Austria

Sunday

Matthew Goodwin

What drives populism?

What has led to the rise of populism? The conventional answer involves inequality, flattening wages – and general economic malaise. In Europe, one year after the vote for Brexit, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times claimed that the global financial crisis had ‘opened the door to a populist surge’. In America, thousands rushed out to buy J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a coming of age story about down-and-outs in poverty stricken Kentucky, as a blueprint on the Trump voter. Yet this take is deeply misleading. If populists only required economic hardship to thrive then they would be rocking in Portugal and Spain while collapsing in states that have had some of

Friday

Katherine Forster

Skiing with kids doesn’t have to be ruinously expensive

One day in February each year, my three children come home from school in London, but go to sleep in Germany. We pile into our old Rover 75 Estate, take the tunnel to Calais, then drive through France, Belgium and the Netherlands before collapsing into bed in Aachen: five countries in an afternoon. The next day we cruise down the Autobahn to Munich or Salzburg, potter around the city and have an early night. The following morning we are on the ski slopes, hours before the plane gang arrive. For a ten-night ski holiday in February half-term, the most expensive ski week of the year, our total spend is less

Saturday

William Cook

Populism is making a comeback in Europe, and Austria is leading the way

Last year’s Austrian presidential election looked like a turning point for the European Union. Alexander Van der Bellen, a soft left Eurofederalist (narrowly) defeated Eurosceptic Norbert Hofer, of the hard right Austrian Freedom Party, and Continental Europhiles went into 2017 with fresh hope that they might halt the tidal wave of Brexit, before it engulfed the EU. Sure enough, this year France and Holland have both returned Europhile candidates, and Germany looks set to follow suit. The tide had turned, the pundits said. 2016 had been the high water mark of Populism. 2017 would be the year the EU fought back. However, the tide in Europe may now be about

Thursday

Charlotte Moore

Old, unhappy, far off things

August Geiger led an unremarkable life. Born in 1926, the third of ten children of a Catholic farming family in western Austria, the most unusual thing about him was his unwillingness ever to leave Wolfurt, the village where he had grown up. He built a house there, for his schoolteacher wife and their children, and refused ever to go on holiday. His wife had suggested that they go on a walk and call it their honeymoon, but August rejected even this slight change in his routine. It was, therefore, particularly poignant that when he developed Alzheimer’s disease, August’s dominant obsession became his desire to go home. Nothing could convince him

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Is time up for the EU?

Something is happening across Europe, says the Sun – but EU leaders are still intent on burying their heads in the sand. Following Matteo Renzi’s defeat in the Italian referendum on Sunday and far-right Eurosceptic candidate Norbert Hofer’s good showing in the Austrian election, it’s clear that ‘voters across Europe are increasingly rejecting the EU’s self-interested ruling consensus,’ the paper says. But while the outcome for the continent does not look good, the signs of instability in Europe can arguably be only a good omen for Theresa May as she looks to negotiate Britain’s Brexit deal. The Sun argues that this instability ‘strengthens Theresa May’s hand’ and suggests that the increasing

Monday

William Cook

Thanks to Brexit and Trump, Austria lost its appetite for political upheaval

Austria’s presidential election has been overshadowed by Matteo Renzi’s dramatic defeat in the Italian referendum, but Alexander Van der Bellen’s victory is significant nonetheless. It confirms there are now two Europes, north and south. Southern members like Italy are becoming increasingly hostile towards the EU, while northern members like Austria will do (almost) anything to keep the EU on track. So why did Austria buck the American trend, and chose a Euro-friendly head of state? Churchill said Russia was a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He might have been talking about Austria today. The Austrian capital, ‘Red’ Vienna, has always been socially liberal and politically leftist. The

