Eu

Thursday

Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage’s diary: How I survived Dry January

Dry January is tougher than it sounds. Well, for me anyway. It’s now been some 28 days since I’ve had a drink, and you should see what that means for my campaigning strategy. ‘Ginger beer? Lemonade?’ Pub-goers around the country can’t believe it when I walk in and whisper my order over the bar. The fact is they don’t believe I’m really doing it. ‘I’m not all spin and bluster like those other lads,’ I usually reply. ‘If I promise I’m going to do something, I’ll bloody well do it.’ Still, I can’t say it’s never going to tempt me again. Especially not given the week I’ve had. It all

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Merkel’s difficulty is Cameron’s opportunity

In the run-up to the Greek election, European figures were adamant that there wasn’t as much to worry about as people thought. They argued that Syriza wouldn’t come close to winning a majority and that it would have to do a coalition deal with Potami who would end up moderating its demands. This complacency was misplaced. Syriza came within a whisker of a majority and then formed a coalition with right wing nationalists, the Greek Independents, who agree with Syriza on very little other than the need to end EU-imposed austerity. Politically, it is very hard to see how the Greek situation can be resolved. Syriza’s entire rationale as a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Europe’s crisis is Cameron’s opportunity

Napoleon notoriously preferred his generals to be lucky — and on that score at least, he would have approved of David Cameron. The triumph of the Syriza party in Greece presents him with a glorious opportunity to solve the European question that has bedevilled the Tories for so long. Europe’s difficulty is Cameron’s opportunity. The European elite has been shaken by the scale of Syriza’s victory. Just a few weeks ago, Cameron was arguing in private that Greek voters, who remain overwhelmingly pro-EU, would ultimately not back a party that was intent on a confrontation with the eurozone authorities. European diplomats stressed that even if Syriza won it wouldn’t get

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

What’s good about austerity (whatever the Greeks think)

The only question I remember from my Oxford moral philosophy paper was ‘What is integrity and is it a virtue?’ In the margins of all the politicking that follows the victory of Syriza in the Greek election, I hope someone asks: ‘What is austerity, is it a virtue, and why has it worked in the UK and Ireland but failed in Greece?’ My own definition of austerity in the context of financial crisis, when I debated it with former Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou, was ‘a synonym for frugal, uncorrupt government supported by willing taxpayers of the sort that has been largely absent in southern Europe’, at which George got

Nicholas Farrell

The benefits of breeding like a rabbit

Let’s face it. Whatever Pope Francis actually means when his head is in the clouds during those in-flight press conferences of his, we Europeans need to breed like rabbits if we want to preserve Europe. That is not why I have bred like a rabbit, but it is the brutal truth. I have five children aged 11 down to three — because until the age of 40 I thought I was infertile and did not think I could breed at all, let alone like a rabbit; and because though I am a devout agnostic, I am married to Carla, a devout Catholic, who is much younger than me and refuses

Monday

Steerpike

Revealed: Nigel Farage once voted for the Green Party

Nigel Farage’s secret is out. In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, the leader of Ukip let slip that he once voted for the Green Party. ‘I voted Green in 1989 in the European elections,’ Farage admits. While he fails to give any further explanation of why he supported a party that appears to be at loggerheads with his own views, Farage does go on to reveal the most insulting names he has been called. ‘I was called a football hooligan once in public and I didn’t like that. I am many things but a hooligan I am not. I have been called everything this year, absolutely everything, racist, xenophobe – there’s

Abbie Martin

Greece lightning: six things you need to know about Syriza’s victory

It’s official: Syriza, the Greek anti-austerity leftist party, has won the general election. With 98pc of the votes counted it is looks to have taken 149 out of 300 seats, just two short of an overall majority but still in a very strong position. Syriza is pro-EU but anti-austerity – so will soon face a confrontation with the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund). Germany has indicated that it’s less worried about Greece leaving the EU, so won’t bend over backwards to accommodate demands. The brinkmanship will now begin. 1. Background – the Greek economy Over the last four years Greece has suffered from a depression comparable to 1930s America, resulting in

