The Social World

Category: International

  • The rise of the mayors

    The rise of the mayors

    In Britain, the leading political parties have just held their annual conventions. After a month of national political debates, lost in all the commentary about polling and positioning is a larger and more consequential story about the changing dynamics of power. And it’s simply this: in a world where parties, prime ministers and presidents have long dominated the global stage, the spotlight is increasingly turning to a new group of leaders: mayors. And they are shifting the plot from talk to action.

    Mayors have emerged as entrepreneurial actors on national and even international issues

    In recent years, mayors have emerged as increasingly entrepreneurial actors on national and even international issues. They’re not only collecting trash and fixing roads, but they’re also pioneering new ways to tackle job creation, healthcare, housing construction, climate change and more. They are bringing a spirit of innovation to city halls, as the best US mayors in both major political parties are doing, too.

    This development is only natural, since mayors stand on the front lines of our biggest challenges. And as frustration with national leadership grows around the globe, cities stand out as laboratories of renewal. Mayors are showing how progress happens in practice, by embracing pragmatic problem-solving, rather than ideological combat.

    In London, Mayor Sadiq Khan has capitalized on devolution to reduce air pollution, provide school lunches for children and improve social services. Mayoral combined authorities in Greater Manchester and Liverpool are developing new ways to provide better transportation for residents, more plans for affordable housing and more effective police and fire services. And earlier this year, the British government announced six new regions that will develop mayoral combined authorities, a move that will put 80 percent of the country under devolution.

    Across the EU, local leaders are also raising their ambitions and asserting their power, even without new grants of authority. Helsinki, Finland, has gone without a traffic fatality for more than 365 days thanks to the mayor’s efforts to improve street design and public transport. And the city of Madrid is one step closer to reaching net zero emissions, in no small part because of the mayor’s effort to transition the city’s bus fleet to electric power.

    As mayors rise to meet the moment, it’s critical that they have the skills and capabilities needed to pursue bold ideas – and succeed. When I was first elected mayor of New York in 2001, just weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, I had spent 20 years building and running a company. But most mayors arrive in office with little experience running complex organizations. They haven’t spent much time, if any, using data to manage performance; attracting and retaining talent; breaking down silos; improving customer service; solving complex problems by developing and implementing innovative solutions – and many other activities essential to success.

    In the private sector, executive leadership and management training are the rule rather than the exception. But in the public sector, it essentially didn’t exist. And so in 2017 Bloomberg Philanthropies formed a partnership with Harvard University to bridge the gap. Since then, the program has trained mayors in eight of America’s ten biggest cities and more than 380 mayors worldwide, including in Liverpool and Greater Manchester.

    Now, as Europe increasingly turns to its mayors, we are teaming up with the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Hertie School in Berlin to create the first-ever leadership program designed specifically for mayors and top city officials in the UK and across Europe. The inaugural class will include 30 mayors from 17 countries representing a diverse array of cities, from industrial centers and tourism magnets to university hubs and national capitals. The initiative will build their capacity to lead – aligning talent, tools and shared purpose to help them write Europe’s next chapter.

    Over the course of the one-year program, which is backed through a $50 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, mayors and their staffs will take part in training inside and outside the classroom, including one-on-one mentoring and coaching sessions. The focus of the sessions will be on strengthening their capacity to empower their teams, build partnerships with communities and businesses, bring new ideas and creativity to challenging problems, share lessons across city and national boundaries and accelerate progress they are already making.

    As the world increasingly turns to mayors to deliver results, the stakes are much too high to expect them to go it alone. With the very best in leadership and management training, mayors can redefine what is possible for cities – and their countries – to accomplish. As they do, voters will see the virtue of electing problem-solvers over flamethrowers, with the benefits spreading far and wide. In the theater of politics, as in life, Shakespeare’s words hold true: “Action is eloquence.”

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.

  • Good riddance (or not) to George Abaraonye

    Good riddance (or not) to George Abaraonye

    It was rather sly of George Abaraonye to move the motion of no confidence in himself as president-elect of the Oxford Union. He said it was an act of “true accountability”, but it seemed to me more a sense of false virtue.

    The ballot question was: “Should George Abaraonye, President-Elect, be removed as an Officer of the Society?” The franchise wasn’t limited to current students or those in the environs of Oxford who could conveniently vote in person, but was extended extraordinarily to potentially thousands of life members all over the world who could vote by proxy. This was at the request of the standing committee – at quite short notice – and has been the cause of considerable confusion and chronic delay.

    The problem was that life members do not all have membership cards (these do get lost over the decades) and so were permitted either to vote in person with photo ID, or email proof of ID with matriculation details to the single extraordinary returning officer (to whom I shall return). Still, many alumni who live in or around Oxford and who went along to the Goodman Library to vote in person were turned away because their past memberships couldn’t be corroborated manually from central ledgers. Those who were turned away included Baroness Deech (a former head of house), Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, and former presidents of the Union Viscount Hailsham and Melanie Johnson (despite photographic evidence adorning the walls). Scores of others were similarly prevented from voting on account of lost records. Shambolic.

