Europe

Does anyone really expect the EU referendum to resolve anything?

I suppose, if you could look deep into the mind of somebody who was passionately keen that Britain should leave the European Union then, in among things like old episodes of Dad’s Army and unassailable convictions that Cornwall produces some perfectly good vintages, and so on, you might also spot a vision of the future. In this vision, our referendum will have been and gone and Britain will have seen the light and left the EU. Everybody will have been convinced. Even Nick Clegg. The question will have been settled for a generation at least, and there will be no need to talk about it anymore and we’ll be able

David Cameron is trying to manage the referendum – and his party – properly

The government’s announcement that EU migrants will not be able to vote in the EU referendum tells us a number of things about the way David Cameron is approaching this vote. Firstly, he’s keen to show everyone that he’s getting on with it – indeed, the Prime Minister seems reinvigorated on all fronts at the moment – and making announcements about the franchise is just one example of that. The second is that Cameron does not want the debate about the referendum to be one of an Establishment stitch-up. Allowing EU citizens to vote would be one way of encouraging such a narrative from certain parts of the ‘Out’ camp.

Mr Cameron goes to Latvia

Five days before the Queen’s Speech, David Cameron is taking on the first big challenge of this new Parliament: renegotiating our relationship with the EU. He’s undertaking a whistle-stop tour of European capitals today, focusing on the smaller countries at first. As the Prime Minister sets off for a summit in Riga in Latvia, he was keen to point out that it’s far from a hop, skip and jump to a referendum next year: ‘These talks will not be easy. They will not be quick. There will be different views and disagreements along the way. But by working together in the right spirit and sticking at it, I believe we can find solutions that will address

Antwerp

Napoleon didn’t think much of Antwerp. ‘Scarcely a European city at all,’ he scoffed. If only he could see it today. Ten years ago, Antwerp felt provincial. Now it feels like the capital of an (almost) independent state. ‘Jardin Zoologique’ it says outside the zoo, but that’s the only French signage you’ll see in this resolutely Flemish city. When they built the zoo, in 1843, Belgium was only 13 years old, and French was the official language throughout this mongrel nation. Now it only survives on a few old war memorials. ‘You’re in Flanders now,’ locals tell you, if you try to speak to them in French. Each time I

Germans propose linking the British renegotiation to Eurozone reform

Wolfgang Schäuble’s decision to link the British renegotiation to changes to the governance of the Eurozone is highly significant. In an interview the German Finance Minister told the Wall Street Journal that he has discussed George Osborne ‘coming to Berlin so that we can think together about how we can combine the British position with the urgent need for a strengthened governance of the eurozone’. Schäuble went on to say that ‘the structure of this currency union will stay fragile as long as its governance isn’t substantially reinforced. Maybe there is a chance to combine both goals’. Schäuble’s comments are the most encouragement that the government has had on the

George Osborne poaches Daily Mail’s political editor

George Osborne has moved to strengthen his personal, political operation by hiring the political editor of the Daily Mail James Chapman as his director of communications. This beefing up of his media team will be seen in Westminster as a statement of political intent by the Chancellor; it gives him a more formidable operation than any of the other likely contenders for the Tory leadership. I am told that Chapman will be handling communications for Osborne in his role as both Chancellor and First Secretary of State. One of the reasons that Osborne was keen to hire a Fleet Street heavy hitter to be his director of communications, he’s never

Nigel Farage isn’t the biggest threat to the Eurosceptic cause. Vladimir Putin is

I keep on reading that the ‘Outers’ are going to lose the upcoming EU referendum because Euroscepticism has become associated with Ukip, and Nigel Farage is too divisive. It has been talked about for some time but I’ve seen it far more since the party won 13 per cent of the vote last week. The paradox is that, as Ukip’s support has risen since 2011, conversely British support for EU membership has actually increased. It’s possible, of course, that the public has come to associate Euroscepticism with Ukip whereas it once associated it with the Tory Right, although how much less toxic that brand is must be open to debate. It’s

How David Cameron will manage his Tory coalition

Up until Thursday night, everything that David Cameron and George Osborne had done in government had had to be agreed by the Liberal Democrats. Every policy had to go through the ‘Quad’, the coalition government’s decision making body made up of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander. That doesn’t have to happen anymore. As one Downing Street figure says: ‘It is all completely different now, we can power forward with what we want to do. There’s no need for everything to be watered down. It’s invigorating’. Not having to manage a coalition, also frees up huge amounts of time for both Cameron and the Number 10 operation. It would be well

The Greek crisis is back, and this time it’s more serious than before

Amidst the hullabaloo of the general election campaign, one thing that has generally gone unnoticed in Britain’s political discourse is the worsening Greek situation. You now have European finance ministers openly talking about the possibility of a Greek default. What has changed is that there is now no goodwill and very little trust between Greece and the rest of the Eurozone. The rest of the Eurozone think that the Greeks are obfuscating and not providing the details needed. While the Syriza-led Greek government feel that the rest of the Eurozone is not providing them with the political cover they need to make a deal. They feel that the Eurozone’s insistence

Rhodes to nowhere

‘Rhodes must fall!’ shouted angry black students at the University of Cape Town. The problem is — and it is the profoundest problem of race relations — they were also demonstrating by their every action and desire that they want Rhodes to rise even higher. Last month a black 30-year-old student, Chumani Maxwele, in a great blaze of publicity, threw ‘human excrement’ over the statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the steps to the university’s upper campus. It was followed by similar acts and protests across South Africa against symbols of white imperialism and colonialism. At UCT itself, black students stormed into a council meeting chanting, ‘One settler, one bullet!’

