Eu

Thursday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Theresa May hits back against Brussels

Theresa May’s missive to Brussels delivered on the steps of Downing Street had a simple message: keep out of our election. The PM’s speech was her most direct attack yet against the EU and showed that she was intent on living up to her moniker of being a ‘bloody difficult woman’. Her words might have gone down badly across the Channel, but they’ve been warmly welcomed in today’s newspapers: ‘The gloves are off,’ says the Daily Telegraph, which argues that recent events have shown to the Prime Minister that ‘the prospects of a smooth Brexit have gone’. The PM’s charged statement ‘marked a break from the recent British position’, the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Diane’s grey matter and Labour’s sticky votes

I awoke the other morning to hear Diane Abbott’s brains leaking out of her ears and all over the carpet during an interview with LBC’s excellent Nick Ferrari. You will need a mop and a bucket very sharpish, I thought to myself, as she gabbled on, the hole beneath her feet growing larger with every syllable she uttered. Diane has had the brain leakage problem before, many times, and my worry is that following the LBC debacle there is almost nothing left inside her skull at all, just a thin greyish residue resembling a kind of fungi or leaf mould. This would leave her on an intellectual par with Emily

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Theresa May pulls no punches in her attack on the European Commission

Theresa May has kicked off the Tory general election campaign with a remarkably punchy statement in Downing Street. She accused the European Commission of trying to interfere in the UK general election. She said that the hardening of the Commission’s negotiating stance and the leaks of recent days ‘had been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on 8 June.’ She added that there were those in Brussels who did not want to see the UK prosper. May’s charge takes us into new territory. I can’t recall a British Prime Minister accusing an allied power, let alone a group the UK is still

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

Could the French far left propel Marine Le Pen to victory?

The French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye’s career has encompassed everything from fiction to prose poetry, but he will best be remembered for his contribution to political science: Horseshoe Theory. This maxim holds that the far left and far right, rather than being at opposite ends of a linear political spectrum, in fact closely resemble each other. This is because the political spectrum is not linear but instead curves like a horseshoe, the right and left extremes of which almost meet. Faye’s theory has often been derided for being simplistic, so he could be forgiven for feeling a quiet sense of vindication after a recent survey of supporters of the defeated far

Siobhan Fenton

The EU has gifted the Republican cause a blueprint for a united Ireland

Theresa May’s awkward dinner date with Jean-Claude Juncker stole the headlines, but there was another Brexit development that passed with much-less fuss: the European Union’s plan for Ireland to reunite after Brexit, which it inserted quietly into its negotiating guidelines. Few in Britain paid much attention to it. Across the Irish Sea, it was a different story. Among Catholic communities, there is growing hope that Brexit could be the issue which finally sees partition end on the island. Yet within Protestant communities, there is a growing fear that the EU is using Brexit as a tool to sneak through Irish reunification. The British government appears to be doing precious little to stop it. The issue of

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill

Who does Jean-Claude Juncker think he is?

Jean-Claude Juncker: what a nasty piece of work. There aren’t many politicians I’d say that about. Even most of those I disagree with strike me as being pretty decent people. Theresa May might be a petty authoritarian, but she isn’t sinister. Jeremy Corbyn is wrong about everything, and stuck politically and sartorially in 1983, but he seems a nice enough guy. But Juncker — it is still rare that such a noxious character, such a scheming operator, such an arrogant arse, such a jumped-up, poundshop Machiavelli, darkens the corridors of politics. He’s the worst. All of Juncker’s awful traits were on display at the weekend, in the spat over his

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s burkini row returns

Bad weather swept across southern France over the May Day holiday but summer is just around the corner and with it will come the burkini. Last week, a call was issued to burkini-wearers to gather at the Cannes film festival later this month, with the organiser saying it will be the perfect moment ‘to celebrate together this freedom in the town that was the first to ban the burkini’. The burkini brouhaha of last August made headlines around the world but it soon blew over like a summer storm. A handful of beaches on the Cote d’Azur banned young women from wearing the Islamic swimsuit, citing concerns over public disorder,