    Abaraonye’s supporters have been challenging every proxy vote cast by email to ascertain whether the senders were ever members. It is of course perfectly reasonable to seek to prevent electoral fraud, but cross-checking a thousand votes can take some time given that dusty ledgers from the 1960s and 1970s seem to have disappeared altogether. The standing committee knew this and should have foreseen the chaos it might cause. The validity of the vote has been further undermined by unconfirmed reports that the extraordinary returning officer gave other students – some distinctly partisan in the proceedings – access to his email inbox. There was no way of knowing if proxy votes were tampered with, deleted or even received.

    Unsurprisingly, amid allegations and counter-allegations of procedural irregularity, it is hard to see how the returning officer and extraordinary returning officer were able to confirm a safe and fair result at all. Proceedings were also informally suspended at noon yesterday because of “an impossible working atmosphere”; the extraordinary returning officer having been “subjected to obstruction, intimidation and unwarranted hostility by a number of Representatives”. 

    And then came the first dramatic twist worthy of Conclave. In a meeting of the standing committee, which Abaraonye was permitted to attend as president-elect, he and his supporters moved a revenge motion of no confidence in the current president, Moosa Harraj, for allowing alumni to vote on Saturday. And they came prepared (very) with the requisite 150 signatures, so that vote will take place on Thursday. All this was decided before even starting to count Saturday’s no confidence vote.

    Another twist came this morning, after white smoke had seemingly finally emerged. Abaraonye had been voted out (or “resigned”, as it is deemed) according to Donovan Lock, the extraordinary returning officer, with the motion which needed a two-thirds majority being accepted, 1,228 to 501. But Abaraonye has now said he will contest the decision. In a statement this morning, his camp said that his opponents had access to Lock’s email account to which the proxy votes were sent: “We do not know if or how many proxy votes have been tampered with… George Abaraonye remains the President-Elect per the Oxford Union rules. According to Rule 47(h)(v), the result of a confidence ballot cannot accepted until disciplinary appeals have been resolved”.

    This whole sorry saga is such an Oxford farrago. Perhaps we could have read the runes when email signatories to the motion of no confidence discovered they had to copy in Abaraonye as the mover of the motion, conveniently providing him with a database of a couple of hundred names and contact details of those who wanted to oust him. His supporters have also been able to see the names of those who voted by proxy, including influential public figures, thus breaching the secret ballot. 

    Since news circulated of his moment of ecstasy at the shooting of Charlie Kirk last month, Abaraonye has been trying to redeem himself with exculpatory excuses. His celebratory comments on Instagram and WhatsApp were “poor judgment”, he “reacted impulsively”, his words have been widely “misrepresented”. He also said that his remarks (“Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f***ing go”; “Charlie Kirk got shot loool”) “did not reflect my values” – which is strange because the impulsive reaction is usually a rather accurate reflection of a person’s values. He even claims to have become a victim of “cancel culture”, which is also odd given that he was the mover of the motion and so canceled himself. 

    Toby Young was of the view that Abaraonye “should not be penalized by the Oxford Union or the university for saying something offensive but perfectly lawful. That’s free speech”. I agree that he shouldn’t be disciplined by his college or the university, but the Oxford Union has every right to expect elected officers to uphold its institutional ethos. It is indeed a bastion of free speech, and Abaraonye is perfectly free to express his views. But he does not then have the right to hold the office of president if he believes, as it appears to me, that political assassination and violent revolution are justified when the ballot box and free speech are deemed to have failed.

    It may be “perfectly lawful” to express such a view, but it would rightly disqualify him from holding a number of positions in public life, including, I believe, one that seeks to advance education through free speech and expression. He has damaged the interests of the Oxford Union and brought it into disrepute. Free speech can have perfectly justifiable consequences, and 1,227 members evidently agree with me. 

    Some of Abaraonye’s allies have been framing the attempt to remove him as “racist”. According to the Oxford branch of Stand Up To Racism: “If this racist campaign to depose George is successful it will further embolden fascists and the far right.” I’d say that’s a good example of what I call “censory smearing”: tarnishing Abaraonye’s critics with unpleasant character smears to shut them down. But I’m not going to be shamed into doubting motives or thinking that the desire for Abaraonye to be removed as president-elect was based on anything but a concern for the reputation and standing of the society. As for “racism”, it is worth noting in passing that another screenshot from one of Abaraonye’s WhatsApp exchanges shows him boasting: “I don’t frequent white establishments.” But perhaps those words don’t reflect his values either.

    The problem was not only his celebratory outburst at Kirk’s death, but the fact that other messages have emerged suggesting he holds the Oxford Union itself in contempt. When one friend wrote to him before his election in June “if u hate it then you should run for presidency!!!!”, Abaraonye responded: “real lol that’s what I did.”

    It seems it was all one big gas to him. His presidency wasn’t to be one that dignified a hallowed chamber, but subversive of and corrosive to its traditions. He clearly despises the establishment (too white, perhaps?), and inclines to a necessary destruction. Why else would you seek to lead an institution you apparently hate?  

