Eu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

German history is uniquely awful: that’s what makes it so engrossing

As I grew up half German in England in the 1970s, my German heritage was confined to the few curios my grandmother had brought here after the war: a signet ring, a cigarette case, a scrapbook with some missing pages…. She’d changed her name, she’d changed my father’s name, the nation she came from lay in ruins — but from this salvaged bric-à-brac I pieced together the story of my father’s German family, a story they’d done their best to bury in the country they’d left behind. Through a range of objects, large and small, from the Gutenberg Bible to the Reichstag, the director of the British Museum has done

Cameron to demand migrant benefit curbs in ‘game-changing’ immigration speech

David Cameron will make his ‘game-changer’ speech on immigration tomorrow in which he is expected to say that the UK will leave the EU if it does not secure reforms that allow the government to deny benefits to migrants. He will say: ‘If we cannot put our relationship with the EU on a better footing, then of course I rule nothing out.’ This is not the emergency brake or points-based system that the PM seemed to hint at previously and therefore unless there is more in the speech, some of his MPs may feel rather let down. Many were today saying that they expected it to be reasonably small beer,

Is Owen Paterson hoping to become leader of the ‘Out’ camp in the 2017 referendum?

There may well be a battle in Labour for the party’s soul, but the same is certainly true of the Tory party. Owen Paterson’s speech today to Business for Britain is proof of that, with the former Environment Secretary arguing that Britain should leave the European Union. Paterson is certainly applying pressure on David Cameron before the election, arguing that he ‘doubts Britain’s ability to represent itself on the world stage’, but he is also auditioning for another big job, that of the leader of the ‘Out’ camp in the 2017 referendum. There are a number of Conservative big beasts who already think that David Cameron will end up campaigning

Fraser Nelson

Don’t blame Theresa May – she did her bit. The problem is immigration from the EU

Theresa May is getting some stick this morning because she has admitted the obvious: that immigration is never going to get below the ‘tens of thousands’ target that David Cameron stupidly agreed to in opposition. She can only control immigration from outside the EU which she has successfully reduced to its lowest levels for about 15 years. But she has been blown off course by immigration not by the Slavs but Western Europe – Italians, Portuguese, Spanish coming here to flee the sclerosis of their debt-addled high-regulation economies and partake in the job-creation miracle underway in Britain. National Insurance registration data indicates that the number of Polish immigrants plunged, while immigration

Sorry, Anne Glover, but you were just too scientific for the Green Blob

The Green Blob which did for Owen Paterson has claimed another victim. Her name is Anne Glover and she was, until recently, chief scientific adviser to the President of the European Commission. ‘I believe her outstanding background and calibre will bring invaluable expertise to the Commission,’ said former president José Manuel Barroso when she was appointed in December 2011. Indeed they did, and that was the problem. As with its chief accountants (see Marta Andreasen), so it is with its chief scientists: the very last thing the EU wants is pesky experts presenting inconvenient truths which threaten to impede it from doing whatever the hell it likes. Especially not if

Yvette Cooper steals Tory immigration slogan from 2005

At the height of the 2005 election, the then Tory leader Michael Howard (advised by one Lynton Crosby) declared: ‘Let’s be clear. It’s not racist to talk about immigration. It’s not racist to criticise the system. It’s not racist to want to limit the numbers. It’s just plain common sense.’ Howard was lambasted by Labour for the speech, with cabinet ministers wheeled out to slam the Conservatives for ‘scurrilous, right-wing, ugly tactics’. Fast forward nine years and Yvette Cooper’s soundbite sounds a little familiar. In a speech today, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary declared: ‘It isn’t racist to be worried about immigration or to call for immigration reform.’ Even one of the campaign’s

Hammond tries to thread the needle on EU immigration

Philip Hammond’s interview in The Telegraph this morning is striking for several reasons. First, Hammond admits that Britain isn’t going to regain full control of its borders in the renegotiation. As he puts it, ‘“If your ambition is that we have total unfettered control of our own borders to do what we like, that isn’t compatible with membership of the European Union, it’s as simple as that. And people who advocate that know jolly well it is not compatible with membership of the European Union. So if that’s what you want, you’re essentially talking about leaving the European Union.”   But he does seem to think that agreement on something

