Eu

Wednesday

Richard Ekins

The government is right to turn its back on the European Court of Justice

A key question in the Brexit talks is how any deal between the EU and UK will be upheld. The government has begun to address this today, publishing a paper on enforcement and dispute resolution. One thing is clear: ministers are committed to extricating the UK from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In fact, the main point of the paper could be summed up as spelling out why Britain cannot agree to the ECJ being the arbiter of any Brexit deal. The government is entirely right about this. Sovereign states do not and should not enter into agreements in which the meaning and effect of the

Tuesday

Mark Nayler

Catalonia’s fight for independence is turning nasty

As if the issue of Catalonian secession wasn’t fraught enough, some of its most committed advocates are now arguing that the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last week demonstrate the region’s readiness for independence. Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, for his part, has suggested that the vehicle attacks that left 15 dead require regional differences to be cast aside in the battle against jihadism. The debate about Catalonian independence has always been a heated, complex one in Spain. Now that the tragic events of last week are being introduced into the discussion, it will become even more so. Some of the more fervent supporters of Catalonian secession have been particularly active on social media

Monday

Camilla Swift

Considering retiring abroad? Don’t forget about your state pension

Retiring to a warmer, more exotic, country is something that many of us dream of doing – and sooner, rather than later. One in ten people over the age of fifty are currently considering retiring abroad, with the main reasons being a better lifestyle, a cheaper way of life and of course, better weather than the UK. Who can blame us for wanting to enjoy some sunshine in our old age? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most popular retirement destination for Brits is still Spain, with other locations closer to home – France, Portugal, Italy and South East Europe – following close behind in the popularity stakes. But growing old abroad can

Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Britain – not Brussels – is doing all the innovative thinking on Brexit

We will be hopelessly out-witted by wily Brussels negotiators. We are unprepared for the scale of the task. We are about to be humiliated as we discover just how weak our hand is against a unified European Union that is determined to punish us for our foolishness in leaving the world’s largest trading bloc. The hardcore Remainer commentary on our negotiations over Brexit is so familiar it just about writes itself. But in the last few days, there has been an interesting twist to that script. The UK, far from being the confused, divided and weak partner is the side coming up with the interesting innovative ideas. And it is

Friday

Mark Nayler

Spain faces up to Europe’s new terror threat

In the early hours of this morning, as police in Barcelona continued to piece together the terrible events on Las Ramblas yesterday afternoon, another vehicle attack occurred in the seaside town of Cambrils, a popular tourist destination about 75 miles south of the Catalonian capital. Five men, some wearing fake explosive belts, drove into crowds and injured seven people, including a police officer, before their car flipped over. Whilst trying to escape the scene, four of the suspects were shot dead on site and one died later after being arrested. Spanish police say that the Cambrils attack is linked to yesterday’s incident in the Catalonian capital. Vehicle attacks, it seems, constitute a

Thursday

William Cook

Germany’s booming economy paves the way for another Merkel victory

With the German elections now barely a month away, the Bundesrepublik remains beset by worries about terrorism and immigration. Yet, just like the river in the song, the German economic juggernaut just keeps rolling along. The latest GDP figures are even better than expected – 0.6 per cent growth in the second quarter – the best year on year rate since 2014, and the twelfth consecutive quarter in which the German economy has grown. Other Eurozone countries have reported healthy figures, too. France grew by 0.5 per cent, and Spain reported a rise of 0.9 per cent – its strongest result for three years (the British economy grew by 0.3

Saturday

Richard Ekins

The panic about a Brexit legal limbo isn’t justified

In widely reported remarks earlier this week, Lord Neuberger, the outgoing President of the Supreme Court, called for Parliament to tell our judges very clearly how rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) are to be dealt with after Brexit. Lord Neuberger’s concern is to avoid judges being left without guidance, required simply to do as they see best, which might invite the unfair charge that they are choosing to make law, whereas in fact they would have been left with no alternative. This concern to leave political questions to the political authorities, echoed in a recent speech by the outgoing Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas,

