World

Cindy Yu

The wedding tourists

If you’ve walked by the red telephone boxes on Parliament Square, chances are you have seen an Asian couple in full wedding dress posing for a photographer. A strange place to go after a wedding, you might think, but the odds are that they’re not (yet) married — and won’t be for some time. This is, instead, a new Chinese phenomenon: the pre-wedding photo shoot. Pre-weddings are now as essential to young Chinese couples as honeymoons are to the British. With ever more money to splash, and their sights set on farther horizons, a sweet pose under a blue sky is no longer enough, as it was for my parents.

Martin Vander Weyer

TSB’s new owners should have seen this computer catastrophe coming

The systems breakdown at TSB is not (yet) the worst UK bank computer cock-up of all time: that prize is held by RBS, whose problems in 2012 afflicted customers for a month and attracted a £56 million fine. But the failure of TSB to migrate four million customers’ accounts from systems bequeathed by its former parent Lloyds to a streamlined IT structure, designed by new Spanish owner Banco Sabadell, is surely the fiasco that has been longest foreseen. It dates from 2009, when Brussels insisted that Lloyds dispose of part of its branch network as a condition for the bailout that followed its acquisition of HBOS during the financial crisis.

A trade war is a zero sum game

A decision on one of the more controversial of U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies was yesterday postponed as the U.S. extended the exemption from tariffs on steel and aluminium imports for a handful of allies including the European Union. The news comes in the wake of talks with Europe’s ‘big hitters’, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who left Washington with seemingly little to show for their efforts. But this reprieve might quietly be considered a victory–so long as the Europeans can figure out a way to make it permanent. As tensions with China escalate, the bloc will hope that Trump is realising he needs the economic

My encounter with the Isis ‘Beatles’

Just getting to meet the two British jihadists accused of being part of the so-called “Beatles” cell of Islamic State terrorists is an arduous task. Crossing the Tigris in a battered river barge is the only route available from Iraq into Rojava, the Kurdish controlled part of northern Syria where the two men – Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh – are being held along with hundreds, possibly thousands, of Isis foreign fighters. The Kurdish YPG militia oversee all movement in Rojava and its intelligence wing controls access to their detainees a seven hour drive away in the town of Kobane; a journey that takes visitors through dozens of towns battle

Ransom money has turned Boko Haram into Nigeria’s Cosa Nostra

Amina Ahmed counts herself as one of the lucky ones, or just about. When Boko Haram staged a mass kidnapping in her home town of Gwoza, northern Nigeria, three years ago, she and other female captives were sorted into two different categories of chattel. The less favoured ones were conscripted as cannon fodder against the Nigerian army, with suicide bombs strapped to their waists. The others became ‘servants to the Emir’s soldiers’ – which, Amina discovered, was Islamist-speak for sex slave. During her two years in captivity, she was forced to sleep with at least 10 different men. She’d shudder whenever she heard their motorbikes roaring into camp. Eight months

Are Macron and Merkel playing good cop, bad cop with Trump?

For France and Germany, the contrast could scarcely be starker. For three days Emmanuel Macron was wooed and fêted by Donald Trump, treated to marching bands and banquets. Today, Angela Merkel made a brief two-and-a-half hour stop-off at the White House, then flew away again. So does this mean President Macron is Trump’s New Best Friend and Chancellor Merkel is just his sideman (or should that be sidewoman?)? As always, in international diplomacy, this is a question to which the answer is: well, yes and no. Sure, the dramatic difference between these tête-à-têtes was no coincidence. Yes, Macron’s was a full state visit, Merkel’s was merely a working meeting, but

Tom Goodenough

Trump’s critics should give him the credit he deserves for Korea

Donald Trump’s critics waste little time in condemning him. Whether it’s an ill-judged gaffe or a spelling mistake in a tweet, pointing the finger at a president some love to hate is a popular exercise in virtue signalling. But those who shout the loudest about Trump’s misdemeanours seem to be curiously quiet when The Donald does actually get things right – not least when it comes to North Korea. After all, it’s no coincidence that today’s historic summit on the Korean peninsula has happened on Trump’s watch. While Barack Obama prevaricated over what to do about North Korea, making little headway in dealing with Pyongyang – and arguably making things worse

Kanye West won’t be the last celebrity to cross the left/right Rubicon in 2018 

In a culture war you can’t be too picky about who your friends are, even less your celebrities. The stars never come out for President Donald Trump, not during his campaign and certainly not at his inauguration. Where President Obama danced an elegant waltz while Beyoncé sang At Last and Stevie Wonder, Puff Daddy and Sting looked on, Trump’s big moment was accompanied by the crooning of Erin Boehme (me neither). Suddenly, things have changed. Kanye West – the rapper whose global celebrity is still juggernaut-sized despite not having released any decent music since 2007 – has done the previously unthinkable: he’s started tweeting pro-Trump messages. Unsurprisingly, West’s tweets – which have included a picture of himself wearing a Make America Great Again cap personally signed by the

Steerpike

Has Diane Abbott forgotten her history of blunders?

