World

Australia is hardly the first country to back gay marriage but it certainly appears to be the most unlikely. A nation that once prided itself on backs-against-the-wall masculinity has just backed equal marriage in a government-run postal survey. Sixty-two per cent answered ‘Yes’ to the question: ‘Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?’, with a response rate of 80 per cent. Actually, it’s not all that shocking. Aussie attitudes to sexuality have changed beyond recognition in a generation. As has happened across the West, gays have gone from revilement to toleration to acceptance thanks to pop culture, demographics, and the decline of organised Christianity. The result

As BBC2’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight prides itself on attracting the finest politicians and pundits to offer their two cents worth on breaking news stories. So, Mr S was curious to learn of the tactics deployed by one producer to get politicians on the show. Speaking at an event in Soho, Amber Rudd recalled a call she received from a staffer on the show back when she was a fresh-faced backbencher: ‘I remember quite late at night, getting a call from Newsnight asking me to come speak on something. And I took pity on the poor young man asking me to do this and I said to him: “Listen,

The ongoing investigation into Russian influence in the US election is looking more and more like an existential threat to big tech. A couple of weeks back, Facebook, hauled up in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that up to 126 million people saw political adverts that had been purchased by the Kremlin backed ‘Internet Research Agency’, between 2015-2017. It turned over 3,000 ads to investigators, which had been placed through almost 500 accounts and 120 pages. It’s not just Facebook, of course. Twitter also provided Congress with the handles of around 36,000 Russian linked bots who tweeted a total of 1.4 million times in the two months before

Before Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States, his supporters claimed that he would be ‘good for US business’ and ‘good for the US economy’. He brought an impressive track record to the White House as a successful media personality and star of The Apprentice; a businessman and property investor worth anything from $3.9 to $10 billion (or so the estimates claimed), despite going bankrupt several times in the 1990s and around the global financial crisis in 2008. Well were Trump’s supporters right? Yes. In the past year, equities in particular have delivered some impressive returns, while ‘safe haven’ assets (like gold) have fallen behind, according

The Maldives’ spotless beaches mask the story of a troubled nation. The country’s former president, Mohamed Nasheed, is in exile in Britain, having been sentenced to 13 years in prison on what are widely seen as spurious terror charges. Protests on the streets of the capital, Male, are frequent. Soldiers recently locked down the country’s parliament in an apparent bid to block a no confidence vote. Violence is also on the rise: earlier this year, a liberal blogger, Yameen Rasheed, was murdered – hacked to death in his apartment block. In the run-up to his killing, Rasheed said he has been targeted by radicalised Muslims incensed at his posts about Islam. The changing

So, let me get this right. Priti Patel should resign because, while on a private holiday, she did some work – i.e. meeting foreign politicians. BBC PM’s Eddie Mair says she is in serious trouble. Only with arseholes like you, sunshine. The real reason for leftie anguish is that Patel suggested that Israel could possibly receive some of the UK’s foreign aid budget for its humanitarian work in the Golan Heights. Too right, Priti. If we are to have a foreign aid budget I think it should all go to Israel. Especially for its humanitarian work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Support democracy, militate against our enemies. Frankly I’d

The collapse of the old order in the West provoked a collapse in confidence in ‘professional politicians’. It was a boo phrase as reliable as ‘heretic’ in the medieval church. A speaker wishing to endear himself or herself to the audience only had to say that the country was sick to the back teeth of them to earn a round of applause. On a material level, there were rational reasons for the loathing. We do not say often enough that Western societies have failed their peoples. The average Briton or American has not had a pay rise for over a decade. Growth rates in Britain appear to have taken a

This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer’s ‘Any Other Business’ column. In connection with the receding possibility of a London Stock Exchange listing for Saudi Aramco, I wrote that the City authorities’ apparent eagerness to accommodate companies ‘from places not best known for their accounting standards, business probity or general attachment to democracy and the rule of law’ smacked of Brexit-driven desperation. Russia was one of the places I had in mind. Now along comes a listing candidate that rings more alarm bells than the secretive Saudi oil giant. The company concerned is called EN+ Group, and it is the first Russian entity to come to the London market

On the left bank of the Rhine, on the leafy outskirts of Bonn, there’s a building that encapsulates the Bundesrepublik’s best and worst of times. For 44 years, the Villa Hammerschmidt was the official residence of the German President, Germany’s equivalent of the White House. No longer. Now, the German President resides in the Bellevue Palace in Berlin, 300 miles away. Architecture reveals a great deal about the shifting psyche of a nation, and these two contrasting buildings sum up the difference between the Bonn government of the Cold War and today’s government in Berlin. The Villa Hammerschmidt here in Bonn is ornate yet modest – the Bellevue Palace is

Gordon Brown has pitched his memoirs as the honest confessions of a decent man. He failed to win the one general election he fought, he asserts, due to a personality that was unsuited to an age of Twitter and emotional displays. His is the Walter Mondale response to failure — the former US vice president said of his defeat in the 1984 presidential election: ‘I think you know I’ve never really warmed up to television, and in fairness to television, it’s never really warmed up to me.’ Admitting to poor media skills is not genuine self-examination on the part of Brown, more an attempt to shift the blame for his

Oh dear. Earlier this month there was a furore when it was revealed that a tights advert featuring a picture of a dancer’s bare back had been banned from the Tube. As part of Sadiq Khan’s promise to ban adverts on TfL which could cause body confidence issues, the firm were told by TfL’s contractor to add a bandeau bra to the image of the model. So, Mr S was intrigued see some of the adverts that TfL appear to be perfectly relaxed about. While a bare back may be deemed too much for the daily commute, a ‘propaganda machine’ advert for Russia Today – the Kremlin-backed news outlet – is a-ok: Workers

Barcelona I was roaring through central Barcelona on the back of a motorcycle, in the midst of a pack of unionist riders adorned with Spanish flags, all sounding their horns with reckless abandon, when it hit me: this was the voice of the silent majority. Catalonia does not want independence from Spain. But let me begin at the beginning. Yesterday afternoon, the word was put out on Twitter that a group of unionists were intending to parade through Barcelona on two wheels before riding out to the port, where a battalion of national police were barracked in a ship. There they planned to serenade officers and shower them with flowers

The Catalan Parliament has voted for a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain. President Carles Puigdemont had toyed with taking the decision but in the end left it up to the legislature. It is now not a question of Madrid deposing him; it will have to shut down the whole operation. Direct rule is all but inevitable. Madrid held out this nuclear option in the hope of dissuading the nationalists from taking the leap but the bluff has been called. After the scenes that greeted the October 1st referendum on independence, only an optimist would expect the Spanish imposition to be a bloodless affair. Most Catalans did not want to