Society

Boris Johnson may have received a lukewarm reaction from Emmanuel Macron to his emphatic election victory last month but one French politician was cock-a-hoop at the result. Shortly after the scale of the Conservative win was clear, Marine Le Pen tweeted her delight, declaring that ‘the crushing victory of Boris Johnson shows that neither manoeuvring nor intimidation can sway a people who have decided to take their destiny in their own hands.’ Other than finding the EU objectionable, Johnson and Le Pen have little in common and economically, the Frenchwoman’s desire to nationalise banks is more in line with Jeremy Corbyn’s worldview. But the triumph of the Conservative leader has been

As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, here is an overview of what to expect from European politics in 2020. 1. Brexit – or at least a ‘beta version’ of it – will happen At the end of January, the UK will finally leave the EU, even if for the rest of 2020 it will continue to outsource its regulation-making capacity and trade policy to Brussels, in return for full EU market access. Boris Johnson has promised not to extend this transitional arrangement beyond 2020. A decision on that is due by the end of June. There are two schools of thought as to what the UK

The defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party has afforded little respite to British Jews. Residents of Hampstead and Belsize Park woke on Sunday to storefronts and a synagogue daubed in the Star of David and ‘9/11’, apparently invoking the conspiracy theory that Jews were behind the September 11 attacks. December has been sweeps month for anti-Semitism across Europe. Two teenagers were charged after allegedly beating a rabbi in Stamford Hill while shouting ‘kill Jews’. A man was arrested on suspicion of racially or religiously aggravated assault after a United Synagogue official was attacked near his east London home. An Israeli student was assaulted on the Paris Metro for speaking

Emmanuel Macron’s 2020 ‘to do’ list is nothing if not challenging. Starting with the domestic it offers no respite in its international agenda. Nation-wide transport strikes opposed to the President’s root and branch pension reform have been paralysing France for 23 days, now longer than the legendary 1995 strike that forced President Chirac to withdraw his pension reform. Neither side looks ready to concede and for the moment public opinion supports the strikers. The economic costs are considerable; for France’s national railway, SNCF, the cost is put at nearly half a billion euros while the broader economic impact on tourism and lost sales during the Christmas period will hit French

Jolyon Maugham QC got up early on Boxing Day morning, put on his wife’s satin kimono, went into his garden and bludgeoned a fox to death with a baseball bat. He then announced what he had done on Twitter. There is no mystery about why he killed the fox. It had come to eat his chickens, which he keeps in his central London garden. It became trapped in the chicken-netting. Rather than try to disentangle it or call the RSPCA, he killed it with the baseball bat that he keeps at home, mainly to deter intruders. I doubt that he relished the task of killing the fox, and he tweeted,