Eu

If Merkel shrugs…

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/angelamerkel-sburden/media.mp3″ title=”Fredrik Erixon and James Forsyth discuss the challenges facing Angela Merkel” startat=36] Listen [/audioplayer]German chancellor Angela Merkel may still be the most formidable politician in Europe, but this week she lost a bit of her reputation as the scourge of Mediterranean debtor nations. Greece’s firebrand leftist premier, Alexis Tsipras, actually gets on well with Merkel, however much his countrymen enjoy burning her in effigy and adorning her portraits with Hitler moustaches. In a recent profile of their relationship in Der Spiegel, Tsipras gushed, ‘She has this East German way of telling you honestly and straightforwardly what she thinks.’ His top adviser Nikos Pappas also admires Merkel, calling her

Ten myths about Brexit

  1. Leaving the EU would hurt the UK’s ability to trade with it.   The fearmonger’s favourite argument. But fear not: the global economy has changed dramatically since Britain joined the EU in 1973, seeking entrance to a common market. The World Trade Organisation has brought down tariff rates around the world; even if we didn’t sign a free-trade deal with the EU, we would have to pay, at most, £7.5 billion a year in tariffs for access to its markets. That’s well below our current membership fee. 2. Three million jobs will disappear.   A bogus figure, heard often from the likes of Nick Clegg. It dates back

Rod Liddle

The questions you don’t ask at the BBC

There was a remarkable scene in one BBC Today programme morning meeting in about 1995, as all the producers gathered together to discuss what stories would be on the following day’s show. The big story was the European Union; the splits occasioned by the EU within the Tory party and the battle, on the part of racist neanderthal xenophobes, to keep us out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, from which we had ignominiously exited three years before. The meeting cackled and hooted at the likes of Bill Cash and his assorted fascists on the Eurosceptic right. ‘They think the Germans are determined to dominate Europe!’ and ‘They’re just racists!’ and

Martin Vander Weyer

Contagion of a different kind as Greece wriggles off the hook

The clear winner in the Greek crisis is the author of The Little Book of Negotiating Clichés, whose royalties must have been pouring in as the clock ticked towards midnight while European leaders took positive steps back from the brink and found themselves speaking the same language, perhaps because they were reading from the same page. But assuming this predictable dance results in terms that Prime Minister Tsipras can persuade his comrades to accept before the IMF’s default deadline and the moment when the Greek banking system can no longer seek life-support from the European Central Bank — which is all still quite a big assumption — who will be

Greece’s service economy is no match for Germany’s mercantile one

It sounds a bit odd these days but economics was actually invented by the Greeks. Back then, in ancient Greece, the ethos of economics was to keep the house in order and generally manage finances in a way that would make Wolfgang Schäuble blush with embarrassment for extravagant habits. Now economics is about to get a new meaning for Greeks. Perhaps not a science, but Greekonomics is now the art of killing an economy softly. The Greek tragedy is not that it teeters on the brink of default. Greece is going to get its deal – and its euro membership will live to die another day. The deal that is

Will the Calais crisis create another EU headache for David Cameron?

The crisis at Calais has once again raised the issue of UK border security. Some of the 3,000-odd illegal migrants residing at the port took advantage of yesterday’s ferry workers strike by attempting to board the delayed vehicles. The immigration minister James Brokenshire told the BBC this morning the situation is ‘hugely regrettable’ and the government will be taking steps to ensure Britain’s border security is beefed up: ‘It is hugely regrettable that we’ve seen these incidents occurring as a result of industrial action in France. ‘We are putting additional resourcing into the port of Dover to enhance screenings and detections there so that we’re looking at this on both sides of the Channel. ‘We have

‘No’ campaign coordinator pushes idea of two referendums

Dominic Cummings is the man drafted in to put together the putative No campaign for the EU referendum. Cummings has a tendency to surprise and he has done that today with a piece that pushes the idea that the No campaign should say that there would be a second referendum if Britain votes Out. This second vote would be on the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU. Cummings’ thinking is that this would de-risk voting No. People would be simply rejecting the deal that David Cameron had negotiated rather than voting to leave outright. Cummings sums up the advantages of a second referendum for No thus: This approach might allow NO to

David Patrikarakos

The one thing that might ensure a Greek deal: fear

On a narrow, sloping street in downtown Athens sits a graffiti-strewn wall that has captured the spirit of a nation. Amidst the spray-painted slogans and flaking posters, a black-and-white stencilled image of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras looks down benignly (beneath a perfectly-observed monobrow) at passers-by. His arms outstretched, dressed in flowing robes and with a halo circling his head, he is Christ come to redeem Greece. Such is the bitter humour that now pervades the country’s capital city as the prospect of financial implosion nears. Tsipras came to power promising to get rid of austerity and take the fight to Greece’s European partners. Reality, alas, proved less accommodating. The

Greece: The devil will be in the detail

The Greek economy minister Giorgos Stathakis has told Robert Peston in an interview that the deadlock between Athens and its creditors has been broken, that $7.2 billion of funds should soon be released enabling the IMF to be paid at the end of the month. But this judgement seems distinctly premature. First of all, the technical negotiations have yet to take place — and it is all too easy to see how a deal could fall apart then. While the IMF tends to take a tougher line than the European Commission and so might not sign off on this deal. It is also worth remembering that there have been times

