World

President Obama has taken his European tour to Germany, where he touted the ‘indisputable’ benefits of an EU-US free-trade pact. Speaking at the Hannover Messe Trade Fair, Obama noted the importance of an agreement as a bulwark against the likes of Russia ‘at this time of uncertainty, including here in Europe, when others would use trade and energy as a weapon.’ Trade as a weapon? You don’t say. Obama’s remarks in Germany came shortly after his visit to Britain, where he bludgeoned Brexit campaigners with the implied threat that Britain would ‘go to the back of the queue’ for a US trade pact if it left the EU. Obama followed that press

I suppose it’s inevitable that Brexiters will angrily reject Obama’s intervention, especially his line about Britain being left ‘at the back of the queue’ when it comes to trade. But if they let their annoyance spill over into a general criticism of the president, they will harm their own case. For most Brits still rate him very highly. Tim Montgomerie accuses him of extreme arrogance, and widens the critique: the grand stirring rhetoric that won him the presidency not only failed to unite America; it fostered a more extreme and angry political culture. I half-agree: Obama’s exceptional expression of liberal idealism scared his opponents, and provoked them to mobilise. Something

Something very strange and rather disturbing appears to be happening to the British right. Or at least to a large and noisy segment of it. It seems to have decided that the Republican party is something to emulate. Of course Ukip has always had a Tea Party tendency but this once-niche persuasion appears to be going mainstream. The reaction to Barack Obama’s remarks yesterday, in which he suggested that Brexit campaigners were not being wholly straight with the British people (I know! Who knew?) has been as remarkable as it has been depressing. How dare Obama insult Britain like this! How dare he threaten the British people! Why has Britain allowed

As Barack Obama urges the UK to stick with the EU on his final official trip to Britain, there has been a security clampdown ahead of his arrival. Large parts of London have become no-go zones for drones while the President is in town. Happily, Obama appears to be taking no chances himself either. Mr S witnessed President Obama’s motorcade this afternoon pass Birdcage walk. By Steerpike’s count there were a total of 22 vehicles making up the motorcade. How many cars does one man need?

Many people have described what it’s like to find themselves the target of an internet lynch mob. Perhaps more unusually, the other week I woke up to find myself at the head of one. It wasn’t my intention to bring the wrath of a whole city down upon Julian Caddy, the managing director of arts festival Brighton Fringe; I merely wanted to vent my own anger. In truth, he brought it on himself by authoring an odious and spectacularly ill-judged piece in the local paper, the Argus. Ostensibly, he was writing about Brighton & Hove’s Palace Pier. But his real subject was the people of Brighton. The pier, he wrote, represented all that was ‘cheap’ and ‘tacky’ about Brighton, luring

Students have been getting a bad rep of late. Whether it’s safe space advocates proposing motions to ban free speech societies or equality officers tweeting ‘kill all white men’, the mood on campus has changed dramatically in the past five years. So, will this change with the election of a new National Union of Students president? It’s not looking all that likely following today’s news that Malia Bouattia has been elected as NUS president — to the delight of Cage, the Islamic-focussed advocacy organisation. Congratulations to @MaliaBouattia on being elected the NUS president! #NUSconference — CAGE International (@CAGEintl) April 20, 2016 To introduce readers to Bouattia’s politics, Mr S has compiled a three-point

The Telegraph reports this morning that British Gas owner Centrica is attempting to shrug off a sharp drop in customer numbers with a range of new tariffs. In the first three months of the year, Britain’s biggest energy supplier lost 224,000 customer accounts – more than in the whole of 2015 – as customers turned to rival companies. The company has lost customers for five consecutive years, from highs of almost 16 million residential gas and electricity accounts in 2010. Now it has just over 14.4 million accounts. Iain Conn, chief executive, said that Centrica planned to introduce ‘a number of innovative new tariffs’ for customers in coming months, following energy regulator Ofgem scrapping its four-tariff limit

Nobody should be surprised that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has instituted effective blasphemy laws to defend himself from criticism in Turkey.  But many of us had assumed that these lèse-majesté laws would not yet be put in place inside Europe.  At least not until David Cameron succeeds in his long-held ambition to bring Turkey fully into the EU. Yet here we are.  Erdogan’s rule now already extends to Europe. At the end of last month, during a late-night comedy programme, a young German comedian called Jan Böhmermann included a poem that was rude about Erdogan.  Incidentally the point of Mr Böhmermann’s skit was to highlight the obscenity of Turkey already trying to

The latest competition invited you to submit a review of a well-known work of literature that has been written by a comically inappropriate reviewer. Some of you chose well-known individuals for the job; others provided reviews written by anonymous writers but penned in a comically inappropriate style. Honourable mentions go to Nicholas Stone and John O’Byrne, who let Donald Trump loose on The Odyssey and Brave New World respectively. I also liked Jane Moth’s assessment of Great Expectations from the perspective of a reviewer writing for All Things Bridal magazine: ‘So we opened Great Expectations with much anticipation, knowing that great expectations are precisely what our executive brides have. Imagine our

Oh dear. I’ve always admired Jonathan Freedland, and he usually writes so well about America. But his latest contribution to the Donald Trump debate is dreadful. It is a Guardian video — the format doesn’t help — called ‘Dear America, this Donald Trump thing? It’s not just about you.’ In it, Freedland warns the US that the rest of the world will be very, very worried if Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee. Watch and try not to cringe: Surely, as a clever man, Freedland realises that such progressive special pleading is what fuels the Donald Trump phenomenon? It is so deeply patronising. Come on America, the Guardian is saying,