Politics

Is there anyone in the Met Police, I wonder, low-minded enough to think of things in PR terms? “I’ve got a good wheeze, guv,” I imagine some grizzled lifer piping up. “Let’s get tooled up, kick in the door of a Quaker meeting house and chuck a bunch of unarmed young women in the back of the paddy-wagon.” Could such a move, his superior might have wondered fleetingly, look in any way heavy-handed if reported on the front page of a newspaper? If they did, the thought evidently soon evaporated. It was an advertised meeting, not a terrorist cell So here we are. No fewer than twenty – twenty! –

Marine Le Pen has been knocked out of the presidential race and disqualified from standing for public office after she was convicted of misappropriating public funds. She has been given a suspended prison sentence, will have to wear an ankle bracelet for two years, is barred from standing for office for five years, and has been fined €100,000. Her path to the Élysée has, for now, been blocked by the courts rather than the electorate. Some will see this as a triumph of justice over populism, the rule of law asserting itself against an increasingly threatening far-right. But look more closely at the legal reasoning behind the decision, and the

Just hours after the US announced last week that it had reached an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to stop the conflict in the Black Sea, Moscow presented its conditions for this partial truce. Moscow said it would comply with the truce only when these stipulations are met. This list of demands Russia presented to the US is a classic example of the delay tactics the Kremlin likes to use. But it also provides a helpful glimpse at Russian decision-making and Putin’s world view. The agreement, as hashed out between the US and Russia, is pretty hollow. America insisted Russia agreed to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea, eliminate