Eu politics

Sunday

William Cook

Sadness and dismay: how Spain views the Catalan independence vote

In Barcelona civilians have been giving red carnations to policemen (a symbolic echo of the 1974 revolution in Portugal) but here in Extremadura today’s Catalan Independence vote has been greeted with a mixture of sadness and dismay. In the historic city of Caceres, balconies are festooned with Spanish flags – part of a nationwide demonstration of national unity (local newspapers are reporting that more Spanish flags have been sold here in the last few days than when Spain won the World Cup). In stark contrast to prosperous Catalonia, Extremadura has always been one of the poorest parts of Spain. A parched wilderness of scrub and stunted oaks and gnarled old

Saturday

Charles Moore

Juncker’s EU vision won’t end well

You can see why Theresa May said in Florence that the British wished the European Union well in its plans for greater integration, while choosing a different path ourselves. There is no point in causing antagonism over what we cannot prevent. But in fact greater European integration will do great harm to all Europeans, including us. The rise of AfD in the German elections was caused almost entirely by Mrs Merkel’s extraordinary decision to admit a million Middle Eastern migrants in a year. The spread of the Schengen area — proposed by Jean-Claude Juncker — combined with recrudescent migrant pressure can only confirm freedom of movement as the impossible issue

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

The West is delusional about de-radicalising jihadists

The error of Emma Kelty, the one that cost the British adventurer her brave life on the banks of the Amazon, was a failing all too common in Europeans: she had too much good faith. Raised in comfort and educated in compassion, Kelty had little concept of the savagery that lurks in some souls. Displaying a mix of naivety and conceit, she ignored warnings from villagers and went on her way, even posting a joke on social media mocking the locals’ concern for her welfare. Two days later she was murdered by a gang of ‘water rats’, young men with no regard for human life. What happened to Kelty is little different

Wednesday

William Cook

Alternative für Deutschland’s success tells the tale of Germany’s forgotten East

Back in the early 1990s, a few years after the Berlin Wall came down, I went back to the house in Dresden where my father was born. The house was on the outskirts so my father and grandmother survived the bombing – they got the last train out of Dresden before the Red Army arrived. The family I found there had been there since 1945. They’d been expelled from Silesia when Stalin handed the region over to Poland, and had ended up in Dresden along with so many other displaced Germans. They’d been living there for half a century, three generations under the same roof. They didn’t own this house

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Donald Tusk’s Brexit warning shows the EU is confident it has the upper hand

Only last month, the Government was still keeping up the pretence of being optimistic that Brexit trade talks with the EU could start by October. Now the hope of doing so is fading fast. The European Council president Donald Tusk used a trip to Downing Street today to deliver a stark message: ‘there is not sufficient progress yet’. “No sufficient progress yet but we’ll work on it” – @eucopresident Donald Tusk on #Brexit talks with PM @theresa_may https://t.co/02trD6qbWH pic.twitter.com/M0VzhWyDIp — BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) September 26, 2017 This is a blow to the Government, with ministers now resigning themselves for the next phase of trade talks being pushed back, possibly until Christmas

Monday

Douglas Murray

A beginner’s guide to the AfD

The German public have, as predicted, kept ahold of nurse. But it is the breakthrough of the AfD into the German Parliament that is causing headlines around the world. Of course the four-year old party’s electoral success is also unsurprising. In elections last September the AfD were elected to representative roles in most of the country’s regional assemblies and beat Merkel’s party into third place in her own constituency. Nevertheless, yesterday’s electoral breakthrough is stunning and the success of this four-year-old party is among other things now causing a predictable rash of 1930s analogies. In a media landscape where very few papers can afford any foreign coverage at all, and

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The real winner of Germany’s election is Jean-Claude Juncker