    The fact that high-profile speakers have withdrawn over his comments, and major donors are withholding funds, ought to have made him reflect a little deeper on the damage he was doing. The conduct of his supporters since the close of poll has also been deeply damaging. But self-reflection seems to be beyond him, as is the moral-intellectual process of weighing whether his endorsement of political violence could coexist with his aspiration to lead a debating society that eschews it. If he cared at all, he’d have resigned weeks ago. 

    The Oxford Union is in a state. It is facing bankruptcy, with a projected loss of £400,000 this coming year, and looking at a maintenance bill for their Grade 2 listed building of between £4-5 million. Membership has collapsed, lawsuits abound, staff are leaving and trustees are resigning. The Augean stables need clearing out, and the society is in desperate need of fundamental reform if its reputation is to be restored. But children like George Abaraonye are not the ones to lead that. He doesn’t even seem to appreciate that when you are an elected officer of a world-renowned debating society that prizes freedom of speech, your own free speech is necessarily constrained by institutional obligations and reputational demands. If you don’t like that, at least try to learn why you shouldn’t stand for a public-facing office.

  • Is Kemi Badenoch plotting an American move?

    Brits who make a pivot to America tend to fall into two categories. There are those who seek a bigger stage – like Alfred Hitchcock or Christopher Hitchens. Then there are those who were in some sense “run out of town” back in Britain and now seek solace and refuge in the New World. Under this heading we can put the Pilgrim Fathers, Thomas Paine, Mark Thatcher (wayward son of Margaret Thatcher), and now, Kemi Badenoch – beleaguered leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.

    Badenoch has penned an odd op-ed for the New York Post celebrating the policies of the second Trump administration. The article begins with a strangely wry hat tip to the 47th President on the “Not bad, kid” pattern:

    “But often these days I look across the pond at the United States and think you guys might be on to something.”

    Which is rather a lot like me informing Michael Phelps that he may be “on to something” with his butterfly stroke. The rest of the article carries on in a similar vein, praising action on the border, energy and defense. 

    Yet why did she write it? It is safe to say that the voters Mrs. Badenoch so desperately needs (her Tories have now fallen to third place in the polls, displaced as the party of the right by Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK) are unlikely to be regular readers of the Post. 

    Cockburn can think of some slightly lower motives. Could the article be an attempt to set the seemingly doomed party leader up for a career on the American lecture circuit? Bolshy conservative British firebrands are always in demand stateside, as the post-premiership of Liz Truss shows. In that case, we would refer Mrs. Badenoch to the words of the English poet W.H. Auden, himself a plyer of this trade:

    “Another morning comes: I see,
    Dwindling below me on the plane,
    The roofs of one more audience
    I shall not see again.

    God bless the lot of them, although
    I don’t remember which was which:
    God bless the USA, so large,
    So friendly, and so rich.”

  • Bolivia votes for ‘capitalism for all’

    Bolivia votes for ‘capitalism for all’

    Bolivia has taken a decisive turn to the right after the Christian Democratic Senator Rodrigo Paz won the second round of the presidential election after years of left-wing rule left the country’s economy in chaos.

    Paz, 58, narrowly beat another right winger, Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga by 54.6 percent to 45.4 percent to take the presidency in the second round run off. He will be inaugurated on November 8.

    The landlocked country had been ruled by the leftist MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) party since 2006, which enjoyed enormous support from Bolivia’s indigenous Indian majority. The charismatic Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, was elected to enforce social equality, but presided over a disastrous economic decline which has left inflation running at 40 percent, and fuel so short that drivers sometimes have to queue for two days to fill their tanks.

    Paz promises to maintain Morales’ social welfare, but to bring back economic stability.

    His moderately conservative campaign won over indigenous voters disillusioned by MAS. The socialist candidate won only a derisory 3 percent in the first round in August and was eliminated from the contest. The runner up to Paz, “Toto” Quiroga, who briefly served as president in 2001, had promised a more radical right-wing program to privatize state companies on the lines of Javier Milei’s libertarian policy in neighboring Argentina, but this went too far for poorer Bolivians to swallow.

    First elected in 2005, Morales was a trade union leader and coca farmer who promised to bring power to his fellow indigenous citizens. Twice re-elected with massive 60 percent support, his rule abruptly ended in 2019, when he resigned and went into exile amidst deepening economic crises and corruption allegations. Power passed to opposition leader Jeanine Anez, but a year later Morales’s finance minister, the British educated Luis Arce, was elected president, Morales returned home and MAS rule resumed.

    But Morales fell out with his former favorite, accusing Arce of conspiring to prevent his return to power, and as economic chaos deepened, a faction of the army attempted a coup in June last year. MAS rule became so unpopular that Arce did not run for re-election this year, knowing that he would lose. Meanwhile, Morales retreated to a jungle hideout, protected by a bodyguard of fellow coca growers. The 65-year-old deposed leader denies charges of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl with whom he has allegedly had a child.

