Yanis varoufakis

On this week’s episode we’re looking at the Brexit situation as 2017 draws to a close. We’ll also be marvelling at all the wondrous, and infuriating, jargon to come from our EU withdrawal, and asking whether British aristocrats are being seduced by the new ‘glamocracy’. First up: the days might be getting shorter, but the crises faced by Britain’s Brexit negotiations seem never-ending. Ireland has been the sticking point this week, compounding a torrid month for Theresa May. Her task is Herculean, writes James Forsyth in this week’s magazine cover story, not because she herself is Hercules, but because her tasks are getting more and more difficult. Will the EU ever

Jeremy Corbyn’s eye-swivelling about-face on the EU – he once wanted to leave, now he wants to stay – has become a source of mirth for Eurosceptics and a sign of hope for Europhiles. To the anti-EU lobby, the fact that Corbyn voted against staying in the common market in the 1975 referendum and against EU treaties as an MP, yet now wants us all to vote to stay in, shows what a slippery character he is. For the Brussels-loving brigade it confirms that even the most heathen of EU haters can see the light. The ‘sinner who repents’ – actual words used in the Guardian‘s editorial on the newly

Oh dear. This week Jeremy Corbyn claimed that Yanis Varoufakis would advise Labour in ‘some capacity’. However, whatever capacity that will be, the message doesn’t appear to have got through to Varoufakis. After a week in which the former Syriza MP and Greek finance minister has been made fun of by senior Tories over the arrangement, Varoufakis seems to be at pains to play down any such role. In an interview with CNBC, Varoufakis states that he is not advising Corbyn — ‘I’m a full time active politician. As such, I could not be advising another politician’. Instead he says he is just talking to ‘anyone who wants to talk to me’. ‘So, I am talking to

Given that one of the major findings of the Beckett report into Labour’s general election loss was that the party were not trusted with the economy, it’s safe to say that John McDonnell has his work cut out when it comes to winning back voters on this issue. So, the latest individual to be appointed as an advisor to the party makes for a rather curious choice. Step forward Yanis Varoufakis. Yes, the former Syriza MP and Greek finance minister — who resigned from his role during negotiations for an EU bailout for the debt-ridden country — has been selected to advise Labour in ‘some capacity’. Speaking to the Islington Tribune, Jeremy Corbyn explained

Not often that I’d be inclined to agree with Syriza, but Yanis Varoufakis had a point last night when he questioned the degree of austerity that has happened in Britain. The Conservatives talk a good game, he said, but George Osborne’s cuts pretty much stopped after year one. I’m going to give a compliment to George Osborne and the Tory government. It’s going to create some consternation in the Tory part. He hasn’t really practiced austerity, he has talked about austerity and it didn’t work. He killed of the nascent recovery after 2009 with the little bit of austerity he did, but he stopped it.” The below figures, drawn from

The new leader walks across a bridge, in the dark, while the journalist asks him questions. He’s not shouting, this journalist; not like Michael Crick would be, all smug of face while shrieking ‘Isn’t it true you’re a terrible dickhead?’ None of that. Even so, the leader says not a word. He stares ahead, face stony, furious and fixed. Clip-clop go his feet. For two minutes. There’s a video. For two actual minutes. WATCH: This is what happened when I tried to ask #Corbyn about shadow cabinet. He accuses me of “bothering” him. pic.twitter.com/uyqQdwXYu3 — Darren McCaffrey (@DMcCaffreySKY) September 14, 2015 This was Jeremy Corbyn, being trailed across Westminster Bridge

It’s nearly 30 years since I worked in Japan, but I still have a few words of the language and a certain idea of how the place worked. The role of the business press, for example, was to trumpet export successes of Japanese corporations, and not to report shenanigans in which securities firms boosted prices of selected shares by pushing them to housewife investors, to generate campaign funds for favoured politicians. So I’m curious how the Financial Times will fare under its new owner Nikkei, the very Japanese media group that has paid £844 million to acquire the world’s most prestigious business title. Has the culture changed since my day?

So farewell, Yanis Varoufakis. You used to be Greece’s finance minister. Then you resigned, or were you sacked? You took control of the Greek economy six months ago when it was growing. Yes, honestly! Growth last year ran at 0.8 per cent, with forecasts of 3 per cent this year. The government had a primary budget surplus. Unemployment was falling. Until you came along. Varoufakis was a product of British universities. He read economics at Essex and mathematical statistics at Birmingham, returning to Essex to do a PhD in economics. With the benefit of his British university education he returned to Greece and, during his short time in office, obliterated the

As a long-time Eurosceptic, I should be happy about the Johnny-Come-Latelys now swelling the sceptic ranks. Following Euro-institutions’ wicked treatment of Greece, many European liberals have finally realised that Brussels might not be the hotbed of liberalism, internationalism and bunny rabbits they thought it was. So, bit by bit, they’re becoming the thing they once looked down upon, the thing they once forcefielded their dinner parties against: Eurosceptics. But I’m not feeling very welcoming to these latter-day doubters, currently live-tweeting their Euro-existential angst and clogging their newspaper columns with tortured questions about whether the EU really is a ‘great achievement of enlightened internationalism’. (Answer: no, you donuts.) For two reasons.

If Greece had voted ‘Yes’ to the austerity package proposed by its creditors, then there would have been a round of resignations at the top of Syriza. But this morning, even though the party is celebrating a ‘No’ vote, its finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has resigned. Writing on his blog, he explains that in order for the country to get a good deal that it can accept, he needs to let someone else take over: ‘Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister