Climate clown show
The Taliban go green
It sounds better to say ‘Afghanistan attended COP29’ instead of laying the truth out in bold print: the Taliban are…
Cashed up! What do we make of Chalmers’ thought bubble?
It is a blink-and-you-missed-it moment, but the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has announced a new regulation to protect cash transactions on…
Into the arms of the radical Left
Banning Australians who are under 16 from social media has one obvious and immediate side-effect: political outrage. As the only…
Weaponising children to justify censorship
Setting aside the vast and rock-solid arguments as to why banning social media for those under 16 is a Trojan…
After Sinwar’s death: Israel is ascendant
I stood at the Bar-Lev lookout with the battle-hardened Colonel of the Israeli Defense Force.* At a respectful distance, the…
Kamala was never going to beat Trump the in-Vanceable
As a woman and the incumbent Vice President, Kamala Harris had the extremely difficult task of stepping into a second…
Australia’s energy policy is all coming badly unstuck
To cap all Labor’s woes, the Starmer and Biden governments have announced a major u-turn to nuclear as their strategy…
Defending Australian sovereignty and freedoms
I write to you with a profound concern for the future of our nation’s freedoms in light of several proposed…
A thousand days of the Ukraine war
On its 1,000th day, the debate about the war on Ukraine is focused on the ascendancy of Donald J. Trump…
Companies that neglect customer care risk extinction
Like lumbering dinosaurs oblivious to the asteroid bearing down on them, companies that trade on their brand alone to see…
The End-of-Disco election
Some may remember the 1979 ‘disco demolition’ concert in Chicago. A garish event planned for between the games of a…
Biden’s threat to world peace?
Unfortunately, it’s not hyperbole to observe that we are closer to a third world war now than ever before. This…
The Conference of Parties: how many more?
The latest COP talkfest, with 66,778 participants, is producing much hot air and hand-wringing as it looks to upgrade the…
France could be 100 per cent nuclear. Why not Australia?
‘80 per cent of electricity production is done by nuclear (in France). Actually, we could have 100 per cent, but…
Bluesky: the blue wave crashes on itself
I feel like my recent foray into the social media app Bluesky Social was a bit of a precursor to…
Australia’s swansong for free speech
The end of the year could be the swansong for free speech in Australia. The Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, passed…
Net zero bandwagon’s wheels are wobbling
Are the wheels of the net zero bandwagon beginning to wobble? You might think that I am only posing this…
Trump’s lesson for the centre right
One of the key takeaways of Donald Trump’s return to the White House is the eclectic and unprecedented coalition he…
Trigger warning: common sense outbreak at UN!
Has Hell frozen over? Uncommonly for the UN (think Antonio Guterres with the global warming hyperbole), one of its recent…
Defeat of the elites
So a big lesson from the US election is that, like Trump, conservatives can ignore the advisor class, and win. …
Net zero defence
From Rome’s greatest enemy Hannibal to the modern-day Pashtun tribal leaders in Afghanistan, history recognises it is better to be…
MAD Bill is dead
When it comes to global competition, Australia likes to punch above its weight. The world war on free speech is…
In his father’s footsteps
My esteemed colleague James Allan once wrote in The Spectator Australia that he could have voted for the Kennedy Democrats.…
Hey, Mr Trump, have we got a deal for you
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, King Louis XIV’ s minister of finance, once pithily observed that, ‘The art of taxation consists of plucking…
Could Ukraine go nuclear?
Should Ukraine have nuclear weapons? This is a question that was raised, a little insincerely, by President Zelensky recently as he…
DC officials brace for Trump’s reign
You better watch out, you better not cry… President-elect Donald Trump is coming to town. And according to a recent…
Joe Biden has put Ukraine in an impossible position
This week, Joe Biden lifted one of the many restraints placed on Ukraine in its war with Russia. The outgoing…
The farmers’ revolt makes me proud to be British
My first thought upon seeing today’s revolt of the farmers was just how gloriously normal it looked. For more than…
Why is this New Zealand airport clamping down on hugs?
‘Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,’ Hugh Grant famously offered in the heartwarming opening scene of Love,…
How New Zealand managed to sink a tenth of its naval fleet
New Zealand just lost one tenth of its naval defence fleet. The HMNZS Manawanui – the jewel in the nation’s small military…
How does New Zealand solve a problem like China?
New Zealand’s most important trading partner is also the nation’s biggest security headache, according to a new risk-assessment report produced…
Why are so many young people abandoning New Zealand?
Heading to the UK is a longstanding rite of cultural passage for many Kiwis. People like my youngest son, who…
Not even close: how Trump confounded the pundits
Such grandeur in the mind
There’s always something breathtaking about the prices great art can fetch but the sale of Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ at Christie’s…
Striving of the individual soul
The Australian Ballet seems to have had a smash hit with Oscar. Not only did the ballet, choreographed by Christopher…
Narrative robbery
So the silly season, the festive season when we celebrate the incarnation of the Good is looming, yet again, and…
The all-powerful hand of the director
When that writer of spare French prose André Gide was asked who the greatest French poet was he replied, ‘Hugo,…
What will the cities of the future look like?
At the Pacific Design Center Gallery in Los Angeles, artists have created an imaginary enormo-conurbation into which humanity’s billions have…
Blooming marvellous: the year’s best gardening books
I am an absolute sucker for a handsome reproduction of a rare and highly illustrated natural history, preferably more than…
The fresh hell of Dorothy Parker’s Hollywood
Hollywood didn’t kill Dorothy Parker, but booze probably did. In fact, if Hollywood hadn’t paid her so well to spend…
Who would be a goalkeeper?
‘We are all goalkeepers now,’ declares Robert McCrum, and who could seriously argue with that? Every day we try to…
A quest for retribution: Fire, by John Boyne, reviewed
At the end of John Boyne’s novel Earth, Evan Keogh, a conscience-stricken young footballer, hands evidence of his connivance in…
South Asia in a time of the breaking of nations
Early on Christmas morning in 1962, the Indian diplomat S.S. Banerjee heard a mysterious knock on his door in Dacca,…
The ambassador’s daughter bent on betrayal
In June 1933, the 24-year-old Martha Dodd, the daughter of the newly appointed American ambassador to Berlin, arrived in the…
Seeds of hope in the siege of Leningrad
The idea was revolutionary – yet there was something ancient at its heart. The scientist Nikolai Vavilov, arriving in Petrograd…