Even if Germany had Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, Angela Merkel would be struggling this morning to form a government. With 33 per cent of the vote, her Christian Democrat and Christian Social alliance has suffered its weakest showing in 68 years – tempered only by the equal failure of the socialists. It might have been a moment for Emmanuel Macron to seize the crown of de facto leader of Europe were it not that he, too, suffered a lower-profile though no less significant electoral reversal over the weekend – in Senate elections the La Republique En Marche party won only 23 of the 171 seats up for grabs. With his

William Cook

Germany’s shy AfD voters hand the Bundesrepublik a seismic shock

The German Embassy in London threw an election party yesterday, but as the guests gathered round the big screens to watch the exit poll the mood became subdued. Of course diplomats are supposed to be neutral and even German journalists strive to be objective, but off the record everyone here in Belgrave Square was saying the same thing: ‘Anyone but AfD.’ Alternative für Deutschland, Germany’s anti-immigration party, has been a thorn in Angela Merkel’s side ever since it was founded four years ago. In Germany’s last election, in 2013, it polled 4.7 per cent – just missing out on the 5 per cent required for representation in the Bundestag, German’s

Sunday

Philip Sime

Merkel limps to victory as AfD surges in German elections

Angela Merkel has won, for the fourth time, but on her party’s worst election result since 1949. Her main rivals did just as badly and the main winner looks like Alternative for Germany (AfD), now Germany’s no3 party. Here’s the national picture: So the centre-left Social Democratic Party is heading for just 20pc, its worst result since the Second World War.  Martin Schulz, SPD leader, said it has been “a difficult and bitter day for German social democracy”. By which he means that AfD are set to break through into the Bundestag with 13.5 per cent of the vote, a result that differs sharply in east and west. In the former East Germany, AfD is the second-largest party with

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit confusion continues

One of the daily rituals in British politics at the moment is each of the main parties sending out press releases about how ‘hopelessly divided’ the other is on Brexit. There are so many facets on which politicians can bicker that this ritual won’t end with the negotiations, or the transition period (however long that ends up being) or indeed with the eventual relationship with the EU that Britain settles into. “There will be a lot of movement” of workers after Brexit – @jeremycorbyn tells #marr pic.twitter.com/qn38wWGQks — The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) September 24, 2017 Today Labour is ‘hopelessly divided’ over the question of single market membership and freedom

Saturday

Philip Sime

‘Long and vain’: Europe’s press reacts to Theresa May’s Florence speech

Following months of tortured negotiation between the UK and the EU, Theresa May delivered her speech in Florence yesterday in an attempt to break the Brexit deadlock. Mrs May proposed a two-year transition period during which Britain would retain its access to the single market and confirmed that the UK Government will honour its commitments to the EU budget. She also spoke of the ‘shared challenges and opportunities’ that face the UK and the EU in a bid to build consensus. Here’s how Europe’s press reacted to the long-awaited speech. France France’s centre-left daily, Le Monde, agrees with Theresa May that Brexit negotiations can be extended beyond March 2019, however, points

William Cook

Britain may have lost faith – but Germany still believes in the EU

Theresa May’s Florence speech may have been welcomed with cautious optimism by Michel Barnier, but the reaction in Germany has been decidedly more downbeat. ‘In substance, May is bringing no more clarity,’ tweeted German MEP Manfred Weber. ‘I am even more concerned now.’ Weber is Chairman of the centre-right European Peoples Party, the biggest grouping in the European Parliament, and a rising star in Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. So does he speak for Merkel? Well, that would be pushing it, but while ‘Mutti’ maintains her deafening silence about all matters Brexit, it’s probably the closest we’re going to get. ‘The clock is ticking and time is running faster than

Steerpike Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg sees red

Although Theresa May did manage to prevent a revolt breaking out after her speech in Florence yesterday, that’s not to say anyone in Cabinet is particularly pleased by her words. The Prime Minister did buy herself more time – but failed to clearly say where she what direction she was planning to go in that period. On the backbenches, Conservative MPs have less reason to hold their tongue over such concerns – as Jacob Rees-Mogg demonstrated on Newsnight. The Brexiteer MP has been the first out of the blocks to express concern over what May said – and the red lines she may have crossed: ‘I have three concerns about

