Eu

Wednesday

Tom Goodenough

Coffee House shots: Osborne’s Brexit budget

George Osborne has angered Tory MPs today by suggesting a vote to leave the European Union could trigger a series of tax rises. 57 Conservative MPs have signed a letter saying that they would not support such a motion in Parliament in a move which left Osborne flailing during a tetchy interview on the Today programme this morning. So why did the Chancellor run the risk of winding up those on the Tory backbenches? And will it do anything to scare people into backing ‘Remain’? On today’s Coffee House Shots podcast, Isabel Hardman joins Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth, who says: ‘I think the aim of this was to shift

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Andrew Neil grills Ed Vaizey for a second time over George Osborne’s EU spin

The last time Ed Vaizey appeared on the Daily Politics to defend one of George Osborne’s dodgy dossiers, the result was not pretty. The culture minister’s bumbling performance was compared to that of The Thick of It‘s Ben Swain, in his Newsnight interview. So, it was an interesting decision to send Vaizey back onto the airwaves today to defend Osborne’s new Brexit ‘punishment budget’. With the Chancellor of the Exchequer promising to go back on election promises and raise taxes if the people dare to vote for Brexit, Andrew Neil put to Vaizey that it didn’t add up: AN: Why does a shallow recession result in this massive punishment in

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Scottish Brexit poll shows big drop in support for ‘Remain’

‘Remain’ have being having a woeful time in the polls lately, with numerous surveys putting ‘Leave’ ahead. But north of the border, it’s been widely thought that it’s a different picture and that those wanting Britain to remain in the EU outnumbered those backing Brexit. A new poll out just now suggests that whilst that might still be the case, ‘Leave’ has also gained considerable ground in Scotland. The STV poll, put together by Ipsos Mori, shows that support for ‘Remain’ has been slashed by 13 per cent since April. Back then, 66 per cent of Scots surveyed backed Remain, compared to just 29 per cent who were planning on

Steerpike Steerpike

Hapless Remain chief makes a comeback… to attend fashion bash

With the Remain camp now seen to be lagging behind Leave both in terms of momentum and polling, it’s a case of all hands on deck with the In crowd. However, as Mr S has previously noted, Britain Stronger in Europe’s chairman Stuart Rose has been nowhere to be seen of late. After a number of embarrassing slips — from claiming wages would rise if Britain leaves the EU to forgetting the name of his own group — Rose has retreated from the limelight. However as polling day nears, Remain-ers can take heart that he has made a return to the spotlight. Only rather than getting out on the campaign trail, Rose instead decided to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne’s dead cat Budget

The In campaign believe that they win when the referendum debate is focused on the economy. So, today George Osborne and Alistair Darling are outlining a deliberately provocative post-Brexit emergency Budget. It is stuffed full of horrors: a 2p rise in the basic rate of income tax, a 3p rise in the higher rate and cuts to the NHS budget to name but a few. The plan is clear, to get the economy and the supposed effects on the public finances of Brexit to the top of the agenda. Now, as Fraser and Jonathan Portes have pointed out these aren’t the kind of measures that a government would actually enact

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Vote Leave’s action plan shows why Brexit wouldn’t be a ‘leap in the dark’

What do David Cameron and the likes of Ed Balls and Harriet Harman have in common? The answer: they’ve all described Brexit as a ‘leap in the dark’. And they’re not alone in saying those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU have no plan for what happens next. We’ve heard the ‘leap in the dark’ phrase repeatedly over the last few months. But today Vote Leave have spelled out their action plan for a scenario that looks increasingly likely, at least if the polls are to be believed: what happens after a vote for Brexit on June 23rd? The ‘Leave’ campaign say that it would ‘make no sense to

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Coffee House shots: Brexit builds momentum, but can ‘Remain’ fight back?

