World

The first round of the French presidential election is a national carnival that seldom disappoints. If Sunday’s vote follows the opinion polls, only President Nicolas Sarkozy with 28 per cent of the vote and his Socialist party opponent François Hollande (a predicted 27 per cent) will remain in the ring. The country will then be faced with the real choice of who is to run France for the next five years, but the elimination of the eight outsiders will have taken most of the high spirits out of the campaign. The first round is the roll call of true believers. Three of the current candidates are Trotskyists (or ex-Trotskyists) and

Michael Gove’s school reform is being overwhelmed by the surging demand for school places, I argue in my Telegraph column today. When the Education Secretary first draw up his ‘free school’ programme, he said in a Spectator interview that his aim — while radical — was simple.  ‘In your neighbourhood, there will be a new school going out of its way to persuade you to send your children there. It will market itself on being able to generate better results, and it won’t cost you an extra penny’ Choice is only possible when supply outstrips demand. But the latter is growing faster than anyone envisaged a few years ago. The

In 2004, when the Formula One circus first travelled to the Middle East for the inaugural Bahrain Grand Prix, there was little sign of the storm to come. The first event was hailed as a success — and not just for Michael Schumacher, who notched up his 73rd victory in the Sakhir desert. The FIA — the sport’s governing body — even declared it that year’s ‘Best Organised Grand Prix’. Few would have guessed then that, eight years later, so many would want to see the race cancelled. But when the calls came — first from Nabeel Rajab, the Vice President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, two days

David Cameron has returned from what was a bit of a war-and-peace tour of East Asia. Taking arms dealers to Indonesia one day, posing with Aung San Suu Kyi the next. In today’s Sunday Telegraph he writes an almost-defensive piece about it all: ‘With the eurozone producing sluggish growth, we simply can’t rely on trade with Europe to generate the jobs and growth we need. We need to look south and east and do a much better job of winning business in places such as China, India, the Gulf, Africa and South America. That’s why I have been leading trade missions to some of the fastest growing parts of the world, including

Gawker, the American news gossip site, is very pleased with itself. They’ve hired a Fox News ‘mole’, and he or she has already given them their first scoop: off-air footage of Mitt Romney chatting away amicably with Fox News presenter Sean Hannity before an interview. This is meant to be an insight into the sleazy world the American right, and inevitably the clip is going viral. But what Gawker and the mole might not realise is that they may have given the Romney campaign a surprise boost. I’ve seen many Romney interviews and speeches, far too many. But this is the only time I’ve seen him come across as a human being.

Apologies for my absence from this area: I took my two boys away for an uplifting week of cycling on a windswept and pretty Dutch island. I suppose they might have burned off a few more calories if I’d let them loose in the Rossebuurt for a few hours, but I’m getting respectable and middle class in old age. We flew back into Southend Airport, which was was an absolute joy: four minutes from disembarking we were out of the airport building. This may be the best use yet that anyone has thought of for Essex. A few questions about puzzling news stories which occurred whilst I was away: 1.)

The liberty versus security debate has returned to Westminster, and it’s just like old times. David Davis is having great fun beating up the government, except this time it’s a Tory-led one. And as so often, Davis has a point. Much rot is spoken in the name of ‘national security,’ which can be used by the right as ‘health and safety’ is used by the left: a verbal trump card, to win any debate and justify any policy. So it has proved with this bun fight over the snooping powers about to go through parliament. It has split the coalition, and even the Tory party. In my Telegraph column today,

As I said earlier, it now looks almost certain that Mitt Romney will clinch the nomination. The primaries may not quite be over yet, but it’s never too early to speculate about who he’ll pick to be his Vice Presidential candidate. Indeed, 2008 Republican nominee John McCain weighed in this morning. ‘I think it should be Sarah Palin,’ he chuckled. ‘We have a wealth of talent out there and I’m sure that Mitt will make the right choice,’ he added more seriously, before breaking into laughter again as he said ’Obviously, it’s a tough decision’. The favourite for the job is still Florida Senator Marco Rubio. His odds lengthened somewhat

Who on earth does Nicolas Sarkozy think he is? The answer, of course, is President of the French Republic. And from that position — and propelled by the Toulouse shootings and doubtless by the imminent election — he has chosen to expel a number of people from the Republic whose views, actions and teachings are deemed inimical to the State. Sarkozy gave the order yesterday and a couple of hours later the men were on planes back to their countries of origin. As the Times reports, the Algerian Islamist Ali Belhadad was flown back to Algiers and Almany Baradji, an imam, was sent back to Mali. The French Interior Ministry