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s terror threat hasn’t gone away

The latest attack in France couldn’t have come at a worse time for the government. On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and his ministers dined at the Élysée Palace as the guests of their president, a “moment of conviviality” before they all head off on holidays today. It’s been a trying few weeks for them, what with Emmanuel Macron’s plummeting popularity amid a series of PR disasters for his inexperienced En Marche! party and a spot of R&R is just what everyone needs. Instead, this morning brought news of yet another outrage in the French capital. Fortunately, casualties were light. Of the six soldiers struck by a BMW outside their barracks in

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: Jean-Claude Juncker’s £23,500 private jet jaunt

Jean-Claude Juncker is a man with few friends in Britain – and that’s before his latest expenses were published following a lengthy fight. It’s fair to say the documents, which were released today, won’t do the president of the European Commission any favours. Juncker claimed thousands of euros worth of expenses for various trips during the first three months of 2016 alone. But the most eye-watering expenditure came on his official visit to Rome in February 2016. As well as claiming £450 (€500) for his accommodation during the one-night trip, Juncker billed taxpayers a whopping £23,500 (€26,000) for a private jet. Mr S. thinks the next time Juncker makes a

Tuesday

Camilla Swift

Would you really want to be a farmer in 2017?

What does being ‘a farmer’ mean to you? For those that have experienced it, the job – or lifestyle, really – the answer might be early mornings, long days, and little pay. Others imagine farming to be more like living the good life. Perhaps that’s the reason why a recent report, commissioned by the Prince’s Countryside Trust, revealed that twenty five per cent of adults questioned quite like the sound of giving up their day job and taking up farming instead. The economics of the profession might make them think again, however. The most startling fact from the report is the gap between the general public’s estimates of a farmer’s

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

France is getting fed up with Brigitte Macron

Having recently hosted Bono and Rihanna and taken centre stage during Donald Trump’s visit to France, Brigitte Macron now has a new role to keep herself busy. The French President’s wife was named last week as the godmother of the first baby panda born in a French zoo. Macron said she was ‘very happy’ to be asked. But, increasingly, France is not feeling her joy and there is growing resentment at her presence in the Élysée Palace. An online petition launched two weeks ago by the artist Thierry Paul Valette opposing the creation of a formal role for Brigitte Macron as First Lady has been signed by nearly 200,000 people. The petition says

Sunday

Martin Vander Weyer

Why fudging Ireland’s Brexit border issue can only mean Troubles ahead

The question of what kind of border after Brexit will exist between Northern Ireland and the Republic will, I predict, become a very thorny one indeed as negotiations crawl into the autumn. Talk of ‘putting the border in the Irish Sea’ — somehow leaving the north inside the EU for customs and immigration purposes, but cut off from European funding — was a red herring that provoked DUP tantrums, but more significant was the weekend outburst from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. As far as his government is concerned ‘there shouldn’t be an economic border… and we’re not going to help [the British] design some sort of border that we don’t believe

Thursday

Taki

High life | 3 August 2017

I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super yachts that terrorise sea life. In fact, dolphins escorted us in to Kyparissi, a tiny village on the eastern Peloponnese 60 kms from Sparta, my grandmother’s birthplace. German and Spartan; not a bad combination, especially if one thinks democracy is a biological contradiction, which I do. Just look at the Remoaners and you’ll see what I mean. Back in the good old days, we Athenians knew how to practise real democracy. All Athenian males over 18, irrespective of wealth or status, had the right to attend the Assembly, which met

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Italy’s patience with the migrant charities is wearing thin

