World

You don’t have to like Hillary Clinton to hope she becomes the next President of the United States. But, by god, this year, in this election, she is, as you might say, likeable enough. Of course there is something dispiriting about Mrs Clinton’s campaign. But, based on time-served entitlement and identity politics as it may be, it is nowhere – nothing – like as dispiriting as the alternative. Nor is it as mournfully depressing as the spectacle of so many Republicans dutifully lining up to endorse a man they know – if they have any shred of intellectual or even political decency – is the most appalling, dangerous, and unqualified candidate

Not since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault 30 years ago has a media stunt landed with such a wet thud. Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, longtime horse whisperer to the Republican half of Washington’s political establishment, had promised on Sunday that after months of begging any hawk with a pulse to run against the hated Donald Trump, there will finally ‘be an independent candidate – an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.’ Monday came and went without any such announcement, and then on Tuesday we learned that Kristol’s white knight was a mostly obscure conservative commentator in Tennessee named David A. French. Who doesn’t even

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside…but it comes at a cost. According to the latest research from Halifax, house prices have increased by a third across British seaside towns over the past decade. The annual Halifax Seaside Town Review revealed average house prices have grown from £166,565 in 2006 to £219,386 in 2016, equivalent to an average increase of £440 per month. The UK’s most expensive seaside town is Sandbanks in Dorset, with the average house price there nearly £665,000. Salcombe in Devon, where the average home is worth £539,950, came second. Unsurprisingly, eight of the top 10 most expensive seaside towns were in south-west England. The least

Dr Johnson said that if anyone truly wanted to understand themselves, they should listen to what their enemies say about them. And whilst China is not an enemy of the EU, it is certainly highly critical of it. Why then did China’s President Xi Jinping wade into the Brexit debate and call on Britain to stay put? What would possibly make him support something that criticises his country on human rights, trade issues and market access? One reason is simply because, for all their differences with western democracies, Chinese leaders and policy makers are very pragmatic. They view Europe predominantly as an economic actor, not a security one. And as

Think Donald Trump is too vulgar, too crazy to actually make it to the White House? Then you probably thought he’d never make the nomination. When he stood, Arianne Huffington said she would cover his race in the “entertainment” section of her website. Now he has ended up securing enough delegates to wrap up the Republican nomination. We’ve been told by commentators doing their bit to re-assure us that there’s no way the orange maniac would win a general election. In fact, the truth is rather scarier, with the average results from recent polls putting Trump ahead with a 43.4 per cent share compared to Hillary’s 43.2 per cent. Quite a

If as a teenager you couldn’t leave home quick enough, spare a thought for the 3.8 million young adults who will be living with their parents by 2025. That’s the conclusion of a study by the insurer Aviva. The company found that a million more 21 to 34-year-olds are likely to find themselves living with their parents over the next decade thanks to the prohibitive cost of housing. The number of households containing two or more families is also expected to rise, from 1.5 million to 2.2 million. Meanwhile, Hometrack reports that house prices in the UK’s biggest cities have jumped due to the buy-to-let surge, with Cambridge outpacing its rival Oxford. Average price

Do you remember when they said it wasn’t possible? When the pointy-headed wonks in Washington DC and the New York journalists with their masters degrees said Donald Trump’s campaign would be hit by scandal, or come undone without the support of experienced Republican party officials who knew how to work complicated caucus states, or that the candidate would simply lose interest and go back to making money? At a little before quarter past 10 on Thursday morning, an Associated Press reporter ran the numbers through his calculator and found that Trump had proved the sceptics wrong, he had clinched the 1237 delegates he needed for the Republican Party nomination. A

Another day, another story of ineptitude by the taxman. According to The Telegraph and other news outlets, more than three million people may have paid the wrong tax after chaos at HM Revenue and Customs left callers waiting for over an hour to speak to staff last year. In a savage report by the National Audit Office, it said that a decision to cut jobs in HMRC meant that call waiting times tripled to 47 minutes last October as paper tax returns were due. The Whitehall auditors said HMRC got its timing badly wrong when rolling out its digital strategy, which involved moving more personal taxpayers online and reducing demand for telephone and

With only two months until the Rio Olympics, Brazil’s woes continue, with a minister in the interim government being forced to resign after being accused of plotting to stop the country’s national corruption probe. It is not just president Dilma Rousseff being investigated, of course; a full quarter of Brazil’s congressmen are accused of criminal acts, which suggests the country may have a slight problem with corruption. There is a solution at hand, however, and one favoured by the people. Two thirds of Brazilians say they would like to get rid of presidents altogether – and bring back the monarchy. And there is a man waiting in the wings. Seventy-five-year-old Bertrand

If you want to know how lost Europe is, how thoroughly it has abandoned freedom of speech, get this: two French music festivals have banned Eagles of Death Metal, the American rock band whose gig at the Bataclan was turned into a bloodbath by Isis last November, after the lead singer said some dodgy things about Muslims. Yes, six months after they watched and heard 89 of their fans being slaughtered by Isis for the crime of engaging in ‘perversity’, Eagles of Death Metal are now being shut down by festival organisers for saying allegedly perverted things about Islam. Isis must be delighted: Western liberals are doing their dirty work for them; they’re silencing

Ipanema, Brazil Another Sunday night, yet another episode of Game of Thrones drowned out by pot-banging and angry folk yelling into the night. In my quiet corner of Ipanema, a slanging match takes place as middle-class tenants of a high-rise apartment start slandering their neighbours in the favela below. The words ‘cow’ and ‘communist’, among others, are shouted by darkened figures hanging out of windows. The comebacks are meted out with equal ferocity. Things are tense in this town at the moment. Pot-banging, or panelaço, is an established form of protest in South America. In Brazil it has been happening in many cities for several months now as the middle classes

Boris Johnson is by no means short of a bob or two but when I challenged him to create a limerick for The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition (prize £1,000) he was unable to resist. Naturally, during his interview with me and Urs Gehriger, for the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche – which I call the Swiss Spectator – the subject of the migrant crisis – and the EU’s recent German-driven deal with Turkey to stop the migrant tide from the east – cropped up. And so too did the criminal prosecution in Germany of the comedian Jan Böhmermann, for a poem accusing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of getting his