World

The Eurozone crisis is teaching us plenty about how to recover from recessions. The nations that tried a debt-fuelled stimulus have found that their economies haven’t grown much, but they are saddled with the extra debt. The Swedes have cut taxes for the low paid, the Estonians took the fast route back to fiscal sanity — and both are now growing well, in spite of the turmoil that has engulfed their neighbours. But what’s less well-known is Germany’s record of reform, and how it has helped the country reach unemployment at a 20-year low.   Ten years ago, the German economy itself was pretty stagnant. When it first entered the

The news that matters today isn’t what was said at Leveson, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the government won’t act on the inquiry’s report if it suggests anything big, but that the Spanish bailout is failing. Indeed, Spanish bank stocks are lower this evening than they were this morning and the yield on Spain’s 10 year bonds is back above six percent. But one group who will benefit from the Spanish bailout is Syriza, the Greek anti-bailout party. The decision to bailout Spain without fiscal conditions is a major boost to Syriza’s pitch that ultimately the rest of the Eurozone will blink if Greece demands changes to the terms of

More than a week on from the massacre at Houla, another hundred or so men, women and children have been slaughtered in Hama, Syria. They were apparently stabbed to death and some of their bodies then burned. David Cameron has responded to this by describing the killings as ‘brutal and sickening’. William Hague had previously described the Houla massacre as ‘deeply disturbing.’ So what is Britain going to do about it? The Prime Minister has a suggestion: ‘I think that lots of different countries in the world — countries that sit around the UN Security Council table — have got to sit down today and discuss this issue.’ He goes

Whitehall sits and waits. Normal politics is continuing, squalls over whether the apprentice stewards at the Jubilee were taken advantage of and the next stage in the Warsi saga have dominated today, but everyone knows that the big story is unfolding — albeit, at an unpredictable pace — on the continent. There are, at the moment, two big questions. The first is how will Spain, which has essentially admitted that it will struggle to sell any more bonds, recapitalise its banks. Once again, we see the president of the ECB, the Commission and most of the other Eurozone members badgering the Germans to bend the rules and allow a quick

The situation in Syria is very precarious, according to multiple reports – including those of UN observers. Diplomatic tensions remain as before, with Russia and China unyielding in their intransigence. The question of intervention (in some form) is being considered, and all options are supposed to be on the table. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, has said that a blockade of arms should be imposed by policing the eastern Mediterranean and encouraging Iraq and Turkey to secure their borders and airspace. He said: ‘We have to find a way of demonstrating to them that it’s not just speeches that we make but we actually give

The warning by Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, that the euro is ‘unsustainable unless further steps are undertaken’ is about as stark as they come. I’m informed that what Draghi is pushing for behind the scenes is for the ECB’s remit to be expanded to include Eurozone financial policy. This would lead to, to put it crudely, the creation of a European Banking Union. It would see the ECB take over from national governments when it comes to bank bailouts and the like. This would, in turn, ease some of the pressures on countries like Spain whose borrowing costs are being driven up by the market’s

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing is an energetic 86-year old. When we meet in Paris, for the first interview he’s given since the Socialists took power earlier this month, the former French president is fresh off the plane from a hunting trip in Namibia. Soon, he’ll hop on another flight bound for China, where he heads a think tank.   Giscard still holds the record for being the youngest president of the Fifth Republic – he was 48 when he took the keys to the Élysée. But there’s another claim to fame he’ll be glad to have relinquished – until Sarkozy’s defeat, he was the only recent leader not to win a

When Obama brilliantly skewered Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last year, you might’ve thought the billionaire would slink off the political field. But, to the great glee of Team Obama, ‘The Donald’ is still keen to keep playing. Ever since Trump’s endorsement of Mitt Romney back in February, the Democrats have been attacking Romney by association (‘They both like firing people’, they said, tying Romney’s ‘I like being able to fire people’ gaffe to Trump’s famous Apprentice catchphrase).   And yesterday, the Obama campaign put out an ad attacking Romney for not denouncing Trump’s claims that the President wasn’t born in the US, contrasting it with the