    Bolivia’s chief export, natural gas, has suffered a drastic decline in productivity and the country’s dollar reserves have dwindled. President Paz will have the tricky task of keeping his campaign promise to bring “capitalism to all” with tax cuts, while retaining his popularity with the impoverished masses. 

    His election and the end of MAS rule is good news for the Trump administration, which is waging an undeclared war against another left-wing regime in Venezuela, especially if Latin America’s swing to the right continues in upcoming elections in Colombia, Chile and Peru.

  • Will Japan’s first female prime minister succeed?

    A former heavy metal drummer and biker is not someone the world would expect to become a prime minister of Japan. Particularly if that someone is a woman. But that is what is likely to happy tomorrow. Last month 64-year-old Sanae Takaichi became the first female head of the Liberal Democrat Party – the party that has ruled Japan for all but 4 of the last 70 years. She is now Japan’s first female prime minister.

    On Monday Takaichi signed off on a coalition pact with the right leaning libertarian Japan Innovation Party (Ishin). They have replaced the Komeito, the socially conservative party that is affiliated with Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist organization founded in 1930 which is dedicated to the teachings of the 13th century priest Nichiren. Komeito were the junior partners to the LDP for 26 years.

    Nevertheless, the LDP, which suffered their second worst ever electoral result after prime minister Shigeru Ishiba called a snap election just one month after taking office in September 2024, will remain two votes short of a majority. That will not prevent Takaichi from forming a minority government. Given that President Donald Trump arrives in Tokyo on October 27, there is a pressing need for a Japanese prime minister to be in place to help negotiate trade and tariff talks. No doubt she will seek some relief from the 15 percent levies introduced by Trump on Japanese exports to the US combined with his demand for $550m of investment.

    As the New York Post trumpeted last week, “Trump ready to rock with heavy metal drummer.” Ever the flatterer, Trump has already described Takaichi’s leadership as “tremendous news.” He is likely to be encouraged by her worship of Margaret Thatcher who Takaichi met shortly before her death.

    Takaichi rise to power was enabled by former prime minister Taro Aso, the LDP’s current kingmaker; he is the grandson of Japan’s Shigeru Yoshida who ranks with Germany’s chancellor Conrad Adenauer as one of the great post war political figures who reintegrated the defeated powers into the world order. Aso saw in Takaichi the politician who could keep out the more left leaning of the LDP’s factional leaders.

    Japanese prime ministers do not tend to last long

    She is also the protégé of Shinzo Abe, the most consequential Japanese prime minister of the last fifty years. His economic policies, known as “Abenomics” revived the Japanese economy from its 20-year slump, known as the “Lost Decades” that followed the great financial crash that began in January 1990. Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, combated Japan’s persistent deflation by pursuing easy money policies, fiscal stimulus and structural economic and social reform to increase competitiveness. We can expect more of the same from Takaichi.

    The beginning of her campaign was somewhat flatfooted. Takaichi started electioneering in her home city of Nara, Japan’s ancient capital famous for its temples and roaming deer. She played the race card by complaining in a labored anecdote about foreign tourists harassing deer. As a right-wing Japanese friend said to me over the weekend, her views on immigration did little to play down her reputation as an ultra-nationalist. Her fundamentalist approach on immigration has even led former Japanese leader Fumio Kusada to give her the nickname, “Taliban.”

    Rising immigration of young Asian workers, much needed by Japan’s ageing population, has coincided with a perceived rise in crime rates. While the admittedly thin statistics are played down by the left, who point out that foreigners account for just 3 percent of Japan’s population, the right has been less forgiving. JAPAN Forward, an English-language online newspaper financed by the right-wing Sankei Shimbun newspaper recently posted, “Foreigners are just 3 percent of Japan’s population, yet arrests for serious crimes by foreigners have risen. Why does the media emphasize only benefits?”

    Racism and the fixed belief in Japanese racial superiority has long been a feature of Japanese society. The seven years I lived in Japan can attest to that. Memorably one Japanese restaurant owner very politely informed me, “We don’t serve white people.”

    However, a younger, better travelled generation of Japanese, are increasingly liberal. Noticeably, Takaichi has sought to move her image to more central ground. “I realized last year for the first time that people might have thought of me as a very extreme, right-wing conservative,” she recently opined, “I think I’m an extremely ordinary person.”

    On the global stage she will clearly be perceived as a right winger. She is supportive of Taiwan and is an outspoken critic of China. No Japanese prime minister has visited China since 2013 and she unlikely to break that mould. She is also a member of the 70,000 strong Nippon Kaigi, an organization supported by many LDP right wingers, which denies the atrocities committed in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

    Nevertheless, Takaichi has sought to tone down the rhetoric. She has simply said that the Japanese army’s war crimes are very exaggerated – they are not. But this year she did refrain from visiting the Yasakuni Shrine to honor Japan’s war dead, including its war criminals.

    Japanese prime ministers do not tend to last long. Since World War II a third of Japanese prime minister have lasted for less than a year. Leading a weak minority government and facing formidable economic problems, particularly in the face of Trump’s tariff policies, Takaichi is unlikely to last a four-year term.