Greece may soon face a humanitarian crisis of its own

Normally, the phrase ‘continent in crisis’ is hyperbole. But it seems appropriate today as we contemplate the situation Europe, and more specifically the EU, finds itself in. In the next few days, Greece could default, triggering its exit from the single currency and financial disruption across the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Rome is on the verge of unilaterally issuing Mediterranean migrants travel documents enabling them to travel anywhere in the Schengen area because—as Nicholas Farrell reports in the magazine this week—Italy simply cannot cope with many more arrivals. Those involved in the British government’s preparations for a Greek exit put the chances of it at 50:50. If Greece did leave, which would

Podcast: Greece and the lessons of Black Wednesday, plus the latest on the Labour leadership contest

As the situation in Greece becomes more serious by the day, is a default or Grexit on the horizon? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Channel 4’s Paul Mason discusses this week’s Spectator leading article with Ambrose Evans-Prichard from the Daily Telegraph. Which side is being more unreasonable in this stand off, the European Central Bank or Syriza? Is anything drastic likely to happen over the next few weeks? Are the Greek people feeling resentful towards to the rest of the EU? And what effect is the crisis having on the whole European project? The Spectator’s James Forsyth and Stephen Bush from the New Statesman also discuss the ongoing contests for Labour leader and deputy leader. Given that he remains the favourite to win, what does Andy Burnham need to do over the next

The invasion of Italy

Let us suppose that along the coast of Normandy up to one million non-EU migrants are waiting to be packed like sardines in small unseaworthy vessels and to cross the English Channel. Let us suppose that first the Royal Navy, then the navies of a dozen other EU countries, start to search for all such vessels in the Channel right up to the French coast, out into the North Sea and the Atlantic even, and then ferry all the passengers on board to Dover, Folkestone, Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton in a surreal modern-day never-ending version of the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940. Would the British government agree to take them all?

Keeping Britain in the EU will be easier than keeping the Tories united on the issue

Privately, senior Tories admit that winning the EU referendum, by which they mean securing a vote to stay in on Cameron’s new terms, is the easy part. The more difficult challenge, they admit, will be keeping the Tory party from splitting over the issue. But this realisation doesn’t seem to be informing how the government is actually approaching the referendum hence the row over the attempt to lift the normal purdah restrictions for the campaign itself. Cameron should be bending over backwards to ensure that the whole process is seen as ‘fair’ and to ensure that everyone on the Tory  bench has to accept the result. For as one senior

How far will Merkel go on Greece?

The Greek crisis has been going on for so long now, it is hard to imagine it actually coming to a conclusion. But next week’s meeting of European Finance Ministers is one of the last chances for a deal to be struck. However, there is no sign of an agreement yet. The Financial Times today picks up on German press reports about the German government preparing for Greece leaving the Euro. The Germans have long been convinced that any contagion from Greece leaving the single currency could be contained privately many in Whitehall think that Berlin is far too complacent about this. Now, it appears that Merkel is turning her

It may actually be in Ukip’s interest to lose the EU referendum

Will the country be torn apart by the EU referendum? That’s the argument made by Chris Deerin on the capitalist running dog website CapX. Deerin, a Scottish Unionist, says it’s now Great Britain’s turn to go through the same painful and divisive process that Scotland endured last year. Personally I doubt that will happen, although it’s possible that a slender vote in favour of remaining in the EU may in the long term be divisive. The main problem with the analogy is that there is just no Ukip equivalent of the aggressive Scottish nationalists who shouted at Jim Murphy. There is a Kipper version of the Cybernats, but even online

High life | 11 June 2015

There’s nothing to add to Martin Vander Weyer’s item about Hellas of two weeks ago in these here pages except a Yogi Berra pearl, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over.’ The Greek drama will go on and on until the brinkmanship is exhausted. The EU has blinked, as I thought it would. Although Greek accounting arabesques have been known to shame the Bolshoi — Goldman Sachs taught the modern Hellenes how to legally cook the books and screw Brussels, something we are now paying the price for — we Greeks have contributed a few things apart from cheating and not paying our taxes. As Michael Daley wrote in a letter

Barometer | 11 June 2015

Forty years on The forthcoming EU referendum has rekindled memories of the in-out Common Market referendum of 1975. But it seems a strange looking-glass world now. — Mrs Thatcher was a keen ‘yes’ campaigner, sporting a jumper with the flags of EC member states. Neil Kinnock campaigned for a British exit. The SNP and Plaid Cymru campaigned to leave the EC, the former calling it a ‘dangerous experiment in gross over-centralisation’. — The worry then was that England would vote to stay while Scotland and Wales would vote to leave. — But the most surprising supporters now seem the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, the latter declaring after the

Portrait of the week | 11 June 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said of the EU referendum: ‘If you want to be part of the government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation to have a referendum and that will lead to a successful outcome.’ This caused a certain amount of uproar, with newspaper headlines saying things like ‘PM: Back me or I will sack you.’ Mr Cameron the next day said: ‘It’s clear to me that what I said yesterday was misinterpreted.’ His remarks followed the launch of a grouping called Conservatives for Britain (run by Steve Baker, the MP for Wycombe), which boasted the support of

Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg asks Gove for a Magna Carta

Jacob Rees-Mogg told the House on Thursday that his favourite activity is making speeches on Europe and ‘if the House isn’t sitting, I do it at home’. That’s not the only place he opines on the subject. Mr S was enjoying some supper at the Savile Club on Wednesday evening, with his comrades from ‘Conservatives for Liberty’. The noble sounding group is made up of your average Tory boys, with facial hair that would not have looked out of place in the Continental Army circa 1776. While the evening was meant to be a celebration of the Magna Carta, with David Davis and John Redwood in attendance, the conversation in the room kept going