Eu

Thursday

The Spectator

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

The Spectator

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 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

Stuart Wheeler

A warrant for exit

On the 12th of January, 500 of the great and good, or at any rate the well-heeled, sat down to a sumptuous dinner at the Guildhall at a cost of £500 a head. This was to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, widely regarded as one of the most important documents in the world. Celebrate? A funeral procession would have been more appropriate. Clause 38 provided, ‘No judicial officer shall initiate legal proceedings against anyone on his own mere say-so, without reliable witnesses brought for that purpose.’ Yet the British government had given away, less than three months earlier, the protection provided by that clause. It voluntarily ‘opted in’ to

Tuesday

Nigel Dodds

The government is already getting the EU Referendum Bill wrong

The EU Referendum Bill has been accompanied by almost unprecedented flip-flopping and ‘reverse ferreting’. I think we have to accept that it is quite right for the Liberals and Labour to have changed their minds. Or at any rate, for the voters to have changed their minds for them. Speaking, as I do at Westminster, for the only party in parliament that has been consistent on this matter, I am very glad that the referendum is finally almost upon us. As Bill Cash said earlier today in the Commons, this is the culmination of a twenty-year fight that started with Maastricht, and involved betrayals and evasions by both main parties. It’s

Saturday

James Forsyth

Out’s Farage dilemma

Nigel Farage’s latest intervention—declaring that Ukip is ‘going to take the lead making the case for voting to leave the EU in the referendum—neatly sums up the dilemma facing the Out campaign. On the one hand, there’s a danger that if it doesn’t get moving now then the In campaign will have a massive, and possibly insurmountable, advantage by the time the vote is actually called. On the other, if Out is too closely associated with Ukip then it won’t be able to get the 50.1 percent of the vote that it needs to win the referendum. For while Farage might be quite brilliant at motivating the 13 percent who

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Eurosceptics fear the ‘In’ campaign will get off to a head start

As David Cameron predicted, we are hearing all sorts of ‘noises’ on whether or not his European renegotiation will succeed or fail. But under the noise, as James explains in the magazine this week, the ‘Yes’ campaign to stay in the European Union has already begun. The ‘Yes’ side has many advantages, not least because it has the positive word and is defending the status quo, both of which appeal a little more to voters. It can also enjoy the support of both the Whitehall and EU machines, which is not unimportant. Meanwhile, the frustrations in the ‘No’ or ‘Out’ camp largely focus on timing. Ukip are particularly annoyed that

Nigel Vinson

The Electoral Commission needs reforming. Will anyone dare try?

The Electoral Commission (ElCom) is an institution with a lamentable record of failing to fulfil its role as guardian of our political system. After so many contrary and arguably politically partisan decisions in recent years, one has to ask:  Who guards this guardian? Its chairperson Jenny Watson, as a former women’s rights activist and former member of Liberty and Charter 88, has a strong left-wing influence in her background. Why Watson was ever considered an appropriate candidate for such a politically sensitive role is open to question. She began in the role in 2009, appointed by the Labour Government under Gordon Brown’s premiership, which perhaps explains a great deal. What is less easy

Thursday

Peter Oborne

Diary – 4 June 2015

For the first time since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team six years ago, a Test match side has visited Pakistan. The Zimbabwe tourists, playing at the same Lahore stadium where the attack was mounted, were greeted with wild enthusiasm. Less well reported has been the fact that a team of English cricketers (including myself and Alex Massie of this parish) has been touring the Hindu Kush. We played in Chitral, Drosh, Ayun, Kalash and Booni. In these mountain areas many of our opponents were using pads, gloves and a hard ball for the first time. Still, we were overwhelmed, rarely losing by fewer than 200 runs in

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 4 June 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, toured Europe trying to gain support for reforms to favour Britain’s position in the European Union. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, said she did not rule out treaty changes in Europe and would be a ‘constructive partner’ of Britain in seeking reforms. Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, was found to be on a list of 89 figures from the EU banned from entering Russia. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said he would do something to reduce the cost of agency staff for the NHS in England, which amounted to £3.3 billion last year. The government, which has reduced its stake in Lloyds

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 4 June 2015

We in the West all hate Sepp Blatter, so we pay too little attention to the manner in which the Fifa executives were arrested. For what reason, other than maximum drama, were they all ensnared in a dawn raid on their hotel in Zurich? Are we really satisfied that the US authorities should behave in this way outside their jurisdiction? What is left of Swiss independence if they act thus under US pressure? Can we be confident that this very fat man called Chuck Blazer really exists, or has he been invented by Hollywood? In America, lawyers are more like political players or business entrepreneurs than the sub-fusc professionals of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The march of the ‘yes’ men