    Her policies of lower taxes combined with more government spending bear an uncanny resemblance to those of Liz Truss – Britain’s shortest-lived prime minister. The Japan Times has already pointed out the similarities. Therefore, she could probably have done without the enthusiastic support of Truss, who, in a post on X, claimed that Takaichi’s victory was a “pushback against economic stagnation, excessive migration and the diminution of national sovereignty.”

    But at least she has broken the glass ceiling. Japanese women, formidable in a domestic context where they describe their hen-pecked husbands as Gokiburi (cockroaches), may now become a greater force in Japanese politics. Much will depend on how Takaichi now performs.

  • Schrödinger’s covert action

    Schrödinger’s covert action

    While much of the pushback from the right wing to Donald Trump’s international hawkishness has come from voices focused on the Middle East, and feared potential for wider wars prompted by support for Israel, the actual test of a break within the Republican coalition on foreign policy disputes could come over the president’s stepped up focus on Venezuela.

    The most recent development, with Trump issuing a rare public acknowledgement that he has authorized covert CIA actions on land. “I authorized for two reasons, really,” he explained this week. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. And the other thing are drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

    Think of it as Schrödinger’s covert action – does it really stay covert once you announce it? This would also seem to go against Trump’s stand against starting new wars, particularly those with a mind on regime change, which some of the president’s more hawkish supporters would clearly like to be the ultimate aim. It also includes newly ordained Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who took to the airwaves in an interview with Christiane Amanpour this week practically begging Trump to greater action against Nicolas Maduro’s regime.

    The sheer amount of resources the United States has moved into the region is impressive, well beyond the drones being used to take out a series of Venezuelan drug shipments at sea. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

    “The U.S. has moved advanced weaponry into the Caribbean and in the skies north of Venezuela, including eight Navy warships, an attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, P-8 Poseidon spy planes and MQ-9 Reaper drones. The Pentagon has deployed elite special operations forces, including the Army’s secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the ‘Night Stalkers,’ a U.S. official said. Large troop-carrying and attack helicopters are part of the mix, with some aircraft conducting training flights fewer than 90 miles from Venezuela, the official said.”

    This is definitely a significant force, but what it isn’t is a prelude to a land invasion of the sort likely necessary to take on Maduro’s armed forces. Instead, for now at least, Trump seems happy with the kind of actions that disturbs Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, but doesn’t commit larger troop numbers or personnel to a regime change project.

    A fundamental aspect of the Trump tenure in his second term is that everyone is mindful about the future and what it will bring – namely, if his personally defined version of America First is the enduring approach of the GOP, or if there is a shift toward either further pullback around the world or back toward a default pre-Trump Republican security policy.

    There are plenty of observers on both sides who emphatically believe they will be the beneficiaries once that post-Trump sort happens. Their reactions, and the reactions of voters on the American right, to whatever does happen in Venezuela in this ramped up non-covert covert action could determine where the wind is blowing headed into 2028. Or it could become an object lesson in how even the president most resistant to starting new farflung foreign wars might end up in one much closer to home.

  • Why the French are dreaming of a Donald Trump à la française


    A year ago Donald J Trump was still roundly disliked by the French commentariat. Even the conservative Le Figaro newspaper held its Gallic nose in disdain, running a haughty article headlined “Trump, vulgarity runs rampant.”

    The left still loathe the president of the United States but for the right in France he has become a role model.

    The same Le Figaro now writes approvingly of Trump and admits it got him wrong. “We expected an isolationist Trump, focused solely on American interests,” it declared on Friday. “But in nine months, the president has established himself as a peacemaker in multiple international crises.”

    The French perhaps more than any European nation have never got The Donald. The political class in France are bland, humorless and conventional, as is most of the mainstream media.

    The British populist politician Nigel Farage once said of the American president: “There’s a lot of humor with Trump. It’s quick-witted repartee, which he is a master of. He’s very funny. He’s enormous fun to be with.”

    It’s hard to think of any French politician who could be described as “enormous fun,” certainly not Emmanuel Macron. The only thing enormous about the president of the Republic is his ego. And his list of failures.

    Macron has run France into the ground and reduced the country – and himself – to a laughing stock. The French did not appreciate the sight of Trump mocking Macron in Egypt at the start of this week. But their anger wasn’t directed at the American president, as he wondered with a smirk why Macron was being so “low-key.” For the French, the ridicule of their president is richly deserved.

    The contempt for Macron is arguably most profound within France’s business community. They believed his promise in 2017 to relaunch the country’s economy after five years of shambolic socialism under president Francois Hollande. Macron was hailed as the “Mozart of Finance.”

    Eight years later France finances are out of control and last month two rating agencies downgraded the country’s debt.

    If French conservatives are to break this socialist stranglehold they will need to do more than simply win an election. They must launch a counter-revolution.

    A few weeks ago a book was published in France titled Bosses: the Trump Temptation. Its author, Denis Lafay, interviewed numerous business leaders in France and discovered that they dreamed of a Donald à la française. It was more than his business approach; they also approved of his “strong rejection” of the mainstream media, public spending, international institutions and wokeism. Above all, wrote Lafay, they admired Trump’s personality. “His virility, his taste for combat, his culture of deal-making, his resilience and finally his very authoritarian side, which reassures them.”

