Eu

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Labour MEP stuck in lift in European parliament

Brexit campaigners make the argument that the European Union just isn’t working when it comes to Britain’s interests. While some are yet to be convinced, it’s safe to say that some parts of  the EU parliament just don’t work full stop. Last night Paul Brannen, the Labour MEP, found himself stuck in a lift in parliament, in Brussels. When door of the lift opened, a steel wall appeared. After waiting for 20 minutes, Brannen decided the only thing to do was to film himself in case he didn’t made it out of the lift alive: ‘I’m somewhere between the 13th floor of parliament and the 3rd floor of parliament, and I’ve been here for about

Maria Wilczek

When the EU is no longer able to bribe Turkey, the blackmail will begin

As James Forsyth mentioned earlier this week, things could get much worse in Turkey. Indeed, they will. Europe’s hope that Turkey will continue to soak up migrants is at best naive; at worst, irresponsible. Europe desperately needs Turkey to serve as a migrant waiting room on its borders. In exchange, it has offered an acceleration of the EU admission process. In November, Turkey was promised visa-free travel to the Schengen zone by 2016. In December, after five years of standstill, negotiations concerning economic and monetary policies linked to Turkey’s EU membership were reopened. This entire deal rests on the peculiar idea that, if given the chance, Turkey would be a Europhile with the zeal of

Thursday

Peter Jones

People power then and now

It does seem extraordinary that the increasingly puce-faced Mr Cameron offered us an ‘in-out’ referendum and is now telling us that ‘out’ would mean the end of the world as we know it. What on earth did he think he was doing? His reaction is to eviscerate MPs who support ‘out’, and intentionally deprive us who will actually make the decision of information enabling us to do so. People power is clearly not for him. One of the great virtues of 5th-century bc Athenian direct democracy was that those who made the policy decisions were citizens meeting weekly in Assembly. Parties did not exist. So there were no such things as

Taki

High life | 3 March 2016

The rich are under attack nowadays, never more so than in America, where The Donald continues to trump his critics, amaze and surprise his fans, and drive his haters to paroxysms of sexual fantasy, with Trump as the main actor. National Review, where I got my start 40 years or so ago, devoted a whole issue to rubbishing Donald Trump. There were contributions from great conservatives, such as Thomas Sowell, and great clowns, like John Podhoretz. It was an issue that inadvertently looked in opposite directions while hating The Donald. William Kristol’s bit was in there — the one where he calls Trump vulgar. That he may be, but coming

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 3 March 2016

On Monday I went to the newsagent to buy the newspapers and picked up the first issue of a new one calling itself the New Day. This is the creation of the company that publishes the Daily Mirror, and it is, the publishers say, intended to appeal to people who have given up reading newspapers, people now so numerous that they are rapidly bringing the industry to its knees. The paper’s rather odd title is reminiscent of the carefree song ‘Many a New Day’ from Oklahoma!, and it is presumably intended to emphasise what the publishers call its ‘optimistic approach’. ‘We like to think we’re a modern, upbeat newspaper for

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 3 March 2016

Home An official analysis by the Cabinet Office said that if Britain left the EU it would lead to a ‘decade of uncertainty’. Opponents of Britain remaining in the EU called the report a ‘dodgy dossier’. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the economy would suffer a ‘profound economic shock’ if Britain left, echoing a communiqué of the G20 which referred to ‘the shock of a potential UK exit’. Boris Johnson revised his suggestion that a vote to leave could bring about a better deal from Brussels; ‘Out is out,’ he told the Times. Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, declared that ministers opposing government policy on

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 3 March 2016

The government, or at least David Cameron’s bit of it, seems to think that trade is something that takes place because of a trade agreement. The order is the other way round. People trade, and have done for several thousand years, because it is to their mutual advantage. After a bit, governments come along and try to direct and often impede it, but in the modern world of instant communications, ready transfers of money and container shipping, this has become blessedly difficult. A friend, Edward Atkin, who has made a large fortune out of Avent baby bottles and like products, tells me: ‘I have never known or asked whether any