How Brussels’ sanctions could bleed Britain dry

London is at risk of another blow from Brussels. Currently, the UK Supreme Court is hearing a sanctions case involving the Iranian Bank Mellat, which could prove pivotal in the on-going controversy surrounding the many Russian companies and individuals subject to financial restrictions. Acting at Brussels’ behest and under the Counter Terrorism Act of 2008, the Treasury blacklisted the Iranians for their alleged role in furthering Teheran’s nuclear ambitions. As a direct result, UK financial institutions were prohibited from doing business with the lender. Irked by this development, Bank Mellat challenged the decision both with the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) and Britain’s Supreme Court – and won. In

Why did George Osborne spoil a genuine victory with spin?

After spending so many years pointing out Gordon Brown’s tricks and deceits, I had hoped for a bit of a retirement when George Osborne took office. No such luck. The Chancellor seems to have learned too much from his old nemesis and seems unable to resist stretching the truth – sometimes until the elastic snaps. So it proved with yesterday’s EU negotiation. The Chancellor is blowing smoke, but it seems that the £1.7 billion bill has been halved automatically by the application of the UK rebate – in the same way that previous adjustments have been halved automatically by the UK rebate. Osborne’s achievement – a smaller, but genuine one – was to delay

Smoke, mirrors, magic: how George Osborne “halved” the £1.7bn EU bill

George Osborne took a victory lap on Friday to declare that ‘instead of footing the bill, we have halved the bill.’ This would be the £1.7 billion EU budget invoice the European Commission handed to the UK government in October, with a pay-by date of 1 December. After meeting with his EU counterparts today, the UK finance minister announced a deal in which ‘the bill instead of being £1.7 billion will be around £850 million’. Er…not quite, as it turns out. Here’s what Osborne left out: the UK will still owe the full £1.7 billion, only not all in December, and would be able to quickly offset part of the

Fraser Nelson

Did Osborne halve Britain’s EU bill by admitting that growth still leaves him broke?

George Osborne will tonight return from Brussels bringing peace with honour. He says he has agreed to hand over just £850 million to the EU, rather than the £1.7 billion it asked for, as a penalty  for having the fastest economic growth in Europe. If true*, how did he wangle it? I have a theory. He could have told the EU that yes, the UK has pretty strong growth – over 3 per cent this year and next. In theory, this leaves the UK better-able to pay bills. But not this time. Quite the reverse: the deficit is actually going up right now – a bit of an embarrassment for a Chancellor who asked to be

James Forsyth

Osborne gets Britain’s £1.7bn bill halved—and no payments before the election

Update: In the last few hours, there has been huge confusion and heated debate over whether the British bill has actually been halved. Click here for the verdict of Open Europe which concludes that ‘ Osborne [is] right on the amount but may be exaggerated the extent of the concession.’ A deal has been reached over the supplementary £1.7 billion bill that Britain was handed by the European Commission a fortnight ago. Britain will now pay no more than £850 million, a halving of the bill. George Osborne insisted that the Commission apply the ‘British advantage’ element of the rebate to the bill which led to this 50% reduction. Other EU

Juncker wants more UK money for the EU budget – he could check Luxembourg’s coffers

By rights, Jean-Claude Juncker should be in dire political trouble this morning, not lecturing Britain about paying an extra £1.7 billion to the European Commission. Documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggest that while Juncker was Prime Minister of Luxembourg, 548 comfort letters were issued to various international businesses about their tax arrangements. These letters allowed multinational companies to get away with paying minimal amounts of tax anywhere but Luxembourg despite the majority of their business being done elsewhere, the ICIJ alleges. The ICIJ claims that more than 340 companies secured secret tax deals with Luxembourg. The ICIJ alleges that the deal with FedEx left 99.75 per