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

By their own logic, feminists should support Marine Le Pen

Why aren’t feminists lining up behind Le Pen? I thought women had a moral responsibility to back women standing for office? That’s certainly what they said during the Hillary-Trump clash. Yes, I am voting for Hillary because she’s a woman, because she ‘knows what it’s like to menstruate, be pregnant, give birth’, said one American feminist. So does Le Pen. She has three children. According to the rather crude biologism of feminist identitarianism, that makes her an even better candidate than Hillary, who has one kid. So why the silence, feminists? Aren’t you ‘With Her’? Looking back at the Hillary love-in, its remarkable how much it hinged on ‘Hillary’s a

Sunday

Charles Moore

Does Emmanuel Macron represent the ‘Uber-isation’ of politics?

A French friend tells me that Emmanuel Macron represents the ‘Uber-isation’ of politics. I suppose that makes Le Pen the spokesman for the black cab interest. I want to live in a country which manages a modus vivendi between these two schools of thought. If life is all Uber, it will be freer and cheaper, but also more ignorant and grotty. If life is all black cabs, prices will be too high and cabbies will revert to the surlier service they used to give in the 20th century. Perhaps such peaceful coexistence is an impossible dream. This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes, which appears in this week’s Spectator

Saturday

Jonathan Miller

The more voters see of Emmanuel Macron, the less they like

On Wednesday night, the two finalists in the French presidential election will meet for a head to head television debate, which will be watched by almost everyone in France. A choice between plague and cholera. This is going to be a dangerous encounter for Emmanuel Macron, and a moment of opportunity for Marine Le Pen. Her supporters are suddenly imagining they could win and have announced a deal to appoint the veteran sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan as prime minister, if she does. This remains outside of any scenario I can imagine but even as Macron leads, his legitimacy is in doubt and the more voters see, the less they like. Macron’s

Friday

William Cook

Islamism isn’t the only terror threat Germany is facing

Since December, when Islamic terrorist Anis Amri drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, Germans have been waiting fearfully for the next Islamist attack. However right-wing terrorism is also a growing concern in Germany, and the latest case to come to light shows how this extremist movement may be evolving. Germany’s Military Intelligence is currently investigating 275 cases of right-wing extremism, but surely none of them is quite so disconcerting as the peculiar case of Franco A. The investigation began in January, when a maintenance worker at Vienna Airport opened a toilet ventilation duct and found a pistol hidden inside it. The police attached an alarm to the air

Wednesday

William Cook

Taking Ivanka Trump seriously is a masterstroke by Angela Merkel

Is Ivanka Trump’s visit to Berlin a triumph for Angela Merkel, or a diplomatic disaster? As always, that depends on which newspapers you read. Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung called it a ‘a veritable coup for the chancellor,’ but the headlines in the British press have focused on the boos that greeted Ivanka at yesterday’s W20 Summit, when the President’s daughter described her father as a defender of women’s rights. Sat alongside Ivanka on the conference platform, Merkel looked distinctly awkward – but Ms Trump’s appearance wasn’t entirely met with groans and jeers. Her other comments were greeted with polite applause and, on one occasion, even cheers (she praised Merkel for enforcing

Tuesday

Robert Tombs

France wants a new saviour. Will it be Macron or Le Pen?

