World

On Monday, August 6, the long-arm of the U.S. Treasury Department reached into Europe and violently shook the continent. The first wave of U.S. secondary sanctions on entire sectors of the Iranian economy are now back in force, which means major European conglomerates and large-sized businesses have a potentially existential choice to make. Do we continue to do sign deals in Iran that Washington now explicitly prohibits? Or do we take the path of least resistance by removing our money from the Iranian market and saving ourselves the trouble of billions of dollars of U.S. fines, billions more in asset freezes, and severe damage to the company’s reputation? President Donald

Tommy Robinson has been released on bail after he won an appeal against a conviction for contempt of court. Here is the summary of the judgement from today’s hearing at the Court of Appeal. The key passage explaining the decision is in bold: BACKGROUND TO THE APPEALS The appellant attended Canterbury Crown Court on 8 May 2017 during the trial of four defendants for rape. The jury had been sent out for deliberation. The appellant carried out filming with a commentary on the steps of and inside the court building, although he did not film in the courtroom itself. He had intended to film the defendants but the trial judge

Donald Trump has finally met a European leader he can stand for more than a moment: Italy’s bookish new premier, Giuseppe Conte. The former law professor, who was plucked out of obscurity by 5Star’s Luigi Di Maio and the League’s Matteo Salvini to be the nominal consensus pick of Rome’s anti-establishment government, is the kind of European Trump can do business with. Or at least that is Trump’s hope. For the brash billionaire, Europe has been nothing but a nuisance. Despite his proclamations of having a terrific relationship with Germany’s Angela Merkel and a kinship with France’s Emmanuel Macron, it is not difficult to see through the facade. Relations between

At a speaker luncheon last week, someone I didn’t know passed me a note asking ‘Have you stopped supporting capital punishment?’ As far as I could remember, I have never supported capital punishment, so I was slightly at a loss for a reply. My problem with the subject is that I have always felt ambiguous. On the one hand, capital punishment is horrible, bad for the executioner as well as the victim, and fatal to the innocent. On the other, I cannot confidently argue that, when conducted under law, it would be wrong in every single circumstance. Some times, and perhaps some actions, are so bad that the death penalty

The Labour Party’s tangles over anti-Semitism and Zionism raise basic questions about Western values that are routinely ignored. But sometimes we do need to go back to basics.  A central plank of the ideology of the West is pluralism – the belief that a state should allow the co-existence of various ethnicities and religions, and treat all its citizens equally. It is a slippery plank – some countries, including us, have traditions that technically contravene this principle (we have an established Church, for example). Also, there is an element of hypocrisy in almost every country’s avowal of ethnic and cultural pluralism. In reality, most citizens expect these things to be

The feel-good factor Emmanuel Macron hoped would surge through France following their World Cup win has failed to materialise. The president milked the success for all it was worth but he has been swiftly brought down to earth with a bump. It was actually more of a thump, administered by his now ex-chief bodyguard Alexandre Benalla, who was caught on camera beating a protestor while dressed as a policeman during a May Day march earlier this year. Since the story broke eight days ago, it has dominated the French media. Had the president’s people come clean the day the footage was first broadcast by Le Monde, the story wouldn’t have developed in

If the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party, triumphs in the country’s general election on 9 September it won’t be thanks to Vladimir Putin, no matter how many Swedes fear his drones are trying to swamp them with internet propaganda. It will be Elin Ersson wot swung it for them – along with the police and authorities at Gothenburg Airport. Ms Ersson filmed herself refusing to sit down on a Turkey-bound plane until a failed asylum-seeker, who was being deported to Afghanistan, was removed. He duly was.    Students have been doing this sort of thing for decades, of course – albeit without the benefit of live-streaming on social media, but

When I originally heard that DJ Spoony was curating a night of UK garage backed by a 36-piece orchestra at the Barbican, I was in Thailand surrounded by hostile monkeys. The news provoked such intense feelings of joy and nostalgia that I immediately sought out a rum and pineapple, downloaded whatever half-baked compilation that Twice as Nice had wheeled out and had an impromptu rave outside my hut. For those of us who came of age with this music, years spent manically twirling and bouncing like hyperactive string puppets, this event felt monumental: the Barbican endorsement was validating a genre that had long suffered from serious PR issues and gunshot

It’s not surprising that so many Frenchmen and women partied in Paris last Sunday to celebrate their country’s World Cup success. The French side played with style and panache and deserved their victory; there’s also the fact that France hasn’t had much to cheer about in recent years when it comes to sport so they’re entitled to bask in the glory of Les Bleus. As well as cheers last week there were also some jeers – and spits and slaps – all of them aimed at the British cyclist Chris Froome as he peddled up and down mountains in the Tour de France. These are more than just surly reactions to the recent

One of the joys of a world seized by identity politics is that everyone wants to let you know their self-identification: Israel identifies as a Jewish state and has passed a Basic Law explicitly saying so.  The law is, as a millennial might say, problematic, even if most of it is uncontroversial. It defines the name, flag, emblem and anthem of the state. The Hebrew calendar will still be the official calendar and Yom Ha’atzmaut will continue to be the annual national holiday. Jews will go on having the right to observe Saturday as their day of rest and non-Jews to observe their day of rest. Clause five recommits the state to promoting

To conclude that relations between the United States and the Europeans are in quite a chaotic and unpredictable state is like saying German Chancellor Angela Merkel misses the good old days of Barack Obama and John Kerry. It’s so obvious that it doesn’t need repeating. There are a whole slew of foreign policy and economic issues that have shaken the U.S.-European relationship out of its traditional complacency. Steel and aluminum tariffs, Europe’s anaemic defense spending, the Iran nuclear deal, Brexit, trade imbalances, and Trump’s style of undiplomatic diplomacy have all thrown the continent for a loop. Trump appears to take pleasure in berating America’s European allies and watching them squirm;

It is said that the story of diamond mining in South Africa began with someone who inadvertently kicked a large stone in the dusty ground, only to discover that said stone was in fact a huge diamond. This started a rush of speculators hoping to make a fast buck. For many of today’s speculators, blockchain is that dusty diamond. They stake their claims and reach into their pockets – or most likely try to convince others to reach into theirs ­– to start mining on the promise that they will deliver gemstones. As well as the excitement associated with a new technology, be it the internet, smart phones, Virtual Reality

Usually it starts at McDonald’s. When protestors gather in central London they like to vandalise the burger chain’s Whitehall branch in honour of rioters who trashed the place on May Day, 2000. Today the anti-Trump crowd overlooked this historic site and converged on a nearby pub, the Silver Cross, where a handful of pro-Trump Brits were praising their champion with slogans and fist-gestures. They were a strange bunch. A pensioner in a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, a bearded youngster wearing a yarmulke, and a black guy, about fifty years old, decked out in the full Trump regalia: a red MAGA baseball cap and a ‘Trump 2020’ tee-shirt. These three stalwarts were