World

The stories are filed, the pictures are posted, and the media verdict is almost unanimous: separating children from their parents is wrong, it is unAmerican, and President Donald Trump is going to suffer for it. His administration is baby-snatching. The ‘optics’ are terrible, say the hyperventilating PR men and Washington know-alls. But if everybody stops to breathe for a moment, they should stop to recognise that, on this issue, as on so much else, Donald Trump is winning the politics. Call it vice-signalling. The President and Kirstjen Nielsen are making clear that, even if it means being seen to be inhuman, they are taking voter concerns about massive immigration seriously.

Bibi Netanyahu was in London this month after meeting Angela Merkel, Emanuel Macron and Theresa May, the leaders of the three European countries which had committed most to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Before he flew back to Israel he came to a crowded public meeting at Policy Exchange, whose director, Dean Godson, had asked me to talk with him. I asked him first what he had told the Europeans, who had reacted badly to President Trump’s unilateral action on Iran. ‘Well I’ll tell you what I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell them to pull out of the Iran agreement – because I think it’s effectively defunct. The

Last week, the government announced that it was going to allow onshore windfarms to once again gain access to the vast pots of money set aside for renewable energy. However, there was one very important restriction: only windfarms on remote islands would be eligible. In practice, we are therefore talking about the Inner and Outer Hebrides and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland. Having come to office on the back of a campaign pledge to stop the spread of onshore windfarms, this represented something of a U-turn, but the reaction has been comparatively muted. This is slightly surprising, because in ecological terms, the islands of Scotland are pretty much

These are challenging times for Emmanuel Macron. Kim Jong-Un has supplanted him as Donald Trump’s Best Friend Forever and he’s angered the Italians with clumsy comments about their handling of the migrant crisis. Thank goodness, then, that Kylian Mbappé has recovered from an ankle injury and is fit for France’s World Cup opener today against Australia. Every president and prime minister would love their boys to win the World Cup but for Macron a victory inspired by Mbappé would be particularly timely. What political capital! Endless photo opportunities and references about the football team mirroring the new diverse, dynamic and blossoming France. Mbappé is, for Macron, the figurehead of this

We’ve all been there. You’re at a work event, you don’t really know anyone so soon you end up talking to the strange fellow in the corner. At least that’s what happened to John Mann a few years back when he attended a conference and ended up having a chinwag with a North Korean dictator. Speaking on Question Time, the Labour MP revealed his encounter with Kim Jong-un’s late father – Kim Jong-il: ‘I once met his father, only in passing and he was like him – strange family, strange people. It was at a conference and no-one was talking to him and no-one was talking to me so I went

‘Trudeau or Trump?’ was a choice which Theresa May, with unusually ready wit, evaded in Parliament on Monday. No doubt I am in a minority, but I feel that, of the two, Mr Trudeau — the G7 host at La Malbaie — is the more absurd figure on the world stage, being just as vain as the President and far more pointless (if you doubt me, compare the two men’s tweets). In the same parliamentary statement, Sir Vince Cable asked ‘What is the point of the G7?’ It is part of President Trump’s subversive skill that his actions prompt people to ask such questions. There is no need for such annual

I am sure there must have been a time when feminism was concerned with the interests of the low-paid and disadvantaged – before, that is, it became almost wholly concerned with powerful, well-paid women demanding even higher money. Nicky Morgan and her Treasury Select Committee have found an injustice which puts into the shade the gross injustices suffered by female BBC presenters on £150,000 a year. They have identified a ‘gender bonus gap’ in the City which they say is a whopping 67 per cent. The reason, contends Morgan, is that female City workers are put off by the grubby business of having to negotiate their own bonuses. This practice,

The reviews are coming in for Donald Trump’s performance in Singapore and they aren’t pretty. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times says Trump was ‘hoodwinked’. Ari Fleischer, the former press spokesman for George W. Bush, says ‘This feels like the Agreed Framework of the 90s all over again. NK gave its word to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. They never intended to keep their word. And then they broke it.’ And Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst now at the Heritage Foundation, says ‘This is very disappointing. Each of the four main points was in previous documents with NK, some in a stronger, more encompassing way. The denuke

Donald Trump means different things to different people. To his core supporters, he’s the man who will make America great again.  To his diehard opponents, he is a dangerous juvenile with authoritarian tendencies. Ultimately, these descriptions are secondary to how Trump sees himself: a tough, dealmaking Svengali who has the experience and power of persuasion to get a deal that is advantageous to himself and to the people he represents. Democrats laugh and dismissively wave off that mindset as self-delusion. Even some Republicans would likely roll their eyes in private. Trump, of course, knows this too well – which is why his dalliance with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un this week

Happily for Theresa May, the main news from the G7 conference wasn’t that President Trump failed to mention her in his G7 ‘friends’ list. Instead, the fireworks arrived after the president left and he struck out alone. Some choice comments from Justin Trudeau on trade saw Trump see red and pull out of a previously agreed summit communique – leaving only a G6 in unison on trade. But it’s this photo that sums up the event best: I don’t care if you only had a starter. We all agreed to split the bill equally. #G7 pic.twitter.com/6vXsxiqdtX — Vicki Young (@BBCVickiYoung) June 9, 2018 Captions in the comments.

At first, the Spanish marines are just a distant dot on the horizon. A few minutes later their speedboat is on our starboard side. The marines clamber aboard, disarm the irregulars who’ve seized this Romanian frigate, and secure the helicopter landing pad on the windswept stern. Watching from a safe distance, you’d never know this was just a wargame. As a Romanian sailor told me, as I struggled to control my seasick stomach, the way you fight in a real war depends upon the way you train. Welcome to Sea Shield, a naval warfare exercise involving 21 ships and 12 aircraft from seven Nato allies: Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Spain, Turkey,