World

One hundred days is way too short a time to assess a presidency. On this, if little else, there was unanimity among our stellar panel, facing a 1,000-strong audience in the dramatic arena of Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre. In summary, The Donald’s performance has been erratic and high-risk, but he isn’t all bad: panellist and self-proclaimed friend-of-Trump Piers Morgan recalled a New York barman saying, ‘He’ll either turn out a great president, or we’re all gonna die.’ So why try to judge him so soon? Because it is presidents themselves, starting with FDR, who have chosen to highlight this artificial milestone — and Donald Trump went larger than most by setting

Bad weather swept across southern France over the May Day holiday but summer is just around the corner and with it will come the burkini. Last week, a call was issued to burkini-wearers to gather at the Cannes film festival later this month, with the organiser saying it will be the perfect moment ‘to celebrate together this freedom in the town that was the first to ban the burkini’. The burkini brouhaha of last August made headlines around the world but it soon blew over like a summer storm. A handful of beaches on the Cote d’Azur banned young women from wearing the Islamic swimsuit, citing concerns over public disorder,

Why aren’t feminists lining up behind Le Pen? I thought women had a moral responsibility to back women standing for office? That’s certainly what they said during the Hillary-Trump clash. Yes, I am voting for Hillary because she’s a woman, because she ‘knows what it’s like to menstruate, be pregnant, give birth’, said one American feminist. So does Le Pen. She has three children. According to the rather crude biologism of feminist identitarianism, that makes her an even better candidate than Hillary, who has one kid. So why the silence, feminists? Aren’t you ‘With Her’? Looking back at the Hillary love-in, its remarkable how much it hinged on ‘Hillary’s a

When Trevor Phillips stood down as chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, he had served nine years. His period remains the longest of any UK equality commissioner. So when the confected outrage started over my Sun column about Everton footballer Ross Barkley I was not surprised to see a text pop up from Mr Phillips. I feared he would join the Liverpool bandwagon claiming I was a racist because I had compared the look in the eyes of Barkley with a gorilla. Actually I and every football fan I had ever met believed Barkley to be white. Unluckily for me, but luckily for my enemies in the north-west,

Since December, when Islamic terrorist Anis Amri drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, Germans have been waiting fearfully for the next Islamist attack. However right-wing terrorism is also a growing concern in Germany, and the latest case to come to light shows how this extremist movement may be evolving. Germany’s Military Intelligence is currently investigating 275 cases of right-wing extremism, but surely none of them is quite so disconcerting as the peculiar case of Franco A. The investigation began in January, when a maintenance worker at Vienna Airport opened a toilet ventilation duct and found a pistol hidden inside it. The police attached an alarm to the air

Is Ivanka Trump’s visit to Berlin a triumph for Angela Merkel, or a diplomatic disaster? As always, that depends on which newspapers you read. Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung called it a ‘a veritable coup for the chancellor,’ but the headlines in the British press have focused on the boos that greeted Ivanka at yesterday’s W20 Summit, when the President’s daughter described her father as a defender of women’s rights. Sat alongside Ivanka on the conference platform, Merkel looked distinctly awkward – but Ms Trump’s appearance wasn’t entirely met with groans and jeers. Her other comments were greeted with polite applause and, on one occasion, even cheers (she praised Merkel for enforcing

After having given themselves and the rest of us a fright, France’s voters have, by a worryingly small margin, stepped back from the brink. Some polls indicated a possible victory for the two extremists, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, either of whom would have meant disaster for France. Instead, the next President will almost certainly be the youthful centrist, Emmanuel Macron, the nearest to a viable establishment candidate. Though this is certainly a far lesser evil, it is evident that the political system of Europe’s oldest large democracy has gone spectacularly wrong. The minimum requirement of a functioning democracy is that a manageable range of sensible choices is put

Emmanuel Macron is on the verge of becoming the youngest president in French history. If he is successful in defeating his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, it will also be the first time since 1974 that France elects a centrist president. But even in its early days, Macron’s presidency will face a huge test: his En Marche! movement is still very much in its infancy and it is unclear whether it will morph into a full-blown political party before June’s legislative elections. If it doesn’t, one of the main questions that voters will have is whether Macron will be able to govern in the absence of a clear parliamentary majority. Since the term of the presidency

In the biggest comeback since Lazarus, French president François Hollande has installed Emmanuel Macron as his certain successor, with the collusion of the media, the magistrates and less than 25 per cent of the voters. If Hollande has been a terrible president, the result of the first round of voting confirms that he is a master political technician, with a specialty in dirty tricks. It seems impossible that he will now retire quietly from public life. Whether he will have an official role, or merely be a Svengali-like figure in the shadows of the presidency remains to be seen. One by one, obstacles to Macron’s succession were ruthlessly eliminated and