Saturday

James Forsyth

Austria and Italian voters could plunge the EU into crisis

Voters in Austria and Italy head to the polls tomorrow and could plunge the EU into a political and economic crisis, as I say in The Sun today. In Austria, the candidate of a genuinely far-right party—its first leader was a former SS officer—could become president. If the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer does win, and the race is too close to predict with any confidence, it’d show that the very extremist forces that the European project was meant to crush are now on the rise—and in part, because of the EU’s own failings. But it is the Italian referendum that could have the more immediate consequences. Italy bans polls just

Thursday

Simon Heffer

Revolution was in the air

The Penguin History of Europe reaches its seventh volume (out of nine) with Richard J. Evans’s thorough and wide-ranging work on the 99 years from 1815 to 1914. It comes between two formidable books by formidable scholars: his fellow Cambridge historian Tim Blanning took the story from the close of the Thirty Years’ War to Waterloo, and the Hitler authority Ian Kershaw covered 1914 to 1949. Each of those volumes is much as one would expect of the author: Blanning’s shows his background as a polymath, and his expertise in the histories of more than one major European power; Kershaw’s puts the rise of the Third Reich and its consequences

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 16 June 2016

Houses of ill repute The Austrian interior minister has suggested that his government will demolish the house where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889. Some other properties which have succumbed to the architectural equivalent of the death penalty: — 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, home of Fred West, was demolished in 1996 and turned into a pathway into the next street. — 5 College Close, Soham, where Ian Huntley murdered the schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, was razed in 2004 and is now a patch of grass. — The cottage in Ceinws, Powys, where Mark Bridger murdered April Jones was demolished in 2014. — 10 Rillington Place, home to the serial killer

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Voters have no time for the flaccid centre

A depression has settled on the Liddle household ever since Norbert Hofer narrowly failed in his bid to become the president of Austria. I like a man who keeps a Glock pistol in his jacket pocket, and there is something noble in the cut of his jib. Norbert was thwarted by the voters of Red Vienna and the usual fraudulent postal ballots, most of which will have come from immigrants, as happens time and again in this country. So he lost. Instead the Austrians are saddled with a lunatic, Alexander Van der Bellen, a hand-wringing Green halfwit representing what George Orwell was habituated to call the ‘pansy left’. Interestingly, both

Toby Young Toby Young

The only Eurosceptic in the room

I was in Paris last week to take part in an EU referendum debate at Sciences Po, a French university that specialises in international relations. It’s not an exaggeration to describe Sciences Po as a finishing school for Europe’s political elite. Twenty-eight heads of state have studied or taught there, its graduates include five of the last six French presidents and the current dean is Enrico Letta, a former prime minister of Italy. My fellow panellists included Ana Palacio, the Spanish minister of foreign affairs from 2002 to 2004, and Hubert Vedrine, the French minister of foreign affairs from 1997 to 2002. I think it’s safe to say I was

Monday

Ed West

The working-class vote explains the rise of Austria’s far-right

So Austria has a new leader. The radical leftist Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Green party leader running as an independent, has just edged out radical right-wing politician Norbert Hofer in one of the closest elections in European history. After postal votes were counted, Van der Bellen had 50.2 per cent and Hofer 49.8 per cent – a margin of just 0.4 percentage points. Most of the continent will probably breath a sigh of relief while still being disturbed at the size of the radical right vote; more shocking, perhaps, is the fact that among the working-class, there was almost unanimous support for Hofer, with the Freedom Party receiving 86 per

Thursday

Jan Moir

Diary – 17 March 2016

To while away the time at airports, I like to spot celebrities. But pickings have been slim. Where is everyone? On Saturday morning the only face I see is ex-Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, guiltily bolting a free bacon roll in the BA executive lounge at Heathrow. Check your privilege, Jim! To be fair, he was wearing a tracksuit, so I guess that’s OK. Part of the pain of being a newspaper feature writer is the constant demand to have your photograph taken. It’s hideous in every way. I don’t think I would have agreed to write about the Viva Mayr spa clinic in Austria if I’d known a snapper

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Sins of the fathers | 19 November 2015

