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The increasing desperation of Emmanuel Macron

Jul 11, 2024 | thespectator.com | Jonathan Miller |Lee Cohen |Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young

President Emmanuel Macron finally broke his silence and rediscovered the magical breath of his “baraka” as he took to the airwaves last night. He gave an inspiring speech offering a new political settlement to reunite the French, calling on his nation to be steadfast and confident in its greatness. Correction: Macron did nothing of the kind. Instead, far away at the NATO summit in Washington, he sent a desperate letter to local newspapers promising that something will turn up. Eventually.
Biden’s leadership is a far bigger problem than his health

Jul 11, 2024 | thespectator.com | Lee Cohen |Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young |Toby Young

Since Joe Biden’s now infamous debate performance, the Democratic Party has been having palpitations about his candidacy. But all brouhaha about Biden’s decline has distracted the public from critically examining his administration’s more significant failures. Democrats now talk as if the only problem with Biden is his ability to convince the public that he’s fit to serve.
Dems begin to dogpile on Biden’s reelection campaign

Jul 10, 2024 | thespectator.com | Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young |Toby Young |Ben Domenech

Support for President Joe Biden continuing his reelection campaign is polarizing his own party. The Hill reported yesterday that discontent was growing among Democrats, and the publication offered live updates all day from the Democratic National Committee headquarters, where Dem leadership gathered to discuss Biden’s future as their nominee. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer have both expressed their continued support for Biden.
The slow pace of change in Catholic Ireland

Jul 2, 2024 | thespectator.com | Susie Mesure |Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young |Toby Young

Contemporary Irish writers have a knack of making their recent past feel very foreign. Clare Keegan’s Small Things Like These is set in 1985, but the horrors she reveals about one of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries seem more like ancient history. Alan Murrin pulls off something similar in The Coast Road, where in late 1994 divorce is still illegal in Ireland, unlike the rest of Europe.
What does the Olympic torch have to do with Hitler?

Jun 17, 2024 | thespectator.com | Peter Jones |Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young |Toby Young

The original Olympic Games established a basic canon of seven games, unchanged over some 900 years: foot, horse and chariot races, boxing, wrestling, pankration and pentathlon. This year’s Olympics feature forty-two games, adding for the first time “competitive breakdancing, an urban sport that originated in the hip-hop culture of 1970s block parties in the US.”It has been ever thus since the Games were first revived in Wenlock in 1850, when soccer, cricket and quoits appeared.
Explaining China’s IP problem

Jun 17, 2024 | thespectator.com | Dennis Unkovic |Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young |Toby Young

Since man’s early origins, the desire to possess gold has been a universal obsession. Gold was once viewed as the ultimate symbol of power and wealth. Governments amassed vast quantities of gold to finance their economies and political ambitions. Until the mid-twentieth century, leading national currencies were directly tied to how much physical gold was housed in national treasuries.
The bitter fights around the globe

Jun 17, 2024 | thespectator.com | Bernard-Henri Lévy |Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young |Toby Young

FranceNew Caledonia is an archipelago in the South Pacific not far from Australia. James Cook discovered it in 1774, but, after concluding that too many languages were spoken there, he declined to annex it to the British Empire. France, not as cautious, made it a distant colony under Napoleon III. Today, riots are convulsing the territory.
My surprise call with Donald Trump

Jun 16, 2024 | thespectator.com | Piers Morgan |Jenny McCartney |trainBy Toby Young |Toby Young

Newick, EnglandWhen I interviewed Rishi Sunak in February, I told him I thought his Rwanda plan for “stopping the boats” was an expensive, unworkable dud and offered him a £1,000 bet to be paid to a refugee charity that he wouldn’t get any asylum-seeker planes taking off before the next general election. To my surprise, the British prime minister clutched my outstretched hand and accepted the wager, sparking considerable revulsion.