Caroline Lucas

If the left doesn’t wake up soon, it could be responsible for Brexit

It’s only been a week and a half since the starting gun was fired, yet for people outside of the Westminster bubble, the debate over the EU referendum is no doubt already beginning to tire. On the one hand we have the ‘outers’ banging on almost exclusively about sovereignty and immigration. And on the other side we hear the same economic mantra repeated over and over again. I’m a convinced ‘remainer’ and of course I know that these arguments matter enormously – but I fear that this debate over the future direction of our country could be lost to the ‘outers’ unless my side make a more visceral argument for

The Spectator

The Spectator podcast: Donald Trump’s angry America

In this week’s issue, Freddy Gray discusses Donald Trump’s success on Super Tuesday. America has been the world’s most benevolent superpower, Freddy says, but now its turning nasty. What does Trump’s rise say about America? On the podcast, Freddy tells Isabel Hardman: ‘It actually says something quite troubling about America. I think the rise of Trump suggests that America’s can-do spirit and very positive outlook on the world is changing. I don’t think it’s isolationism so much as more a kind of nastiness, that Trump reflects. It’s a result of the disappointment in Obama. Trump is a sort of bitter, anti-Obama.’ With the issue of Europe bubbling along, James Forsyth

Kate Chisholm

Linked in

What makes the World Service so different from the rest of the BBC? I asked Mary Hockaday, the controller of the English-language service. And how does it justify the additional £289 million funding (spread over the next five years) which the Treasury granted it at the end of last year? Will that money, which could after all otherwise go to welfare or the NHS, be well spent? ‘News is our core,’ says Hockaday. ‘It’s all about the now.’ Which sounds a bit Day Today. Anyway, isn’t this what BBC News and Radio 4 do already? It’s not just about presenting the news, Hockaday adds, but putting it in context. This

Timothy Garton Ash

A conservative case for staying in

I open a dusty binder and look at my yellowing Spectator articles from Poland, Germany and Russia in the dramatic 1980s. And here’s one from Brussels in 1986, suggesting that Britain was edging towards finding its role in the European Community. Ho ho. Back then, Charles Moore was the editor and I was the foreign editor of this magazine. He shared my passion for the liberation of eastern Europe, while becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the western European Community, but he let me make the case for it. Now, 30 years on, Charles and I stand on different sides of a historic national argument. This makes for a curious role reversal.

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Of course the old Tory hatreds are back. That’s referendums for you

Of course it’s vicious. It was always going to be. Sure, they’ve spent decades living peacefully side by side, but so did the Hutu and Tutsi. So did the Alawites and Sunnis, and so did every manner of former Yugoslavian. In politics, old hatreds do not die. They merely keep mum, so as to get selected and maybe become a junior minister. You will not find me dwelling upon the row in cabinet, this week, about whether pro-Brexit ministers are allowed to see government papers related to the EU referendum. Personally, I’d pay good money not to see government papers related to the EU referendum. I consider it a very

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Head of the IN campaign says wages will go up if we leave the EU

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsangryamerica/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson & Isabel Hardman discuss the opening skirmishes of the EU referendum campaign” startat=540] Listen [/audioplayer] Stuart Rose will have to be added to the long list of British businessmen who have struggled to make the transition to politics. Rose, the Chairman of Britain in Europe, didn’t get off to the best of starts in this campaign when he told The Times that ‘“Nothing is going to happen if we come out of Europe in the first five years, probably. There will be absolutely no change’ a quote that was seized upon by the Out campaign who said it disproved all the dire warnings about

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Trade comes before trade agreements (but the ‘in’ campaign don’t think so)

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsangryamerica/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson & Isabel Hardman discuss the opening skirmishes of the EU referendum campaign” startat=540] Listen [/audioplayer] The government, or at least David Cameron’s bit of it, seems to think that trade is something that takes place because of a trade agreement. The order is the other way round. People trade, and have done for several thousand years, because it is to their mutual advantage. After a bit, governments come along and try to direct and often impede it, but in the modern world of instant communications, ready transfers of money and container shipping, this has become blessedly difficult. A friend, Edward Atkin, who has made

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs: Why won’t Corbyn address the Tory EU divide?