What to do about the charities who send boats to bring asylum seekers to the Italian coast? Save the Children and seven others have been doing this for some time now, to the alarm of the Italian government. It suspects that some NGOs are colluding with the people-traffickers, and undermining attempts by the government to shut down a business that has already led to 2,200 deaths this year alone. Nicholas Farrell looked at this in a recent cover story for The Spectator. The NGOs say they are saving lives – which is of course true. But the question is whether, by helping the people traffickers in the final leg of

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Losing our religion

Sir James MacMillan’s European Requiem, performed at the Proms on Sunday, isn’t about Brexit. The composer had to make this clear in a Radio 3 interview just before the broadcast, because the BBC was just itching to cast the work — a melancholy score, despite its thunderous drumbeats — as a lament for us leaving the EU. That would have been neat, given that the second half of the concert consisted of Beethoven’s Ninth, whose ‘Ode to Joy’ has been clumsily appropriated by Brussels. Incidentally, some Remainers in the audience chattered through the symphony’s first three movements, impatient for their Big Tune. I don’t know if there were any ancient

Wednesday

Mark Nayler

Catalonia’s quest for independence takes another surreal turn

In Spain, the fight over Catalonian independence has just taken a surreal new turn. Catalonian president Carles Puigdemont – a passionate secessionist who has said he is prepared to go to prison for his cause – recently announced that there will be an independence referendum in his region on October 1st. His pledge prompted the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, to declare, in full crusader-for-democracy mode, that “the government of Spain is going to defend the law” and prevent the vote from happening.    Would that be the same government currently implicated in one of the biggest corruption cases in recent Spanish history? Yes, it would. The so-called Gürtel case

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The Brexit betrayal bandwagon is growing

It may not be this week. It may not be Boris Johnson. But eventually a minister will break with this tottering government and establish himself (or herself, for it could be Andrea Leadsom) as the leader of the diehard right. Brexit is crying out for its Ludendorff; the scoundrel who can blame his failures on everyone but himself. The smart move for today’s right wing politicians who find their careers blocked is to break with the Tory leadership – whatever or whoever that may consist of – and resort to old  slogans. The referendum delivered a mandate to leave, Johnson, or whoever takes up the challenge of building a new

Tuesday

Camilla Swift

What does the charity sector want from Brexit? A clean break and tax freedom

When it comes to Brexit, for many organisations it seems to be all doom and gloom. Yes, plenty of individual Brexiteers are still glad that they voted to leave the European Union. But the uncertainty that still looms over the UK’s future in so many areas – trade, farming, immigration and more, means that in many sectors, Brexit is seen as a negative. There’s some good news for Leavers today, though. The Charity Finance Group (CFG), which provides support for finance professionals working in the charity sector, has published a new report entitled ‘A Brexit that works for everyone’, analysing what would be the best option for Britain’s charity sector. The

Sunday

Gavin Mortimer

Last summer, feminists defended the burkini. Will they now defend the bikini?

If there was a buzzword from last summer then it was surely ‘burkini’. The media got its swimsuit in a twist over France’s decision to ban the Islamic garment from its beaches. Slow-witted Anglophone columnists – many of whom have a curious predilection for insulting the French – lapped it up and enthusiastically portrayed Islam as the victim of Gallic oppression. Those trusty custodians of liberal values, the Guardian and the New York Times, got particularly worked up, the former declaring in an editorial that ‘women’s right to dress as they feel comfortable and fitting should be defended against those coercing them into either covering or uncovering.’ The New York Times quoted Marwan Muhammad,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

How the economics of cow-milking can help explain Brexit

Writing about judicial appointments, I incautiously compared a silly interview question asking a judge to cite an example of when he had acted with integrity, to asking a farmer, ‘How many times a day do you milk your cows?’ Jamie Blackett, a farmer, writes to say that, in the 21st century, it is a question to which the answer reveals much. He explains. Farmer One milks his 50 cows only once a day. He follows the Norwegian system and makes a marketable green virtue of leaving the calf on the cow. He lives near rich people and sells them his artisan cheese and yoghurt. He voted Remain. Farmer Two milks