World

One of the nicest things in life is the discovery that one-time enemies are in fact terrific, brave people who you might have been wrong about and have grown to respect. For instance, when I was growing up I had a rather marked dislike of Germaine Greer. Then, in recent years, I discovered she was one of the only adults left in the room. Likewise Trevor Phillips. When he was head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission we often used to find ourselves at loggerheads. I recall a panel many years ago when, sitting in the green room beforehand, one of the other panellists asked me what I did.

Robert Mugabe’s resignation fascinates because the fall of tyrants is always a family story, decline of the father, writ large. What a strange creature he is. Who else would give a speech of such orotundity that it contained archaic words like ‘pith’, ‘collegiality’, ‘comported’, ‘untrammelled’ and ‘vicissitudes?’ No British politician has used such language since the 1950s but Mugabe, well-educated by Jesuits, has the pomposity of a pedantic poetaster leavened with Marxist-liberationist arcana. As a teenager I had a weakness for freedom fighters. When Mugabe came to London to negotiate independence, I vanished from home to stand outside his hotel. I was very disappointed that he looked like a dorky

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of populism. Last week in Berlin, Christian Lindner, leader of the Free Democrats, walked out of Germany’s coalition talks, plunging the Bundesrepublik into an unprecedented crisis. Meanwhile in Trier, the ancient Rhineland city where Marx was born and raised, locals were busy preparing for next year’s Karl Marx bicentenary. What on earth would Marx have made of Germany – and Europe – today? Sure enough, the proletariat are rising up against the bourgeoisie, but not in the manner he predicted. Marx assumed that nationalism, like the state itself, would wither away. Instead, those pesky proles are embracing nationalism like never before, and

Even for a veteran of the struggle for freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe, the events of the past week continue to shock. When Robert Mugabe refused to step down in his rambling TV address on Sunday, it seemed impeachment would be the only way to remove him from office. Proceedings to do just that started in parliament yesterday. We didn’t get far. The debate had been going for 40 minutes when the speaker interrupted proceedings to announce that he had received a letter from the president. When it came to the part about Mugabe ‘tendering his resignation with immediate effect’, the place exploded. It took several minutes to restore order

Robert Mugabe has resigned as president of Zimbabwe after 37 years in power. The 93-year-old confirmed his intention to step down in a letter to the speaker of the country’s parliament this afternoon. His decision to quit follows widespread protests on the streets of the capital, Harare, in the wake of the coup carried out last week by the country’s military. In a rambling TV address on Sunday, Mugabe resisted calls to quit. But with Zimbabwean MPs debating an impeachment motion to remove Mugabe from power, the leader of the country’s Zanu PF party appears to have changed his mind. The news of Mugabe’s decision to resign was greeted with

Robert Mugabe nearly gave the entire country a heart attack last night. In the late afternoon, a ZTV broadcasting unit was driven into State House, where Mugabe and the military commanders were negotiating his departure from office. After Saturday, when millions of Zimbabweans took to the streets to call for his retirement – and then the Sunday meeting of the Zanu PF Central Committee at which he was summarily dismissed from the leadership of the Party and replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa – we all expected a humble and contrite Mugabe to announce he was stepping down. We waited from 7pm to 9pm for him to come on television live; when

Is the net closing in on Jared Kushner? It is now being reported that Trump’s son-in-law received a ‘Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite’, which he also reportedly forwarded on. Both Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein are alleging that Kushner did not turn over several important documents to investigators despite numerous requests. If Kushner is engaging in these kind of shenanigans with special counsel Robert Mueller he will be in truly hot water. Kushner’s lawyer has said he was ‘open to responding to any additional requests’. Each day seems to bring a new story about the Trump campaign and Russia, whether it is Kushner or Donald

The liberal media is at the moment engaged in a campaign attacking social media on the grounds that it is ‘destroying democracy’. But is it? The fact is that there is nothing new about social media, the fake news it spreads and the rage it engenders. Ancient Greeks loved the ‘latest news’ as much as anyone today. In his book Characters — it meant ‘behavioural types’ — the Greek academic Theophrastus (d. 287bc) described, among others, the ‘rumour monger’. He was always stopping friends with made-up stories that he claimed to have heard from a reliable source; he assured them that the story was ‘hot’; he quoted unreliable authorities; it

Last week, I predicted that the Mugabe era was at its end and that all that remained was how, when and who? Well we now know: it was Emmerson Mnangagwa, it took just 48 hours and it was in the form of a disguised coup. The leadership of the G40 faction in the ruling Party has been detained, many are in hiding or on the run; some resisted and last night there was some gun fire and explosions. This morning there was a clear statement by the army that they have taken charge. How did this happen? Mnangagwa has been in the Cabinet for 37 years, vice president for 3

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