Rod Liddle

Will jailing Katie Hopkins save the lives of migrants? I have my doubts

More than a thousand migrants have died attempting to get into Europe over the past week, including 900 who perished horribly, trapped in the hold of a Tunisian ship near the Libyan coast. Many thousands have died before and many thousands will die in the near future attempting the same venture unless we in Europe change our policies. Everybody is agreed that something has to be done. For the liberal left, the answer is to sack Katie Hopkins, a fellow columnist of mine at the Sun. Not just sack her but also prosecute her and prosecute the editor of the Sun. More than 200,000 people have signed a petition got

How Labour can use Europe to stop the Tories

One of the first tasks of a party in our time of fragmented politics is to stop their opponents making alliances. As things stand, the Tories can form a coalition with Ukip (and it tells you all you need to know about David Cameron that he would even consider such a possibility) the Democratic Unionists and the Liberal Democrats. As the Lib Dems are likely to form the largest block, they are the most important target for Labour. You only have to listen to Nick Clegg, say, or Danny Alexander, to suspect that they would rather keep the coalition with Cameron. Why shouldn’t they? They’ve worked together for five years.

Convince a generation that Ukip resemble the Nazis and you can make them do anything

There was something genuinely frightening about the disturbance aimed at Nigel Farage and his family this weekend; what’s scary is that there seem to be so many people in our country who think a man having lunch with his family is a legitimate target for such a stunt because of his views. If you’re prepared to do that in front of people’s kids, you can likely do anything. Their self-justification was telling; as one protester put it, Farage was a target because he ‘othered’ people. In my experience people who use the word othered are quite quick to ‘other’ anyone who disagrees with them. Likewise when another one of the

The Great European Disaster on BBC4 reviewed: propaganda worthy of Leni Riefenstahl

My favourite bit of The Great European Disaster (BBC4, Sunday) was the lingering shot that showed golden heads of corn stirring gently in the breeze. It was captioned ‘Europe’. I cannot even begin to describe what a powerful effect this had on my subconscious. It was worthy of Leni Riefenstahl. Indeed, when I experimentally turned off the colour, it was Leni Riefenstahl. ‘Bloody hell!’ I thought to myself. ‘Suddenly it all makes sense.’ But my journey of discovery and enlightenment was only just beginning. I haven’t yet told you what the Ukrainian peasant said. I forget his exact words, but it was something along the lines of, ‘When I think

If Greece leaves the euro could others follow?

Germany wants nothing less than an unconditional surrender from the new Greek government. It is hard to draw any other conclusion from Berlin’s decision to reject Greece’s proposal for a six month extension of the current bailout, which counted as an almost total climb-down by the Syriza-led government. But it seems that the Germans—with an eye on the Spanish elections later this year —want to show that voting for radical, anti-austerity parties gets you absolutely nothing. However, the Germans may well have miscalculated. The Greek Finance Minister wants Greece to leave the euro but, because the vast majority of Greeks wants to stay in the single currency, he has had

Greece isn’t the only country that wants to leave the euro

With EU budget talks breaking down on Monday night, there was, for a time, an outside chance that Greece would leave the euro. Worryingly for EU leaders, there are plenty of people across the rest of the continent who would like to do the same. As research by ComRes for New Direction Foundation across nine European countries shows, significant minorities would like to return to domestic currencies, although the majority of people in major Eurozone countries would like to retain the euro. While the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has been doling out the conditions to Greece about what it will have to do to stay in the euro, one

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband to Cameron: show us your EU renegotiation policy

Ed Miliband has sent an angry letter to David Cameron this afternoon, demanding that he ‘set out in detail a reform agenda for the EU and a strategy for building the alliances needed to deliver it’. Now, David Cameron is quite used to receiving angry letters about Europe, but mostly they come from members of his own party rather than the leader of the Opposition. But because Ed Miliband has decided that his party’s best business policy is actually the responsibility of his Shadow Foreign Office team, he wants to get in on the angry letter-writing act too. This letter is supposed to highlight that pro-business policy, which is Labour’s

Martin Vander Weyer

Bet on a swift Grexit | 19 February 2015

‘Will Greece exit the eurozone in 2015?’ Paddy Power was pricing ‘yes’ at 3-to-1 on Tuesday, with 5-to-2 on another Greek general election within the year and 6-to-4 on the more cautious ‘Greece to adopt an official currency other than the euro by the end of 2017.’ I’m no betting man — as I reminded myself after backing a parade of point-to-point losers on Sunday — and I defer to our in-house speculator Freddy Gray, who will offer a wider guide to political bets worth having in the forthcoming Spectator Money (7 March). But on the Greek card I’m tempted by the longer odds on the shorter timeframe, because this has the

The Eurozone crisis is as much a political problem as it is an economic one

Veterans of Eurozone crisis summits, hoping for another nail-biting drama, had queued to get ringside seats. But yesterday’s meeting over Greece with Eurozone Finance Ministers ended without result. And you shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve been here many times before – Eurozone committees keep minutes but lose hours – and this was not a meeting during which decisions were to be taken. While some Eurozone watchers have convinced themselves that there is now a new script for Greece’s relation with its Eurozone creditors, no Eurozone government but the Greek share that view. It’s not just that other capitals are hostile to Greece’s own game plan of forcing other governments to make a new

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