

Shabana Mahmood unveiled a string of tough measures this week, which she said amounted to the most significant reform of the asylum system since the Second World War. The plans are designed to make the UK less attractive to refugees and make it easier...

Andrew’s banishment

By-election shock

Labour’s resounding defeat in a by-election in its Welsh heartlands last week prompted renewed criticism of Keir Starmer’s leadership. Labour had held the Senedd seat in the former mining town of Caerphilly since its creation in 1999 (and has held the...

A royal pariah

It came years too late, but last week, Prince Andrew finally accepted that his “rancid” reputation had become a threat to the monarchy, said the Daily Mail. Having stepped away from royal duties in 2019, he released a statement confirming he was now...

The hard path to peace

The streets of Tel Aviv felt empty on Monday morning, said Roy Schwartz in The Guardian. “There was no need to ask where everyone was.” Thousands of people were packed into the plaza known now, and perhaps for ever more, as Hostage Square. Others were...

The Tories in peril

In her speech at the Conservative Party conference, Kemi Badenoch made a pitch to win back voters tempted by Reform UK’s anti-immigration agenda. Among other things, she said her government would deport 150,000 migrants a year, via a US-style “removals...

Starmer fights back

Keir Starmer took on Reform UK in a combative speech to the Labour conference this week, describing Nigel Farage as a “snake oil merchant” who “doesn’t like Britain”. Britain was at a “fork in the road”, he said, facing a choice between “renewal” or...

Free speech in the US

Scary but true, said Zack Beauchamp on Vox: a comedian was taken off the air last week for saying things Donald Trump didn’t like. The TV host in question is Jimmy Kimmel, who on his talk show accused “the Maga gang” of “trying to characterise this kid...

Starmer’s nightmare

As Keir Starmer prepared for Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain this week, Labour MPs were questioning how long the PM could survive in office. The speculation over his leadership follows the sacking last Thursday of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to...

France in crisis

President Macron named his ally, Sébastien Lecornu, as his fifth prime minister in two years on Tuesday, following the collapse of François Bayrou’s nine-month-old government. Bayrou had resigned after losing a confidence vote he’d called in an effort...

Xi’s new world order

China’s Xi Jinping presided over a massive military parade in Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, flanked by Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The event marked the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, but Xi used it to...

Britain’s dog boom

How many dogs are there in Britain? No one knows for sure: there’s no dog census. But the most rigorous study, in the journal Nature, found that in 2019 there were 12.64 million dogs in the UK. The industry body UK Pet Food estimates that by 2024,...

The softer side of Nicola Sturgeon

For years, Nicola Sturgeon “wasn’t just popular” in Scotland, said Fraser Nelson in The Times: in the mid- to late 2010s, she was hailed as a “political hero”. Her supporters regarded her as a “Celtic Boudica” destined to lead the nation to...

How broken is Britain?

The third runway

Here we go again, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. Last week, Heathrow Airport unveiled its latest expansion plans. Labour first backed the third runway in 2009, six years after it had been proposed in a White Paper, and the Tories “voted it through...

Golf diplomacy

“It’s not normal for a prime minister to be greeted as a guest in his own country, but nothing’s ever normal any more,” said Tom Peck in The Times. On Monday, Keir Starmer made “a miniature state visit to the Ayrshire branch of the court of King...

Trump on the run

“It’s hard not to chuckle at the mess the Trump administration has made for itself” over Jeffrey Epstein, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. For years, the president and his allies stoked conspiracy theories about the disgraced financier,...

The doctors’ strikes

The Health Secretary Wes Streeting was due to hold talks with union leaders this week, in a bid to avert a fresh wave of strikes by resident doctors in England. Streeting said the planned five-day walkout by resident (formerly junior) doctors starting...

Filling the coffers

Rachel Reeves’s tears in the Commons last week have not harmed her politically, said Archie Mitchell in The Independent. Quite the opposite, in fact. The panicked response of the financial markets to the very idea of the Chancellor being replaced has...

Starmer’s first year

It is a year ago this week that Keir Starmer stormed to electoral victory, with a massive 174-seat majority and a promise that “change begins now”. Back then, senior Labour officials spoke of treating their first term “as an extended [election]...

The peacemaker

“He came, he bombed, he ended the war.” That’s how Donald Trump would sum up the events of the past week, said The Economist, but the reality was a little more complicated. Last Saturday, 48 hours after giving Iran a two-week deadline, the US president...

Netanyahu’s gamble

Last Thursday night, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace unit, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, held an emergency meeting at a military base in Tehran. Hajizadeh and his officials had been warned not to congregate in one place,...

An abuse of power?

On the orders of Donald Trump, some 700 US marines arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday to join a controversial crackdown on protests against the president’s immigration policies. Trump had earlier defied the city’s leaders, and California’s Democratic...

Preparing for war

Keir Starmer vowed this week to make Britain “a battle-ready, armour-clad nation” as he unveiled the long-awaited Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The 144-page report contains 62 recommendations, all of which have been accepted. They include:...

Rayner’s gambit

People high up in politics are very careful about what they write down, said John Rentoul in The Independent. So when one cabinet minister sends a letter to another, “the first question we should ask is: what did she mean by that?” Two months ago, just...

Starmer’s EU “reset”

Keir Starmer hailed a “new era” in relations with Europe this week after the UK and Brussels agreed a post-Brexit “reset”. Under the deal, announced at a summit in London with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, the EU will lift checks on food produce...

Should Germany ban the AfD?

The news “hit Berlin like a bombshell”, said Friederike Haupt in Frankfurter Allgemeine. After a year-long investigation, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has officially designated the Alternative for Germany (AfD) a right-wing extremist...

Farage’s breakthrough

Nigel Farage declared “the end of two-party politics” last week after Reform UK won sweeping gains in local elections in England. His party picked up 677 of the 1,641 seats being contested and took control of ten councils, thrashing the Conservatives...

Trump’s first 100 days

Donald Trump wasn’t kidding when he promised “the most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history”, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Since his 20 January inauguration, Trump has passed an avalanche of executive orders (139...

The death of the Pope

Saving British Steel

The Government seized control of the day-to-day running of British Steel last weekend following a breakdown in talks with the Chinese owner, Jingye, over the future of its Scunthorpe steelworks. Ministers suggested Jingye had been negotiating in bad...

Trump’s experiment

Donald Trump promised to bring down energy prices, said Keith Johnson in Foreign Policy – “and on that front at least, he has delivered”. The bad news, though, is that the recent plunge in crude oil prices reflects fears that he has tipped the global...

An uninvited guest

It was the diplomatic equivalent of measuring “the length of the curtains”, said Alexandra Schwartzbrod in Libération (Paris). Last week, a force of US Hercules military transport planes landed in Greenland ahead of a highprofile visit from...

Toxic influencers

“Do you know where your children are?” Once, that was among the most chilling things you could ask a parent, said Sarah Ditum on UnHerd. Now, “parents know exactly where their children are: at home, probably in their bedrooms”. The after-school time...