    One suspects that France’s business leaders are more desperate than ever for a Donald of their own after the events of this week in parliament. Centrist Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced on Tuesday that his coalition government was suspending the pension reform bill of 2023 until after the 2027 presidential election. The main plank of this bill raised the age of retirement from 62 to 64.

    The Socialist Party celebrated. Their 66 MPs had threatened to join a motion of no confidence in the government if the bill wasn’t suspended. Lecornu capitulated to the blackmail. Patrick Martin, the president of Medef, the largest employer federation, said it was “a sad day for France,” and lamented the fact that a minority socialist party was dictating government policy.

    The Socialist Party’s representation in parliament has dwindled from 295 MPs in 2012 to 66 today, but they have been marching through France’s institutions for decades. They control the Supreme Court, the State Council, the National Audit Office, the state-owned broadcaster and much of the judiciary.

    If French conservatives are to break this socialist stranglehold they will need to do more than simply win an election with an absolute majority. They must launch a counter-revolution, as Trump and J.D. Vance have in America, purging the institutions of the left-wing dogma that has taken root since Francois Mitterrand’s presidency of the 1980s.

    Earlier this week a conservative magazine called Frontières ran an editorial headlined “A plea for a French Trump.” It listed his achievements this year, including the deportation of illegal immigrants and the classification of Antifa as terrorists, and contrasted Trump’s administration of seasoned experts with their own “incompetent elites.”

    France, declared the editorial, “deserves a Trump and the government that goes with him to restore its greatness.”

    Making France great again won’t be easy given how low the country has fallen this century. So if there is a French Trump out there, bonne chance.

  • The UN’s ‘climate crisis’ tax

    The UN’s ‘climate crisis’ tax

    In between votes to legitimize the world’s worst regimes and condemn the world’s only Jewish state, the United Nations has found the time to introduce itself as a global governmental structure with the power to levy taxes on every inhabitant of Earth.  

    No, really. 

    The UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) is of the opinion that it can impose duties on the carbon emissions of ships to the tune of between $100 and $380 per metric ton. All of the revenue generated would be paid out to the UN’s “Net Zero Fund,” which would be used to “reward low-emission ships,” or pick winners and losers.    

    Worse yet, the fund would also be used to transfer wealth to “developing countries,” as well those the UN deems especially “vulnerable” to the consequences of climate change. Among them: China, the world’s second biggest economy and America’s chief geopolitical competitor, which is currently waging a no-holds-barred trade war against it. 

    To its eternal credit, President Donald Trump’s administration has drawn a hard line rejecting this unprecedented proposal. A joint statement released by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy made it clear that the United States would “not tolerate any action that increases costs for our citizens, energy providers, shipping companies and their customers, or tourists.” 

    “The economic impacts from this measure could be disastrous, with some estimates forecasting global shipping costs increasing as much as 10 percent or more,” submitted the three Trump deputies, who went on to threaten those who vote in favor of the proposal with a bevy of investigations, regulations, visa restrictions, commercial penalties, fees and sanctions that ought to make the ill-inclined think twice about crossing Uncle Sam on this matter.  

    The administration’s efforts to strong-arm the rest of the world are righteous. There are, of course, no shortage of economic arguments to be marshaled against this global carbon tax. According to economist Stephen Moore, American vessels representing 12 percent of global maritime shipping are set to pay out 20 percent of all of the revenue generated under the proposal. Moreover, Americans have already been robbed of years of wealth-building opportunity by post-pandemic, post-Biden profligate spending spree-induced inflation. Is yet another cost-raiser really what the doctor ordered? 

    But there are also plenty of principled, long-term reasons to pull out all the stops to kill this pernicious idea in its cradle. 

    The IMO considers this proposal to interfere with the free market and infringe upon its member states’ sovereignty in the name of social justice at a moment when people around the globe are increasingly skeptical, and indeed resentful of such heavy handed interventions. 

    Do the American people really wish to accept the UN’s assertion of the power to tax them at face value? What will follow next? And why should America continue to allow authoritarian China and the motley crew of naive Europeans and malevolent allies to continue to weaponize progressive pet causes to punish the U.S. and advantage themselves?  

    America First is a loaded term with a loaded history. But Trump and his team are doing vital work by championing American interests and spurning this power grab at the IMO. While Presidents Biden and Obama spent their White House tenures practically begging for opportunities to demonstrate that the United States would fall on the “right” side of history on issues like climate change, Trump has accurately diagnosed measures like this carbon tax as a Trojan Horse for wealth redistribution, and bad actors like the Chinese Communist Party. 

    If he was elected to do anything, it was to identify, expose, and consign such measures to the dustbin of history.

  • Justin Trudeau kisses Canada goodbye

    Justin Trudeau kisses Canada goodbye

    Justin Trudeau has finally found something he can’t bankrupt – a washed-up pop star. The former prime minister, now liberated from the burden of office, was recently spotted aboard Katy Perry’s yacht in California, sharing a kiss so theatrical it would have been cut by a good director.  