Sunday

Fredrik Erixon

Syriza’s rule will be short-lived: the EU will never give what it wants

So Alexis Tsipras is Greece’s new Prime Minister. Syriza, the extreme-left party he leads, may end up (just) short of an overall majority. But it won a landslide today – and no one will stand in the way for making government policy of its party programme. This means we’re guaranteed turbulence ahead, both in Greek and Eurozone politics. Syriza is no club for chic leftist posturing, nor is it a discussion circle for grey-haired Marxist academics. It is a coalition of hard and soft communists, violent and peaceful revolutionaries, eco-warriors, radical socialists and a hotchpotch of lefties that think it is an act of fascism to take away bonuses to public servants for washing

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A Syriza majority will put Athens and Berlin on a collision course

The next set of exit polls are now out from Greece and they, again, show Syriza pulling off a spectacular victory. Their lead might even be just enough to see them win an overall majority; the poll estimates that they will win between 148 and 154 seats in the 300 seat parliament. If Syriza do win outright, they will have no justification to voters for watering down their demands to the rest of the Eurozone. They will have a clear mandate to push for the debt restructuring that they want. But Berlin is not going to be in any mood to grant concessions. Angela Merkel is already deeply unhappy about

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Greece votes, Europe waits

Greek voters are currently going to the polls in an election that will have profound consequences for the Eurozone. If the anti-austerity Syriza party wins, as the polls suggest it will—and its lead has actually been increasing in the past few days, the Eurozone crisis will enter a new and more acute phase. Syriza will demand a softening of the terms of the Greek bailout. But the Merkel government, the European Central Bank and the European Commission are adamant that they’ll be no leeway given. With Merkel already deeply unhappy about the ECB’s quantitative easing programme, she isn’t going to sign off on any concessions to Athens. Another reason why

Thursday

Martin Gayford

How will the British public take to Rubens’s fatties?

This week a monumental exhibition, Rubens and His Legacy, is opening at the Royal Academy. It makes the case — surely correct — that the Flemish master was among the most influential figures in European art. There are few painters of the 18th or 19th century — from Joshua Reynolds to Cézanne, Watteau to Constable — who were not affected by his work. It will be interesting, however, to discover what the London art public feel about Rubens himself. The British have had a complicated relationship with the great man. Its apex is represented by his residence in London — admittedly for a brief nine months in 1629–30 — his

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why the Greek election could decide Britain’s next government

Before the eurozone crisis, Greek elections didn’t receive much attention in Westminster. At the moment, however, the polls from Athens are being studied by every politico from the Prime Minister down. How Greece votes on the 25 January could determine the result of our election. If anti-austerity Syriza triumphs, the eurozone crisis will move from a chronic phase into another acute one. For the second election in a row, the backdrop to a British poll and possible coalition negotiation would be talk of debt defaults and bank runs, as Athens struggles with the eurozone straitjacket. Syriza does not want Greece to leave the euro. But it does want the ‘fiscal

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why no one will win on 7 May 2015

On 19 June 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington declared that ‘nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won’. Two hundred years later, David Cameron or Ed Miliband might feel the same way as they sit in Downing Street. Any elation over victory will be quickly overshadowed by the thought of troubles to come — in all likelihood insurmountable troubles for either man. Everyone has known for years when this election will take place, with the result that the campaign starting gun has been fired even earlier than usual. Cameron is busy prophesying economic chaos if Labour wins; Miliband is

Tom Stacey

The deep instinct that Britain’s immigration debate still ignores

The issue of immigration won’t go away, because it threatens the soul of the nation. Nobody in political authority uses such language today, because they are unsure of the validity of ‘soul’ and of the political safety of the term ‘nation’. They will use the term ‘we’ in the context of Britain and its people, but would surely dodge defining it. Try as he might this election year, neither Cameron nor Miliband can do anything to persuade anxious voters they care about immigration, because they don’t use language which reaches the soul. No one else does either, not even Nigel Farage — it just won’t do. Yet only this abandoned