This is a documentary in which three men travel across Europe together, but they’re not pleasurably interrailing, even though there are often times they probably wished they were. For two of them, Niklas and Horst, the journey is about confronting their fathers, who were high-ranking Nazi officials responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, while for the third, the eminent British human-rights lawyer Philippe Sands, it means visiting the place where his grandfather’s family was exterminated. This place, Galicia, which straddles the modern-day border between Poland and Ukraine, is the exact place my own grandmother’s family were murdered. Her father lost every one of his seven siblings. She lost

Thursday

Michael Henderson

My Schubert cruise was a transport of delight

‘Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions to all musicians, appear and inspire…’ Auden wrote his words for the young Benjamin Britten, who was born on St Cecilia’s Day, and who set them to music, but his poem would also be a tribute to the composer that Britten admired above all others except Mozart. Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, and died there 31 years later. ‘Let us honour the memory of a great man,’ he said, raising a glass after attending Beethoven’s funeral in March 1827, ‘and drink to the man who shall be next.’ Schubert died in November the following year, having heard only one concert in his

Thursday

James Forsyth

Merkel’s folly

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/merkelstragicmistake/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Holly Baxter debate Merkel’s offer to Syrian refugees” startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]Of all the irresponsible decisions taken in recent years by European politicians, few will cause as much human misery as Angela Merkel’s plan to welcome Syrian refugees to Germany. Hailed as enlightened moral leadership, it is in fact the result of panic and muddled thinking. Her pronouncements will lure thousands more into the hands of unscrupulous people-traffickers. Her insistence that the rest of the continent should share the burden will add political instability to the mix. Merkel has made a dire situation worse. On Tuesday last week, Germany declared that any Syrian who reaches the

Monday

Steerpike

David Cameron admits he cries at the Sound of Music

This morning the PM turned on the passion in a shouty performance in front of a room full of accountants. Complaints from the lower orders about a lack of zing to the campaign have clearly reached the top of the Tory tree as the new emotional Prime Minister was not done there. Cameron went on to admit in an interview with Classic FM that he cries when he watches the Sound of Music, when those brave Austrian patriots declare their love for their national flower: ‘I do cry in films, The Sound Of Music. As soon as we get on to Edelweiss I’m reaching for the Kleenex.’ With the songs lyrics including the line ‘Bless

Sunday

Lloyd Evans

When Arnie met Ross

Arnie mania struck the capital last night. A thousand fans crowded into the Lancaster London Hotel to see Schwarzenegger in conversation with Jonathan Ross. He came bounding on stage, in a Club Class business suit, and peered out at us with a glazed, lipless smile. He has dark tufty hair, an ochre tan, and a hint of cruelty about the anvil jawline and the small unflickering eyes. A deferential Ross gave him an effusive welcome. They sat opposite each other, like bores in a Pall Mall club, in matching armchairs upholstered in blood-red velvet. Arnie compels our attention because his career is unparalleled. He began as a bodybuilder which is

Friday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: An accent of prejudice

From The Spectator, 31 October 1914: We regret to record that a gallant and patriotic sailor, Prince Louis of Battenberg, has fallen a victim to the foolish prejudice that people with foreign names and of foreign birth cannot be loyal British subjects. It was announced on Friday that Prince Louis of Battenberg had resigned the office of First Sea Lord in a letter to Mr. Winston Churchill, the candour and simplicity of which do him the greatest credit. The First Lord’s reply will interest the public from its mention of the very large number of capital ships and naval craft of all descriptions which are now falling into the lap

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Fischer’s is like visiting Vienna without having to go to Austria (thank God)

Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a concentration camp, and because it is in Marylebone High Street, not Linz. It is the new restaurant from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who opened the Wolseley, the Delaunay and Brasserie Zédel, and it is more profound and lovely than any of them. There is always a clock in a Corbin and King restaurant, a big old clock from some fairytale train station, poised over the clientele as they stuff and age; for remembrance of mortality, I guess. Or maybe they just like big clocks? In any case, the guests