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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Michael Gove |Charles Lipson |Matthew Lynn |John Keiger
To Donald Trump.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Michael Gove |Charles Lipson |John Keiger |Neal Pollack
Sir Roger Scruton may not be Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s favorite author. Apparently Starmer prefers Victoria Hislop. But as he prepares to travel to Washington next week, the PM could scarcely spend his time more wisely than burying his nose in The Uses of Pessimism — and the Dangers of False Hope, one of Scruton’s most powerful works. “Hope untempered by the evidence of history is a dangerous asset,” says Scruton.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Mark Galeotti |Charles Lipson |John Keiger |Neal Pollack
Has Donald Trump’s heavy-handed negotiation style scored a win, or have the Ukrainians managed to wrench a victory of sorts from the jaws of defeat? Although the details are still unclear, Kyiv and Washington are confirming that a deal on mineral rights has been agreed, and that Volodymyr Zelensky will be on his way to the White House on Friday to sign on the dotted line.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Charles Lipson |John Keiger |Neal Pollack |Gavin Mortimer
Why are Democrats mounting such a ferocious assault on Elon Musk? Why are mainstream media outlets so eager to go along? The simplest answers are the best. Musk is the most prominent member of the new administration aside from the president himself. He is Donald Trump’s point man for exposing malfeasance in federal bureaucracies, determining where the money is going and cutting the engorged payroll. The more Musk and Trump succeed, the worse for Democrats.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
spectator.com.au | John Keiger
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died aged 96 on 7 January, was the personification of the travails and excesses of post-war France. He was a co-founder in 1972 of the reactionary Front National, whose senior members included former Vichy collaborators and a former member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division. Yet on 21 April 2002 to universal surprise, he nonetheless beat the Socialist candidate and qualified for the second round of the French presidentials with 18 per cent of the vote.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
spectator.co.uk | John Keiger
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died aged 96 on 7 January, was the personification of the travails and excesses of post-war France. He was a co-founder in 1972 of the reactionary Front National, whose senior members included former Vichy collaborators and a former member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division. Yet on 21 April 2002 to universal surprise, he nonetheless beat the Socialist candidate and qualified for the second round of the French presidentials with 18 per cent of the vote.
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Dec 13, 2024 | 
politeia.co.uk | John Keiger
President Macron’s failed election gamble has now claimed another head, that of Michel Barnier. As the EU insists it keeps to the approved EU deficit levels, the future for France is unclear. Here the historian, John Keiger, gives an insight into the machinations of Brussels from his personal experience in 2013 when drafted in by France as an EU representative on the previous big EU deficit crisis — that of Greece. France’s finances continue to deteriorate.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
telegraph.co.uk | John Keiger
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier in the National Assembly, Paris, France, 04 December 2024.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
telegraph.co.uk | John Keiger
Credit: ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP Not since the Fourth Republic has French politics been in such flux. Following June’s reckless dissolution of the National Assembly, presidential authority has withered, parliament is in disarray and traditional political parties are in turmoil, while a hapless prime minister seeks to hold the country together. Yet the true key to France’s stability is Marine Le Pen. At the head of the largest parliamentary group in the three-way-split National Assembly,...
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | John Keiger
Yesterday morning, the British Prime Minister travelled to Paris at the invitation of the French President to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. Sir Keir Starmer was the first UK leader to attend an Armistice Day ceremony in Paris since Winston Churchill did so alongside General de Gaulle in 1944. Yet there is a degree of irony in these displays of Franco-British unity marking the war’s end.