After having given themselves and the rest of us a fright, France’s voters have, by a worryingly small margin, stepped back from the brink. Some polls indicated a possible victory for the two extremists, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, either of whom would have meant disaster for France. Instead, the next President will almost certainly be the youthful centrist, Emmanuel Macron, the nearest to a viable establishment candidate. Though this is certainly a far lesser evil, it is evident that the political system of Europe’s oldest large democracy has gone spectacularly wrong. The minimum requirement of a functioning democracy is that a manageable range of sensible choices is put

Monday

Freddy Gray

By ditching the National Front, Le Pen is playing Macron at his own game

Everybody knows that Marine Le Pen can’t beat Emmanuel Macron, don’t they? What does she have to lose? Nothing, it seems. She has now declared that she will run as an independent candidate, and not stand for the National Front. Marine’s move is surprising and clever in a madcap way. Anything that Macron can do I can do stranger, she is saying. Macron has reinvented himself as an outsider taking on the establishment — even though everyone knows he is a former banker and Hollande economics adviser. Well, Marine is saying, I can pretend that I am an independent too. Macron’s greatest weakness is that he was tarred by association

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

An unlikely alliance of Communists and Catholics could yet spoil Macron’s coronation

After their humiliation with Brexit and Donald Trump, the pollsters returned to form in France with their predictions of a Macron and Le Pen first round victory. If the polls are as accurate with their forecast for the second round, then the new president of France will be the centrist Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old is the overwhelming favourite. But nonetheless, there are reasons for the National Front to hope that they could still replicate the political earthquakes of 2016. For that to happen Marine Le Pen will have to attack Macron on two fronts with the purpose of attracting votes from both the far-left and the conservative right. Between them,

Sunday

Jonathan Miller

The real winner of the French presidential election? François Hollande

In the biggest comeback since Lazarus, French president François Hollande has installed Emmanuel Macron as his certain successor, with the collusion of the media, the magistrates and less than 25 per cent of the voters. If Hollande has been a terrible president, the result of the first round of voting confirms that he is a master political technician, with a specialty in dirty tricks. It seems impossible that he will now retire quietly from public life. Whether he will have an official role, or merely be a Svengali-like figure in the shadows of the presidency remains to be seen. One by one, obstacles to Macron’s succession were ruthlessly eliminated and

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

‘A great victory for patriots!’ – the Le Pens hail their success in the French presidential election

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday May 7th after the two finished neck-and-neck in the first round of voting. With votes still to be counted, there are slight discrepancies in the final percentage, but according to a Harris Interactive exit poll in Le Figaro, Macron and Le Pen both finished on 22 per cent. An Ipsos exit poll for BFMTV had Macron on 23.7 per cent and the National Front leader on 21.7 per cent. ‘We have today clearly turned a page in the French political life!’ declared a jubilant Macron. At first, there was no

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Macron and Le Pen win first round of the French presidential election, exit polls forecast

It’s still rather a cheerful vibe at the French ambassador’s residence in sunny Kensington this evening. The crowd here would have preferred the exit poll to show Macron and Fillon to go through, but they’ll take Macron versus Le Pen, especially with Macron in the lead. There were sharp intakes of breath when Le Pen popped up on screen in second place. But Macron being ahead is good news as far as these Londoners are concerned. A huge number of French voters abroad turned out today – a good chunk of them in London, where people queued up outside the French Lycée in Kensington for up to three hours to cast

Saturday

Jonathan Miller

France’s deplorable election has unified voters in disgust

I popped into the village pharmacy this morning with a prescription for valium. Not for me, I hasten to add, but for my epileptic dog. But I am sorely tempted to divert one or two doses for my personal use, as I prepare to help count the votes on Sunday night in the first round of the French presidential election. I do not think it is exaggerating to wonder if, on the eve of voting, the fifth republic is going to collapse with a bang or a whimper. It may not even be necessary to wait for the second round of voting in a fortnight. There is a scenario in

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France braces itself for the backlash if Marine Le Pen triumphs

With less than twenty four hours before polling booths open in France, the country’s security forces are on full alert for another attack by Islamist extremists. More than 50,000 police and 7,000 soldiers have been mobilised as part of the massive security operation but they still lack the resources to safeguard every polling station. In Paris, for example, only 400 of the 896 polling booths will have security personnel on duty. But it’s not just Islamists who are menacing France. The far left has called for a ‘Night of Barricades’ [a reference to the May demonstrations of 1968] to begin on Sunday at 6pm, to oppose what they describe as