Forty years ago this week, Britain voted to remain part of the European Community. That remains the only direct vote on the European question that the country has had. The promise of a say on the EU constitution was shelved when that document metamorphosed into the Lisbon Treaty, and the ‘referendum lock’ that the coalition introduced has not yet been triggered by a transfer of power to Brussels. So it’s a historic process that the government will begin on Tuesday, with the first Commons vote on its referendum bill. Straight after the election, there was much speculation that the government would opt for an early referendum on EU membership, rather

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: And they’re back

‘Don’t gloat’. Cameron trotted along to the Commons today with this commandment ringing in his ears. He nearly managed it. But his manner betrayed his state of mind. There was an audible zing, an irrepressible sunniness in his voice as he inaugurated his second term. ‘This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.’ Rarely has that formula held such a fizzy, cocaine kick. Labour’s acting leader, for now, is Harriet Harman. Is she about to pack it in? She seemed passionless and out of sorts. A scowl kept stealing across her lips as she delivered her joke-free lines. She was like a disgruntled lady mayoress opening a fete

Monday

Tessa Mayes

One human right should not be able to extinguish another human right

The Human Rights Act (1998) has a big fan base. In legal, political and celebrity circles there is much enthusiasm for it. Yet the law is not giving us the rights and freedoms we need, because each right can be played off against another. We’ve been losing our human rights in the name of human rights. In the mid-nineties I began chronicling and campaigning for a right to free speech while challenging the Human Rights Act. I couldn’t understand why Britain, a country renowned for its tolerance, was clamping down on the right to free speech (Article 10) including what newspapers published, in the name of a right to privacy (Article

Sunday

James Forsyth

The two tightropes that Cameron must walk on Europe

David Cameron has to walk two tightropes on Europe, and at the same time too. The first is to negotiate a deal with other European leaders that satisfies the bulk of his Euro-sceptic party. If this was not difficult enough, simultaneously Cameron has to show voters that the European question isn’t consuming all of his government’s energies. For despite its importance, it still rankles relatively low on the public’s list of priorities. To address the latter point, I’m told that Cameron will make a major domestic policy announcement in the week of every EU summit in an effort to show that he is not taking his eyes off the home front.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s contradictory EU stance

Of all the talks he will have with European leaders about his plans to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Europe, David Cameron was always likely to enjoy his meeting with Angela Merkel the most. And she doesn’t seem to have disappointed him, saying treaty change was not ‘impossible’ and that ‘we would like to be a part of the process that is going on in Great Britain at the moment and we would like to be a constructive partner in this process’. This is very encouraging for Cameron, though the feeling in Europe generally is still that treaty change is too hard or inconvenient. Which is why Number 10’s insistence on

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 28 May 2015

Steam privatisation Cunard celebrated its 175th birthday by sailing three liners down the Mersey. The formation of the Cunard Line was an early triumph of privatisation. — The Post Office had been operating a monthly service to New York with sailing brigs since 1756. In 1836 a parliamentary committee decided that a steamship service should replace it, and that it would be more efficient for the Admiralty to put it out to tender to private operators. — Samuel Cunard defeated the Great Western Steamship Company and the St George Steam Packet Company by offering a fortnightly service from Liverpool for an annual subsidy of £55,000. The service, which at first only

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 May 2015

Home A Bill to enable a referendum on whether voters wanted Britain to ‘remain’ in the European Union figured in the Queen’s Speech. Another Bill prohibited any rise in income tax rates, VAT or national insurance before 2020. Tenants of housing associations would be given the right to buy their homes. Provision for Scottish devolution was promised in fulfilment of the recommendations of the cross-party Smith Commission. A ‘powerhouse’ in the north was to come into being through cities being given powers over housing, transport, planning and policing. Laws on strikes would be tightened. Red tape for business would be reduced, and a new quango set up to invigilate late

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Cameron’s renegotiation efforts be boosted by the Out campaign’s troubles?

David Cameron is in Holland and France today trying to pave the way for the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s EU membership. Number 10 believe that now the referendum is definitely happening, the bill for it was published today, they can get other countries to engage with Cameron’s concerns. As I say in the column this week, Cameron’s renegotiation strategy has become clearer in recent weeks. Rather than trying to address every concern about EU membership, he is – as one Cabinet Minister told me – going to ‘focus on three or four big things and make a really big push on them.’ The fact that Iain Duncan Smith

Martin Bright

Tony Blair has long been an irrelevance in the Middle East peace process

Following months of speculation, Tony Blair has finally announced he is standing down as the Quartet Representative to the Middle East after eight years in the post. It is tempting to ask whether anyone will notice. His time in the job has been marked by a stagnation of the Peace Process, a hardening of the position of increasingly belligerent Israeli governments and a growing distrust among the Palestinians. Tony Blair himself had long become an irrelevance in negotiations. The truth is that Blair was hamstrung from the moment he took the job (immediately after he stood down as Prime Minister in 2007). He was never a ‘Peace Envoy’, although there was