Brexit has continued to build momentum in the EU referendum race with successive polls putting ‘Leave’ ahead. So with nine days to go, is there anything ‘Remain’ can do to fight back? On this special daily edition of our Spectator Coffee House shots podcast, Fraser Nelson joins Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth to discuss today’s events as the countdown to June 23rd gets ever closer. James Forsyth says the polls in recent days ‘are triggering levels of panic that are even greater than the levels of panic in the final days of the Scottish referendum’. And Fraser Nelson says it’s difficult to see what ‘Remain’ can do to regain the

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

‘Remain’ dodges a hammer blow from the European Court of Justice

‘Remain’ might be trailing in the polls, but the campaign can at least be grateful they haven’t been dealt another hammer blow by the European Court of Justice today. The European Commission had tried to claim that the UK Government was wrong to check whether those getting child benefits were allowed to live in the country before paying out. But thankfully for ‘Remain’, the ECJ ruled that it was legal to hold back money for unemployed EU migrants who were not allowed to be here. The good news for ‘Remain’ is that the decision didn’t go the other way. Given how momentum has increasingly shifted towards ‘Leave’, particularly after yesterday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Denmark’s former Prime Minister speaks out: Brexit would not lead to Dexit

There has been much speculation that a Brexit could lead to a number of other countries following suit and leaving the EU. Top of that list is Denmark, with Nigel Farage claiming that the country would be the first to leave in a domino effect triggered by Brexit. Now Denmark’s former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has waded into the discussion. When asked, at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women event in London, whether Denmark would leave the EU if Britain did, Thorning-Schmidt poured cold water on the suggestion. The former Social Democrat politician, who is the current chief exec of Save the Children, says the majority of Danes want to remain in the EU

Monday

Ismene Brown

The Royal Ballet and Sadler’s Wells explain how Brexit will hurt dance

What would Brexit mean to dance? Many big hitters in dance were among the 300-plus arts people who signed last month’s public letter urging the UK to remain in the EU: the Royal Ballet’s director Kevin O’Hare, choreographer Akram Khan, Sadler’s Wells chief Alistair Spalding and Sir Matthew Bourne among them. I’ve asked some of them to spell out exactly would be altered by a Brexit. First, dance structurally depends on maintaining large numbers of permanent employees, whose skills require long-running and continuing group schooling. Both of these givens imply structural costs far beyond those entailed by opera or theatre. Also, as an artform, dance speaks international languages – ballet

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Gordon Brown shows once again he’s learnt nothing from his run-in with Gillian Duffy

Gordon Brown’s intervention in the EU referendum debate was meant to be all about putting forward the positive case for voting ‘Remain’. But not for the first time, the former Prime Minister appears to have fallen flat on his face over immigration. It wasn’t quite as bad as Brown’s Gillian Duffy moment in that he didn’t call anyone ‘bigoted’ for holding a view on migration. Instead, though, the message to those worried about migration was…you’re worrying about the wrong thing. Brown told John Humphrys on Today that: ‘The biggest problem is illegal immigration.’ So the essence of Brown’s message was not to speak to the many Labour voters who genuinely

Steerpike Steerpike

Project Fear turn it up to 11: Brexit could spell the end of western civilisation, says Donald Tusk

It’s happened. After weeks of Project Fear warnings from the Remain camp — from WW3 to house prices actually falling —  Donald Tusk has offered the most apocalyptic warning yet. A clear frontrunner for Mr S’s ‘Project Fear’ award, the president of the European Council has claimed today that Brexit could spell the end of… western civilisation. Yes, Tusk says that a vote for Leave could lead to the end of ‘western political civilisation in its entirety’: ‘Why is it so dangerous? Because no one can foresee what the long-term consequences would be. As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Can Gordon Brown give the ‘Remain’ camp the boost it so badly needs?

As the countdown to the EU referendum debate continues, the momentum appears to have continued to swing towards Brexit: ‘Leave’ went ahead in the polls last week, with one survey putting them five points clear of ‘Remain’. What’s more, David Cameron has looked more and more rattled. Yesterday, he had to answer questions on Marr about whether he really believed his warnings over Brexit, given that the UK leaving the European Union now doesn’t seem so unlikely. So if Project Fear isn’t paying off, what can the ‘Remain’ camp do to try and regain control of the debate? The answer for the Prime Minister this week is to take a step

