Africa

John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, is our cover boy this week. It’s the Church of England Synod next week, word is that Rowan Williams will be standing down soon, and Rod Liddle is backing Sentamu as his successor. When planning the headline, I thought about calling him the ‘British Obama’. We didn’t use this, as it’s not a compliment — but if Britain is to have a figure who epitomises our country’s inherent tolerance and open-mindedness I’d pick Sentamu above anyone else in public life. If he was made Archbishop, I really don’t think there would be an uproar about the fact that he’s black, or even that he

Peter Kellner recently explained that the BBC licence fee becomes less popular if you describe it as an annual cost rather than as a daily cost. When people are told it costs £145.50 a year 27 per cent more people disapprove than approve. When they are told that’s only the equivalent of 40p a day there’s a striking turnaround: 8 per cent more people approve than disapprove. You see a similar thing with Britain’s development budget. When the aid budget is expressed in terms of billions of pounds, people object and they object strongly. When it’s presented in more human-sized ways it is much more popular. A recent ConservativeHome survey

The Egyptian revolution has pulled itself back from the brink in a quite an extraordinary way. Everyone feared a clash in Tahrir Square today but, so far, a deal struck between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the pro-democracy activists and the military is holding. Tahrir Square is teeming with white-clad Hajis. But everything is calm. The military gave into to a number of key demands from the protesters, including making some changes in the newly-promulgated electoral law. The Muslim Brotherhood feared being blamed by the military for a confrontation and being seen as too close to the Salafists. And the Facebook liberals wanted to keep the revolution united for now.

All of the buccaneering rhetoric has been sucked from the Libyan conflict this week, replaced with words of concession, compromise and caution. A few days ago, it was the news that — contrary to what they might previously have said — the government is prepared to let Gaddafi remain in the country after all. Today, William Hague deploys the same line in an interview with the Times (£), in which he also warns that there are “a lot of problems and even convulsions” to come in northern Africa. As it happens, the depressed mood of our foreign-policymakers reflects the tide of public opinion. Here, for CoffeeHousers’ benefit, are a couple