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The big questions Theresa May must answer

Theresa May’s speech in Florence was fine as far as it went, I say in The Sun this morning. A time limited transition is a sensible way to smooth out Brexit. But May didn’t answer the really big questions in this speech: what kind of future relationship with the EU does the UK want? How does it think regulatory divergence should be managed? The problem is that the Cabinet is divided on these questions—and neither side is strong enough to win the argument. So, Boris and Gove can stop Hammond and Heywood from getting what they want. But they can’t win the debate themselves. The result is a stalemate. This

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Is my euroscepticism partly down to a delayed teenage rebellion?

On Tuesday, for the first — and undoubtedly last — time in my life, I found myself mounting the platform at the Liberal Democrat conference. This was because my father, Richard Moore, was receiving a richly deserved award there. He is 85, so I was assisting him up the steps in Bournemouth. Part of his distinguished service to his party consists in the fact — surely unique in human history — that he has attended every Liberal annual conference since 1953: these shows have taken up a year of his life. He told me that he spoke at the first one he attended, in Llandudno, in favour of what was

Sarah Sands

The Brexiteers own optimism just as Remainers claim reason

On Brexit bias, tone has become almost as important as argument. I notice that cheerfulness can grate on some, who regard it as political comment. When the Australian high commissioner asked on the Today programme why Brits were so gloomy, it was categorised as an anti-Remain intervention. It is true that whoever came up with the word ‘Remoaners’ delivered a lasting blow. The Brexiteers own optimism just as Remainers claim reason. I want to try to tell the story of Brexit through concrete examples rather than positions. We looked at the fashion industry the other day and the designer Patrick Grant made a simple case. When he is making a

Friday

Robert Peston

May’s Florence speech is a blueprint for keeping Britain in the EU as an ‘associate’ member

I am not a conspiracy theorist. But if I were, I might conclude that the prime minister’s speech in Florence represents the victory of Whitehall, led by the cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, over the arch Brexiteers in the cabinet. Because although it is spectacularly short on detail, it does not represent a clean break with the EU. And it seems to propose some kind of associate membership of the EU for Britain as the long-term status quo. May proposes a new trading relationship with the EU that is neither membership of the European Economic Area and the single market or a conventional free trade arrangement. She wants our future

James Forsyth James Forsyth

May’s Brexit speech leaves some key questions unanswered

Theresa May’s speech in Florence set out more detail on the government’s position on transition. But it did not answer the question of what the UK’s final relationship with the EU should be, and how the UK thinks regulatory divergence between it and the EU should be managed. May’s transition proposal, though she still prefers the term implementation period, would see the UK continue to obey all EU rules and regulations and accept free movement, albeit with registrations of new arrivals. In effect, Britain would be staying in the EU but as a non-voting member. She suggested that this transition last two years. But she also said it should go

James Kirkup James Kirkup

A Brexit transition deal could make things worse

As the sort of treacherous, Britain-hating invertebrate who betrayed his Queen and country by voting Remain and still doesn’t believe leaving the EU will make us happier or richer, I should welcome Theresa May’s Florence speech. It is, after all, confirmation that the British Government has – far, far later than it should have done – accepted political, diplomatic and economic reality. Remember, not too long ago we were being told that Britain would pay nothing to the EU after March 2019, that there would be a complete end to ECJ jurisdiction, that ‘no deal’ was nothing to fear and that those semi-mythical German carmakers would force the EU to give

The Spectator

Theresa May’s Florence speech on Brexit, full text

It’s good to be here in this great city of Florence today at a critical time in the evolution of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. It was here, more than anywhere else, that the Renaissance began – a period of history that inspired centuries of creativity and critical thought across our continent and which in many ways defined what it meant to be European. A period of history whose example shaped the modern world. A period of history that teaches us that when we come together in a spirit of ambition and innovation, we have it within ourselves to do great things. That shows us