Sunday

James Lewisohn

Brexit could fire Denmark up to leave the EU – and reignite its smokehouses

Denmark has been basking in a glorious June heatwave this past week, hastening the annual migration cycle.  ‘Summer Danes’ are a delicate subgenus of the species.  We roam the planet’s warmer regions every year between September and May, absenting ourselves from Nordic noir winters.  But mercury rising brings us home; and last week was the warmest early June week in recorded history. So I made my annual pilgrimage to our idyllic local fishing village, Gilleleje, at the northernmost tip of Zealand, a few dozen miles north of Copenhagen. Though still gorgeous, Gilleleje isn’t what it used to be.  Among its many glories, including its beautiful natural harbour, home to Denmark’s fourth-largest

Saturday

James Forsyth

Going for Boris just makes the Remain side look rattled

All sides of the Remain campaign are turning their fire on Boris Johnson at the moment. But these attacks are, I argue in The Sun today, a mistake by the Remainers. First, it makes Boris, the most popular politician in the country, the face of the Out campaign when the IN campaign’s strategic aim is to make voters think that Nigel Farage embodies the Out case. Second, it means that the whole referendum is seen through the prism of the Tory leadership. This is not only bad for Tory party unity post-referendum, but also makes it harder for IN campaign to get the support of Labour party voters as it

Friday

Tom Goodenough

‘Please don’t go’: Spiegel magazine urges Brits not to leave

A week after Angela Merkel intervened in the Brexit debate to say she hopes Britain stays in the EU, Germany’s Spiegel magazine has also waded in. The magazine’s headline is certainly emotive: ‘Please don’t go’, it urges, in an issue which includes several pages in English in a bid to reach out to Brits. As with the clear-cut message on the front cover, the magazine’s poll on whether Germans want Britain to stay in the EU is also conclusive. Spiegel’s survey, conducted by TNS, showed that 79 per cent of people in Germany thought Britain should remain in the EU. It’s possible that this attitude derives from the popularity of

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The EU bullies everyone – on both the Left and the Right

The prevalent notion is that all those people who wish for us to leave the European Union are thick as mince ‘Little Englanders’ (the wrong insult, incidentally), motivated by racism, nostalgia and xenophobic spite. The left-wing argument to get the hell out has been scarcely touched upon, and yet it is – for me, at least, and I suspect quite a few voters – just as compelling as the stuff about immigration and democracy. So huge credit to Suzanne Moore for her piece in Wednesday’s Guardian. It’s, as ever, an excellent bit of writing and gets straight to the point. One caveat, though. Moore recognises the fundamental anti-democratic mindset of the

Thursday

Peter Jones

Rome vs Brussels

The principle of countries working harmoniously together is wholly admirable. Why, then, has the European Union become such a disaster area? The success of the Roman empire may offer a clue. Romans won that empire almost entirely by military might. But they could not have maintained it that way: for some 500 years, a mere 300,000 legionaries patrolled this area of approximately two million square miles and about 60 million inhabitants. So what was their secret? The key is pleasingly paradoxical: the Romans never consciously planned an empire at all. Once they had started down that road, they saw the material advantages it could bring, but there was no blueprint for it. Success was a

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 9 June 2016

One of the most influential and learned figures in the British European debate is Rodney Leach. In the 1990s, he helped lead those of his fellow businessmen who became convinced that the abolition of the pound would be a disaster. He was a moving spirit in Business for Sterling and then in the ‘No’ campaign against the euro. This did much to persuade Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, to ditch euro entry plans in 2004. The following year, Lord Leach set up Open Europe, and continues as its chairman to this day. It is the most trusted think tank for research and debate on all EU questions, and is incredibly useful

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Is the looming prospect of Brexit dampening trade with other EU countries?

Is the looming prospect of Brexit dampening trade with other EU countries? Not if the latest trade statistics are anything to go on. Figures out today – the final set to be published before the referendum – show that imports to the UK from other EU countries are at a record high: rising by £1bn between March and April this year. Britain’s exports to other EU countries also rose in the same period – jumping by £0.9bn, with oil and chemicals making up a large chunk of this number (£0.5bn). These figures can be interpreted in two ways and as with many things to do with the EU referendum, both