    But Trudeau was always drawn to drama. The kind with lighting, makeup and someone else footing the bill. His life has become a soap opera, though not the kind with decent writing or respectable ratings. There was the recurring racist phase, the peace-and-love phase, the power-and-profit phase and now the Malibu make-out phase. Once hailed as the fresh-faced heir to liberal idealism, Trudeau swiftly dissolved into a puddle of melodrama and moisturizer. 

    His years in power left Canada poorer, angrier and more divided than at any point in living memory. He preached virtue but practiced vanity. He championed empathy while governing with arrogance. He turned Canada – long admired for moderation – into a running gag on the world stage. 

    Spare a thought for his ex-wife, Sophie Grégoire, and their three teenage children, who must now watch their father prance around the Pacific like a man auditioning for a midlife-crisis cologne ad called “Hubris.” These are the years when a father’s guidance matters most, yet Trudeau seems intent on performing adolescence rather than parenting it. The family he once paraded for photo-ops has been abandoned, collateral damage in a career built on self-adoration. 

    It’s a fitting metaphor for his time in office. Trudeau inherited a stable nation and left behind a shattered one. Under his leadership, Canada’s national debt doubled, small businesses suffocated under regulation and housing became an impossible dream for a generation. The middle class – once his favourite talking point – was gutted. Canadians now pay more taxes for fewer services, while the political elite grow fatter and smugger on their own sanctimony. 

    Trudeau sold himself as a feminist reformer. But under his watch, women faced soaring living costs, record food insecurity and a healthcare system closer to Congo than Canada. He vowed to unite the country. Instead, he governed like a leader allergic to accountability, dividing Canadians into obedient followers and ideological foes. Those who questioned his mantras or mandates were branded extremists. When truckers protested, he branded them fascists, then froze their bank accounts. The man who looked like he could play the next Bond ended up acting like a Bond villain, just with better hair and worse judgment. 

    And for what? To preserve his ego. The Emergencies Act he invoked wasn’t about protecting Canadians but punishing them. He turned a protest into a purge, revealing that beneath the charm and charisma lurked a control freak of the highest order. 

    Canada became a cautionary tale. A country built on freedom slid into tyranny, cheered on by citizens too polite to protest. 

    Foreign policy fared no better. He alienated India, annoyed China and amused the world with a conveyor belt of photo ops and platitudes. Diplomacy became his favorite vanity project, each summit another red carpet. When the flashes faded, so did Canada’s influence. Trudeau was never taken seriously abroad because, deep down, he never took the job seriously. 

    And now, shirtless and shameless, he’s chasing pop stardom by association. As for Perry, her own decline mirrors his – from pop princess to self-parody. Once the voice of youthful rebellion, the part-time astronaut is now a Vegas lounge act in search of validation. Together, they are a duet of decline. Two faded brands clinging to each other in the hope of renewed relevance. He’s the patron saint of performative decency. She’s the high priestess of performative empowerment. Together, they are the unholy alliance of fame and fakery. 

    Trudeau’s defenders will say his love life is his business. Perhaps. But this is a man who never met a camera he didn’t flirt with, who turned politics into performance and leadership into lifestyle. Privacy was never his language. Every grin, every tear, every contrived display of humility was a stage cue. Even now, his post-political life plays out like a poorly written sequel – Love Actually meets Keeping Up with the Kardashians. 

    Canada deserved a statesman. It got a showman. He entered office promising “sunny ways” and left behind a long winter of division, delusion and decline. 

    While the Liberal Lothario suns himself on borrowed yachts and chases pop stars past their prime, Canadians are left with the mess – higher taxes, weaker freedoms and a fractured sense of nationhood. He didn’t just betray his voters; he betrayed his family, his vows and the quiet dignity that once defined his country. The tragedy of Justin Trudeau isn’t that he lost power. It’s that he was ever given it in the first place. Katy Perry sang about fireworks, but with Trudeau, everything ends in flames.

  • Can Trump’s peace hold?

    He came, he saw, he conquered. That just about describes President Trump’s 12,000-mile round trip from Washington, D.C. to Israel and Egypt. He addressed Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, greeted the hostages and their families, hopped on Air Force One for a flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, signed the first phase of a Gaza peace deal, delivered a moving speech, met with the leaders of 27 countries to push the next phases of his 20-point peace plan forward and take a well-earned victory lap, and returned to Washington after what most people would consider a full day.

    The guns are silent, relief supplies are being poured into Gaza, IDF troops have withdrawn to agreed areas and the 20 surviving hostages have been released, along with four of the 28 bodies of the dead, the others to be returned when they are found by Hamas. That spikes the most powerful weapon Hamas had. In return, Israel released some 2,000 Palestinians, some from Hamas, some serving life sentences for murder. Perhaps more importantly, President Trump’s personal promise that Israel would retreat to agreed areas has allowed Gazans to return to their homes.