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The eurozone is strong enough to kick out Greece if Syriza wins

Ever since European Central Bank president Mario Draghi declared himself ready, in July 2012, ‘to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro’, the likely disintegration of the single currency — as predicted by pundits such as yours truly over the preceding years — has all but disappeared from the comment agenda. The combination of a persuasive ECB leader with reform in some bailed-out eurozone states (notably Ireland and Spain) and an easing of bond market pressures, plus the iron will of Germany to see the euro survive, drove the break-up argument into retreat. Indeed it seemed for a while to have been vanquished, and that ex-president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Will Merkel throw her diplomatic weight behind Cameron’s renegotiation strategy?

Before today’s awful events in Paris, the meeting between David Cameron and Angela Merkel was going to be the big news of the day. The German Chancellor does not always observe the usual rules of neutrality when it comes to foreign elections. In 2012, she endorsed Nicolas Sarkozy in a joint TV interview, declaring that it was ‘natural’ to back a fellow Conservative. Now, there was no indication that Merkel was going to offer Cameron similar backing today. But senior Tories were keen to talk up what they were calling ‘das snub’, the fact that Merkel is not meeting with Miliband. (It is also worth remembering that in 2012, Miliband

Tuesday

William Cook

Germany is shackled in the immigration debate. But Britain isn’t so must lead the way

Today Angela Merkel will meet David Cameron in Downing Street. She will tell him what she can do – and what she cannot do – to help keep Britain in the EU. Yet she might like to begin by telling him what she plans to do to keep her own people behind the EU project, for in Germany the Eurofederalist consensus is being challenged like never before. In Germany, as in Britain, the most emotive issue is immigration. In Germany, as in Britain, people are scared to discuss this issue frankly, for fear of being branded racists. And now a new movement has emerged to fill this vacuum: Patriotische Europaer Gegen

Monday

Steerpike

Do Cameron and Miliband secretly feel the same way about the EU?

At last, an actual dividing line. Ed has used his first proper speech of the 2015 campaign to declare that his party would never, ever leave the EU: ‘We must demand reform from Europe—a European Union that works better for Britain. But make no mistake: exit from the EU would be a dramatic mistake for our country and our economy. So, whatever the politics, I will not join those who cynically offer exit as a realistic plan for our future or the future of Britain’s working families.’ That should really help Labour shore up their northern heartlands against increasing working-class Euroscepticism and the rise of Ukip. Mr S suspects the Labour leader’s

Thursday

Paul Collier

How to fix Britain’s immigration crisis (without leaving Europe)

The response to the Ukip surge has reached the panic stage. Just as British business and academia chorused the economic benefits of Union in the final stages of the Scottish referendum campaign, now their refrain is of the economic benefits of immigration. A letter from ten chief executives in the Financial Times pronounced that unimpeded immigration from Eastern Europe is highly valuable. The previous week economists estimated that immigration from Eastern Europe had contributed £20 billion net in taxes. But Ukip supporters are no longer overawed by businessmen and dons, so what is to be done? Within the accepted rules of English social hierarchy, the tempting implication for the rest

William Cook

Europeans no longer fear Germany. But do the Germans still fear themselves?

In the old Death Strip between East and West Berlin, which runs through the centre of the city, there is a graveyard full of German war heroes and a few war criminals too. From the Red Baron to Reinhard Heydrich, the best and worst of the German military are buried here. There’s also a mass grave full of civilians, killed by Allied air raids, and a memorial to the 136 East Berliners who died trying to cross the Berlin Wall — which ran through this cemetery. The Death Strip is still an empty space. Germany has been marking two anniversaries this year — one a celebration, the other a painful