Diane Abbott is calling for Amber Rudd’s head over the Windrush scandal – but Mr Steerpike was somewhat taken aback by her line of attack against the Home Secretary. On BBC News, Abbott asked: ‘Who can have confidence in Amber Rudd to make far-reaching changes in the Home Office, if she doesn’t seem able to get basic facts right?’ But is she forgetting her own history of blunders? Take the time in the run-up to last year’s snap election when Abbott told LBC’s Nick Ferrari it would cost £300,000 to recruit ten thousand police officers: Or when she recounted listening to Enoch Powell’s speech in primary school; a speech given

The Facebook scandal exposes our politicians’ technical illiteracy

Imagine a world in which all politicians were computer scientists. What a dreary dystopia that would be. It’s hard to think of anything worse than a nation ruled by people with PhDs in machine learning.   That said, politicians do need to know something about the digital world. It’s no longer good enough for our elected representatives to feign technical illiteracy, throw up their arms in defeat, and ask the office twenty-something to fix it. Every professional thinks politicians are clueless about their particular area of expertise – doctors complain that MPs are medically illiterate, teachers moan that they don’t get pedagogy and so on. But a special case can be

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron returns to an increasingly divided Europe

While Emmanuel Macron has been wowing Washington there’s been something of a mini crisis in France. To put it bluntly, the country was invaded on Sunday, its border in the French Alps breached by a force of around 200 foreigners, who then fought with the police as they advanced on the small town of Briançon. The incursion was organised by Italians and Swiss, their number swelled by forty migrants, a fraction of the number who in recent years have used the Alps to cross from Italy into France. In 2016, 315 were intercepted on this arduous route, a figure that last year rose to 1,900. The majority come from West Africa

‘We need to get creative’

‘It was Plato who said storytellers rule the world,’ observes Mariana Mazzucato, her powerful voice tempered with a beaming smile, ‘But the stories we’re constantly told about how value is created are largely myths. We must rethink where wealth really comes from.’ An economics professor at University College London, Mazzucato is fast emerging as one of the world’s leading public intellectuals. From her high-ceilinged office in Bloomsbury, a host of grant-making bodies on speed dial, this 49-year-old Italian-American is determined to ‘replace our current parasitic system with a more sustainable, symbiotic type of capitalism’. Mazzucato emerged from the academic shadows five years ago, when she wrote The Entrepreneurial State. The

Laura Freeman

Paris Notebook

The French President says he wants to rule as a Jupiter — but he doesn’t look like a Jupiter to me. Not the bearded beefcake painted by Rubens in the Louvre, anyway. Macron’s more a clean-shaven Mercury, messenger god and patron deity of the financial services industry. So far the message has been: ‘En Marche!’ Forwards! But forwards where? ‘Macron est nul,’ says the graffiti at Porte Maillot. Imiss London’s parks. Parisians tell me where not to walk. The Bois de Boulogne? Pick-up joint. The Seine? Rats. I have been taking the Métro to Château de Vincennes to walk in the woods. There’s a migrant camp pitched along one avenue.

Charles Moore

Trump and Macron’s special relationship is no surprise

People are expressing bemusement that Presidents Trump and Macron should get on well, since they seem such different people. Surely a clue lies in their shared title. They are the only important executive presidents in the western world, so they have that particular combination of real power and ceremonial pomp which is rightly denied to prime ministers. They love it. Besides, they are not so different, though M.Macron is Gallicly suave and Mr Trump is Yankee brash, and the former is small and thin, the latter neither. Both seem to be egomaniacs who believe in and embody führerprinzip (though luckily neither leads a country which gives it anything like full

Steerpike

Watch: Donald Trump’s Macron power play

Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron have a history of trying to upstage each other on the world stage. When the pair met in Paris last year, they subjected each other to a half-a-minute long handshake, with both determined not to be the first to let go of each other’s hand. At the Nato summit, Macron famously swerved as he was walking towards Trump in an apparent snub. But with Trump now on home turf thanks to Macron visiting the President in the Oval Office just now, Trump appears to have finally got his revenge. First, Trump ‘helped’ his French counterpart – by apparently brushing some dandruff off Macron’s shoulder. Trump

Macron-Trump bromance blossoms as the sun sets on Special Relationship

Twenty-one years ago the sun finally set on the British Empire with the handover of Hong Kong. Now, the sun is setting on what is known as the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. It would be easy to blame Brexit for London’s increasing irrelevance in Washington. After all, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has been rapidly pro-European Union since Henry Kissinger supposedly said that Americans needed to know who to call if they wanted to call Europe. Since then, when a president wanted something from the Old World the British prime minister was their helpmate. There is no question that France has manoeuvred to fill

The shaming of Shania Twain

Celebrity apologies are all the rage. Such is the power of Twitter, that stars without round-the-clock PR surveillance and teams of media advisors will often find themselves in hot water. This week, it’s pop-country singer Shania Twain who has fallen foul of the perpetually offended. Why? Twain had the audacity to talk about supporting Trump in an interview with the Guardian. “I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest”, she said. “Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn’t be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don’t want bullshit. I would have voted for a feeling that it

Steerpike

Ex-grammar school boy’s Julia Hartley-Brewer jibe

Owen Jones triggered the MSM over the weekend when he took to social media to complain that too many journalists went to private school and were not representative of society at large. While Mr S directs the Guardian columnist to this article on representation at Jones’s paper of choice, a number of hacks have risen to the bait. However, Steerpike is more interested in some of the curious responses. Julia Hartley-Brewer – the commentator – took to social media to say she had attended a comprehensive and got into Oxford university on merit. Surely a great achievement and one which the meritocracy-loving Left could get behind? I didn’t go to

Damian Thompson

Could Dublin’s preachy liberals save Ireland’s abortion ban?

Could there be a Trump-style upset when the Irish vote next month on whether to repeal the country’s ban on abortion? That’s the question I discuss in the latest Holy Smoke podcast with my guest Tony Trowbridge, an Australian who became an Irish citizen when he was studying law at Trinity College, Dublin, in the 1970s. He’s watched the country’s transformation from something close to a Catholic theocracy into a society dominated by strident-but-smug media-savvy liberals. Irish political correctness is, if anything, even more preachy and joyless than the American variety. In that respect it’s reminiscent of Irish Catholicism, which paradoxically used to have an almost Calvinist feel to it.