Angela merkel

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 4, in which the future foreign secretary Boris Johnson was named as the winner of Douglas Murray’s ‘President Erdogan Offensive Poetry’ competition I’m pleased to announce that we have a winner of The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition, and here it is: There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn’t even stop to thankera. The author of this winning entry is former Mayor of London and chief Brexiteer, Boris Johnson MP. The Spectator Podcast: Douglas Murray

That the Tunisian terrorist who slaughtered 12 people in Berlin on Monday was even in Europe, let alone able to move about Europe with ease, is a scandal. It shows that the policy of the European Union and its member nations on the migrant crisis is a complete and dangerous failure. The collective refusal of the European liberal elite to face up to this fact promises further disaster. Anis Amri, 24, had no legal let alone moral right to be in Europe, and yet he had been here since 2011 when he arrived in a migrant boat on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. Shortly afterwards, he was jailed for four

German party politics has been overshadowed by yesterday’s atrocity in Berlin. But in light of this tragic event, which Angela Merkel has said was probably a terrorist attack, party politics actually matters more than ever. Increasingly, it seems next year’s Bundestag elections will be the defining event of 2017, not just for Germany but for Europe – and last week’s change of government in Berlin was a sign of things to come. On the face of it, ‘Social Democrats take control of Berlin’s city council’ looks like an inconsequential story. Berlin has always been an SPD stronghold after all. However, there’s more to this story than meets the eye. Before September’s

Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leader-ship mess that followed had both its dramatic and its comic elements. My phone never stopped ringing with Eurosceptics keen to tell me why their contribution to a meeting that had previously escaped my notice was the decisive factor in securing victory. But when a vote is so close — 52 per cent to 48 per cent — then it would not have taken much to push the result the other way. Donald Trump’s victory adds some credence to the idea that Brexit was pre–ordained, part of a wave of history. But the campaign turned on

Shock news! Hold the (virtual) front page! Martin Schulz, arch bogeyman of every British Brexiteer – and even a few Remainers – is leaving the EU. No, Schulz hasn’t renounced his support for ‘ever closer’ European Union. Rather, he’s stepping down as President of the European Parliament to stand as an MP for the SPD, Germany’s Social Democrats. Why should British voters care? Because Schulz has been widely tipped as a potential leader of the SPD, the only party with a real chance of beating Angela Merkel’s CDU in next year’s Bundestag elections. And the winner of that election will steer EU policy throughout the Brexit process, and beyond. Second

In the run-up to the referendum, the Treasury warned that unemployment would rise by half-a-million. Today, this prophecy comes in for criticism in the papers following yesterday’s news that the number of Brits out of work had tumbled to an 11-year low. It’s not only Project Fear which gets a hard time in the editorials though. The moaning ‘anti-Brexit mob’ are also criticised – while the Guardian savages Boris Johnson for making a ‘fool of himself’. The Sun launches an attack on the moaning ‘anti-Brexit mob’ in its leader this morning, saying that it seems that the better the economic outlook since the referendum ‘the louder the caterwauling’ from those unhappy with the

David Davis batted away demands for parliament to be given a vote on the timing of Article 50 or the government’s negotiating stance. Whenever his opponents—who included Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg—brought up how Davis himself had previously said there should be a white paper on the government’s negotiating stance, Davis side-stepped the issue. He also claimed that his views on how the executive should be accountable to parliament hadn’t changed, but that there was a difference between scrutiny and micro-managing. What the government wanted out of the Brexit talks, said Davis, was control of the UK’s borders and laws, co-operation on justice and security matters that is at least

A year from now, 60 million Germans go to the polls in the most important general election in mainland Europe for a generation. The result will define German — and European — politics for the next four years. There are huge questions to be resolved, from the refugee crisis to the financial crisis, but right now the question in Germany is: will Mutti run again? Angela Merkel’s nickname, Mutti (Mummy) is a memento of happier times. A year ago, her position as matriarch of the Bundesrepublik seemed unassailable. And then, last September, she opened Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of fleeing Syrians. Over a million refugees arrived last year.