Eu

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

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

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

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

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

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