World

Copenhagen Denmark has had a difficult few weeks. While it’s used to grabbing the headlines for being the happiest country in the world or having an enviable work-life balance, lately the country has been hit by a torrent of criticism. Thanks to its tougher immigration laws, politicians have even had to deal with Nazi Germany comparisons. And it’s hurt – a lot. Last week, Parliament passed new rules including the controversial ‘jewellery law’. This gives police powers to confiscate valuables and cash worth more than £1,000 from refugees. Never mind that few believe this policy will ever be put into practice. It’s also made it much more difficult for those

When Robert Peston was at the BBC, his bosses were left unimpressed when his floppy hair became the story during a live News at Ten broadcast from windy Athens. After filming Peston received an email from a BBC executive telling him that a haircut was ‘imperative’. Happily Peston’s new bosses at ITV appear to be more accepting of his eccentricities. Today the broadcaster’s new political editor has attracted attention with what appears to be a faux fur collar. Alas the fashionable number did not appeal to everyone, with one viewer likening his appearance to that of a street magazine seller : Flat cap and fur-trimmed parka. Really not a good look for Robert Peston pic.twitter.com/tUuPZCXf2Z —

Even EU officials are now finally admitting that a lot – or, rather, most – of the people we have been calling ‘refugees’ are not refugees. They are economic migrants with no more right to be called European citizens than anybody else in the world. Even Frans Timmermans, Vice President of the European Commission, made this point this week. In his accounting, at least 60pc of the people who are here are economic migrants who should not be here –  are from North African states such as Morocco and Tunisia. As he told Dutch television:- “These are people that you can assume have no reason to apply for refugee status.” Swedish officials are

Try as I might, I find it difficult to feel too sorry for Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld, the cohabiting heterosexual couple who have failed to persuade a High Court judge that the government is wrong to deny them the right to form a civil partnership. Mr Keidan and Ms Steinfeld do not like the ‘patriarchal connotations’ and other cultural baggage which they say are associated with marriage and they do not see why, when same-sex couples can opt for a civil partnership as an alternative to marriage, they cannot. But, marriage provides all the same rights as a civil partnership and the judge has ruled that the government’s position is

It’s easy to get carried away about televised political debates. But tonight’s Fox News/Google Republican Party showdown really could be a significant moment in American history. By ducking the debate, and picking a fight with Fox, Donald Trump appears ingeniously to have sucked all the media oxygen out of the event. All the headlines continue to be about Trump, and Fox can expect a ratings drop. The elephant in the room will be the elephant not in the room. Still, with less than four days to go until the opening Iowa caucuses, Trump’s absence presents a major opportunity for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, the second and third-placed candidates in the

My favourite Islamic scholar, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, has come out with yet another corker. He is the gift that keeps on giving. Sheikh Abdul bin Abdullah al Skeikh has decided that one of the world’s gravest sources of evil is the game chess. Never play it, he told his countrymen, for it breeds enmity and hatred in the world. Hmmm. On my top trumps list of stuff that breeds enmity and hatred in the world, chess comes some distance behind heavily-bearded Muslim mentalists, but that’s probably just me. Previously, old Abdul was reported to have told men that it is ok to eat their wives if they

It sounds ridiculous, I know. The Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln, could never want Donald Trump. Everybody knows that the ‘elite’ wants Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. Trump, with his crazy brew of vulgar populism and economic nationalism, is not their guy. The trouble is, as I wrote in my Spectator piece this week, Trumpmania has been knocking the Republican National Committee’s preferences flat — and the establishment candidates are doing a brilliant job of cancelling each other out. Some party bigwigs are therefore coming to terms with the idea of Trump. Major players behind Romney’s 2012 campaign are now reportedly ‘trying to find their way into Trump’s

If you walk down Holland Park Avenue, down the hill to Shepherd’s Bush, you’ll come across a statue wreathed with peonies, lit by a single candle. Two years ago, in February 2014, the flowers stretched almost to the street curb; the candles were myriad, ringing the statue in ever-widening concentric circles. This is the statue of St Volodymyr, founder king of the Ukrainian nation, set up in the old heart of the British Ukrainian community. In the days around the fall of the Yanukovych government, and Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea, St Vlad was the site of nightly vigils, passionate and prayful protests, many of them led by orthodox priests.