    A key ingredient in the deal was the culture of the New York real estate business. Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and a man with deep relations in the Arab world; Steve Witkoff, who says his goal is to deliver what Trump wants; and the President himself all learned in delis, board rooms and bank C-suites: “get to yes.” Kushner described himself in a New York Times interview as a “deal guy,” and says deal-making is “a different sport” from diplomacy. You take what you can get from the key players, with whom you have formed close relationships, as Trump demonstrated when he acknowledged many personally, and worry about the details later. 

    Now come those details, the time to move on to a durable peace as laid out in the President’s plan. The prospect is not bright, and the televised image of 27 nations gathered to applaud Trump deceiving. Hamas did not attend. The attendance of Israel’s Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, was vetoed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, who threatened to absent himself if Netanyahu were present. Crucially, Iran announced support for “ending the genocidal war” in Gaza but will continue to back Hamas “if Israel continues its expansionist and racist plans.” The mullahs promise to re-arm their proxies throughout the region so they are equipped to continue their battle to destroy Israel. Never mind that Trump has warned that he has ordered 28 “beautiful” new B-2 bombers and that “we will be back” if Iran interferes with progress towards peace in Gaza.

    The hope that a ceasefire will eventually reduce the bitter enmity between Gazans and Israel seems similarly unrealistic

    Then there is the problem of the positions taken by Hamas and Netanyahu. Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, announced, “The proposed weapons turnover is out of the question and not negotiable.”

    Netanyahu has promised that if Hamas do not disarm there will be no further compromises. Rumors that Israel might offer amnesty to Hamas fighters if they do surrender their weapons – “decommission their weapons” in the language of Trump’s plan – seem to reflect unbridled optimism. The head of Mossad has made it clear: “Let every Arab mother know that if her son took part in the massacre he signed his own death warrant.” Israel obviously intends to treat these Hamas fighters as it did the terrorists who assassinated Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and hunt down and assassinate them no matter where they are and how long it takes.

    The hope that a ceasefire will eventually reduce the bitter enmity between Gazans and Israel seems similarly unrealistic. The thousands of Gazans trekking across Gaza to their former homes will find only debris, adding to their anger about the death of family members and friends. The Israeli euphoria will give way to anger as the tales of the horrors inflicted on the surviving hostages circulate, and some of the bodies of hostages remain unfound. Meanwhile, Hamas remains in charge of governing Gaza. The Israeli press estimates that 16,000-18,000 Hamas fighters have survived, and reports that they are now setting about killing internal opponents. The peace plan calls for an international peace-keeping force to replace Hamas, but as General Keane points out “most peace enforcement does not do well.”

    Nor is it realistic to believe that the gleaming towers envisioned on the Gaza coast by Trump will ever emerge from the sands and debris of the Strip. The birth in Gaza of “some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East” requires concrete and steel. And Israel is not likely to abandon its barrier to the importation of materials that permitted Hamas to build its tunnels and manufacture arms.

    Then there is the small matter of the $50 billion the UN estimates would be required to rebuild Gaza, which Trump sees as well within the ability of rich Arab nations to provide. Those nations have not yet unzipped their wallets. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates cannot agree on the governing structure that must be in place before the billions in cash flows. The Saudis would rely on the Palestinian Authority, the Emirates won’t until the PA is reformed, and Netanyahu says he will never agree to turning over the governance of Gaza to the PA. Whether the Kushner-Witkoff “get to yes” team can unleash the needed flow of funds cannot be counted a certainty.

    Even if the funds become available, the reconstruction of Gaza will tax the skills of the world’s builders and the patience of the Gazans. The UN estimates that the 50 million tons of debris created by the war will take 20 years to remove. Trump, reverting to his New York builder’s argot, told Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – “I call him General’ – that Gaza needs ‘a lot of cleanup’, and says ‘rebuilding will be the easiest part.’” Easiest compared with negotiating a ceasefire, perhaps, but extremely difficult. The Strip is strewn with buried, live mines and ammunition; its infrastructure has been destroyed; thousands of its most talented professionals and entrepreneurs are reported by Palestinian sources to have fled, “draining the territory of the very minds needed for reconstruction and development …. [That] undermines its ability to build a resilient society capable of forging a path toward stability and prosperity,” writes Omar Shaban of the Brookings Institution.

    And yet, and yet. The value of the existing “yes” should not be ignored. Any party that breaks the current ceasefire or walks away from future negotiations will face the combined displeasure of the powerful group of world leaders who attended the signing ceremony in Sharm el-Sheikh including, crucially, the Presidents of America, Egypt, Turkey; the Emir of Qatar; the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia; the King of Jordan; the rulers of the Emirates, and the president of Indonesia, an important Muslim country that does not recognize Israel.

    The leaders of the wealthy Arab nations looked at the seas and created spectacular, prosperous cities. They just might find it in their interests to look at the debris of Gaza and imagine a skyline to match theirs and Tel Aviv’s. For now, we have a ceasefire. The one negotiated in Korea has held for over 70 years. As Jews chant during Passover services, at the mention of each blessing from God, “Dayenu”: that would be enough.