David Cameron coasted through another PMQs today. Jeremy Corbyn asked about childcare but his questions were too long and unfocused to trouble the Prime Minister. It does seem odd that Corbyn doesn’t even dare approach the Tory split over the EU. He could surely have made something of IDS calling the government’s paper on the alternatives to EU membership a ‘dodgy dossier’? David Davis asked Cameron, after Bernard Jenkin failed to turn up, whether he would get the HMRC to publish its figures showing how many NI numbers issued to EU nationals are active. This would show whether the official immigration figures are significantly undercounting the number of EU migrants

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Brexit won’t mean more expensive flights for Brits. Here’s why.

We’ve been warned that Brexit could spell the end of cheap travel. But is it really true that Britain voting out of Europe would hit holidaymakers in the pocket? Easyjet’s boss Dame Carolyn McCall said before that Brexit ‘wouldn’t be good for Britain’. And in a company prospectus, the airline warned this year that if Britain votes out in the EU referendum in June, then it could have a ‘material adverse effect’ on the budget airline. But does this hold up to scrutiny? Easyjet says that: ‘The outcome of this decision (in the referendum) could have a material adverse effect on easyJet’s financial condition and results of operations.’ Obviously for

Monday

James Forsyth

How the migrant crisis could get much worse

Angela Merkel gave a defiant interview last night in which she defended her handling of the refugee crisis. She declared, ‘I have no Plan B’—worryingly, I suspect this is true. But how much worse the refugee crisis could become worse is made clear in leaked minutes of a meeting between the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker. As Bloomberg columnist Marc Champion points out, Erdogan is determined to get far more out of the EU than the 3 billion Euros it is currently offering. He tells them that if the offer is for only 3 billion, the conversation might as well end there: “We

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Tom Watson jokes about Labour’s misery

Although the Tories currently find their party divided over Europe, they can at least take heart that the opposition face greater internal conflict. In fact, rather than attack Matthew Hancock in the Commons today over the Cabinet’s Brexit issues, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson opted to make a joke about his own party’s misery: ‘Mr Speaker sadly I am not in the strongest of positions to lecture the poor minister on handling splits in his own party.’ Watson did at least manage to find time to take a small jab at the Conservatives. He asked the minister whether he really believed that Jeremy Heywood’s decision to ban SpAds from providing ministers with material that could be used to support Brexit would really

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Boris on Brexit and Project Fear’s ‘dragons and serpents’

Boris Johnson said he wanted to see ‘total transparency’ ahead of the EU referendum. He referred to this as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to get it right: Owen Paterson laid into ‘Project Fear’ – suggesting that by the time it got to June, ‘dragons coming out of the Thames’ and ‘serpents coming out of our taps’ could be predictions made by those supporting Remain if Britain did vote out: Whilst Matt Hancock didn’t mention dragons or serpents, he did say Brexit could mean ‘pain and problems’: Labour’s Emma Reynolds, speaking on the Daily Politics, insisted she wasn’t an MP who plotted over lunch and was a ‘perfectly straightforward politician’: And Michael

Steerpike Steerpike

Dermot Murnaghan vs Anna Soubry: ‘are you sure you’re in government?’

With the Sunday papers filled with stories suggesting David Cameron’s party is in turmoil over the EU, Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan decided to raise the issue with Anna Soubry during an appearance on his show. Alas he got more than he bargained for when the Minister for Small Business — who is known not to mince her words — proceeded to take Murnaghan to task over his ‘seriously boring’ line of questioning: DM: Are you saying ‘oh dear it’s all turning a bit nasty’? AS: No, I’m saying: ‘oh dear this is so boring for ordinary viewers who are not interested in this media bubble, mainly centred in Westminster’. Out here in the real world people