The Monocle Minute

For a certain sort of political leader, there is no easier win than taking an axe to foreign aid. For a start, foreign aid goes to foreigners, to whom supporters of this certain sort of political leader are generally indifferent. While those voters seethe that colossal quantities of their money are shipped overseas, this certain sort of political leader knows that the amounts are, in the grand scheme of things, tiny. It is unsurprising that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been an early target of Donald Trump, via his hatchet man, Elon Musk. USAID’s name contains the word “international”, which is nearly as toxic a word in some quarters as “foreign”. It accounts for a rounding error of about $50bn (€48bn), or only a little more than Musk spent on a social-media platform.

The same calculation has been made this week, if somewhat less cynically, by the UK’s government. Prime minister Keir Starmer has decided – and rightly so – that defence spending needs to be abruptly hiked. The money has to come from somewhere but it has been decided that the foreign-aid budget will acquiesce. Starmer is doubtless aware of the considerable overlap between voters who are keen on a strong military and voters who are unkeen on assisting the less fortunate elsewhere.

All of which is to mistake foreign aid for charity. It is not. It is an investment – and one which pays for itself, time and again. In episode 573 of Monocle Radio’s The Foreign Desk, we spoke to Andrew Mitchell, former minister of state in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office from 2022 to 2024. The UK’s foreign aid, he told us, “makes Britain safer and more prosperous because it makes the poorest and most difficult parts of the world safer and more prosperous”. Even the most rugged isolationist should be able to absorb this point. It might also be worth considering who is in favour of the US withdrawing from this field; among those offering their congratulations is Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev. It just goes to show that if the West doesn’t get involved, then someone else will.

Andrew Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle and presenter of ‘The Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Italian fashion house Fendi celebrated its 100th birthday this week with a fashion show at its newly renovated Milan headquarters (writes Natalie Theodosi). For the first time, both men’s and womenswear ranges were designed by the firm’s matriarch, Silvia Venturini Fendi, who has risen to the challenge with panache.

Rather than resorting to copying and pasting archival looks or being overly self-referential, Fendi paid homage to her family’s illustrious history with more subtle touches: the supersized doors at the end of the runway replicated the doorway to the brand’s original atelier in Rome; while her twin grandsons opened the show just as she did in 1966 for the late Karl Lagerfeld’s debut for the house.

Her designs – shearling shawls, intricate leather outerwear and slim suits – telegraphed a message of refinement and elegance that many have been missing. Naturally, she sprinkled wit throughout in the form of embellished accessories. Celebrations will be citywide, with the brand taking over six newsstands and bookshops in Milan to sell its Fendi Baguette handbag-inspired Hand in Hand publication and Peekaboo-K book. More ambitious projects will soon follow, including the opening of a new atelier and boutique in Milan – proof that keeping things in the family is good for business.

This is not the first time that Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has called on the militant group to lay down its arms (writes Hannah Lucinda Smith). But his statement calling on the PKK to dissolve, released yesterday, comes at a time when the power balance in the Middle East is shifting.

Öcalan has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999 but during the intervening years the group he founded has extended its reach across Iraq and Syria, where it won the backing of Western forces and established a quasi-state. The new Syrian government is working to integrate the Kurds but will not countenance any kind of autonomy, or the continuation of the militia on its soil. Turkey, too, has spotted its chance to eliminate the group along its border and the US is no longer willing to step in to defend it. These realities leave few other options for Öcalan; the question now is whether the group that has been operating and expanding since his capture will heed his words.

Art Basel will host its inaugural awards ceremony this May (writes Claudia Jacob). The commercial art fair has enlisted a jury of nine directors from institutions such as Sharjah Art Foundation and Hong Kong’s M+ museum, who will announce a total of 36 medallists on 19 June. However, artists won’t be the only winners: curators, museums and lesser-heralded, behind-the-scenes professionals from foundry workers to art handlers are also in line for prizes.

Artists who receive a Gold Medal in the “emerging” category will be entered into a tailored mentoring programme and given the opportunity to showcase their work at a leading global institution. “The awards are a love letter to our global artistic community,” Art Basel’s director of fairs and exhibition platforms, Vincenzo de Bellis, tells The Monocle Minute. “They will celebrate the people and organisations whose practices or contributions are shaping the future of the contemporary art landscape.”

France’s flagship left-of-centre publication, L’Express, was in a deep financial crisis when Alain Weill took the helm as CEO in 2019. Six years and several rounds of layoffs later, L’Express is back from the brink. In 2024 it turned a profit for the first time in years and now has plans for a European edition. Monocle sits down with Weill to talk through his ambitions. Read the full interview in the new March issue of Monocle, which is out now.

Is ‘L’Express’ out of the woods, financially?
It’s not over. I would say that we are halfway there. Today the company’s books are balanced but we must reinvent the future of the magazine. It’s not a mission that is specific to L’Express; it’s an obligation for all titles around the world. AI is coming and free information is both plentiful and high quality.

Tell us about your plans for a European edition.
We already have an audience of subscribers, which is made up of opinion leaders, economists, scientists, teachers, politicians and professionals. This readership throughout Europe is similar: a German business leader has the same concerns as a French business leader and the same desire for information. We want to develop across Europe with talented journalists writing European stories and using technology to publish our content in all 24 languages of the European Union. This will also be a way to attract a younger audience as young people often know Europe better than their parents. They’ve had the opportunity to travel and European values appeal to them.

How do you balance opinion and news?
When I took over RMC [French FM radio station], we made it a 100 per cent opinion radio station but it wasn’t partisan. It’s necessary to not support one side over the other. Today if you think of Cnews [French TV channel], it is an opinion channel but it supports one political camp. Regulation needs to change because soon TV will be broadcast on digital platforms where there is less oversight. A publication like L’Express is liberal and pro-European; it defends democracy but that doesn’t mean that we can’t give a voice to people who think differently. To make up our own minds, it’s important to subject them to other ideas and other points of view.

We discuss clean-mobility breakthroughs with two founders pushing the boundaries of flight, including Dr Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss explorer, psychiatrist and innovator who talks about the significance of Climate Impulse, the environmental flagship project behind his ambitious mission: to fly a hydrogen-powered plane around the world nonstop in 2028. Plus: how their innovations are reshaping the nearly $1tn airline industry as it races toward decarbonisation.