Europe

Tuesday

Paul Ormerod

Who will rule the 21st century?

This is a nice big question to ponder on the holiday beach or in the rented villa. A vast amount has already been written on the rise of China and whether the US will be replaced as the global superpower. And where exactly does Europe fit into all this? It is easy to make a case for American weakness. The twin deficits of the balance of payments and the massive public sector gap between expenditure and income, the increasingly divided and embittered nature of policy discourse in the country, growing cultural fragmentation. The image of a divided nation appears to be supported by what has happened to the choice of

Saturday

Martin Bright

Are you thinking what Aidan Burley was thinking?

When you are not a part of the Tory tribe there are certain subjects you worry about mentioning as journalist, whether it’s at a Conservative Party conference, or indeed, on a blog for the Spectator. One is Europe, another is immigration and a third is multiculturalism. These three interlocking bogies drive the Tory grassroots and emerge, from time to time, to trouble the party leadership. The views of constituency activists on these issues (and people who like to comment on the Spectator site) can be fruity, but I have been talking to Tories for long enough to know that they can be genuinely passionate about this stuff. It was once

Monday

Douglas Murray

The problem with UKIP’s opponents

Leafing through a pile of Economists I’ve just caught up on a Bagehot column from last month which inadvertently demonstrates exactly where UKIP’s opponents go wrong. The very final lines of the piece explain: ‘Mr Farage’s real dream is to reshape Britain, by pulling the Conservatives to the right and bouncing Mr Cameron into a referendum on EU membership. If he pulls that off, his insurgency will be no laughing matter.’ It is what is assumed here, rather than what is said, that is most revealing. Why should the prospect of a consultation of the British people on their membership of the EU be so fearful? Surely it could only

Friday

James Forsyth

The euro sticking plaster peels off

The sticking plaster is peeling off again. Spanish bond yields have again breached 7 per cent this morning. That 10 year gilts are back over this level is yet another reminder that the piece-meal solutions the Eurozone is trying just won’t work. Indeed, they are unravelling at an ever quicker rate as the markets realise that the supposed agreements reached at these summits rarely survive close inspection. What is becoming quite clear is that the prosperous, fiscally-prudent countries of northern Europe — and that’s not just Germany but Holland and Finland also — simply aren’t prepared to give the Spanish and the Italians let alone the Greeks, the kind of

Monday

Steerpike

Amateur sport

It’s Euro-mania in SW1. Always reliable for hard hitting analysis, Tory foghorn Louise Mensch summed up what she saw as her party’s position on the EU: ‘We want a Diet Coke version. A skinny latte. An EasyJet ticket. An IKEA flat-pack. Pain, vin, Boursin. You know. Just the basics.’ And who said a referendum would dumb down a complicated issue? Those paid to walk the line are less happy though. One Tory spinner whispers to me: This ding-dong is almost as interesting as the tennis. Less civilised though…

Sunday

David Blackburn

Banging on about Europe

It’s funny how things turn out. David Cameron said in opposition that there was nothing worse than the Conservative party banging-on about Europe. These days, it bangs-on about little else. The prime minister is a repeat offender. He said on Friday that there should not be an in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. It’s a different story today. In an article for the Sunday Telegraph, Cameron says that he is not afraid of the words Europe and referendum. But don’t mistake that for a pledge. Cameron writes, ‘I don’t agree with those who say we should leave and therefore want the earliest possible in/out referendum. Leaving would

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The EU referendum, you read it here first

Many Spectator subscribers, picking up today’s newspapers, will be a bit puzzled. Is it news that David Cameron has come round to the idea of an EU referendum? Haven’t they read that somewhere before? This sensation is called Déjà Lu, and it I’m afraid afflicts all Spectator subscribers. Cameron’s decision to change his position on the EU was revealed by James Forsyth back in May. As so often, his weekly political column gave real-time updates of the No10’s decision-making process as it happened. He wrote then:  ‘A referendum on Europe is the obvious answer. It is one the leadership seems set to embrace. The popularity of Cameron’s EU veto made

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Angela’s anguish on ESM vote

This all feels rather miserably familiar. Eurozone leaders come to a dawn agreement about resolving the crisis. Markets react positively. The leaders appear on podiums to congratulate one another and themselves on reaching said dawn agreement. By lunchtime, something rather awkward has happened. Angela Merkel, perhaps inspired by George Osborne, had done a U-turn in agreeing to use eurozone bailout funds to support Italy and Spain, but did she have the authority to do so? In Germany, ahead of a vote in the Bundestag to approve the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund and new budget rules, the largest opposition party, the SPD, has called an emergency meeting of the budget

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Italy and Spain put Merkel in the corner

It took them 13 hours, but eurozone leaders have finally agreed to use bailout funds to recapitalise banks directly. The deal, which was reached at 4am (David Cameron had gone to bed at 1am because this is a eurozone, not EU matter), involved Germany giving in to the demands of Italy and Spain. You can read the statement from the euro area leaders here, but essentially what it says is that the refinancing will not take place until a single banking supervisor is set up, to be run by the European Central Bank. This was originally going to be a long-term project, but leaders have now set a deadline of

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The EU campaign that won’t go away

Just when the whips were sighing with relief that Europe has been pushed down the agenda by Lords reform, a rather awkward letter from over 100 Tory MPs flops on to the Prime Minister’s doormat. ConHome has the scoop this morning that John Baron has brought together a large group of MPs  who are calling for legislation to be written that ensures there will be a referendum in the next Parliament on the issue. When I spoke to Baron earlier, he told me that four more have joined, although he has agreed with colleagues that the full list of names will be known only to him and the Prime Minister.

Tuesday

Matthew Sinclair

End the #endfossilfuelsubsidies subsidy

The European Union has been handing out grants to environmentalist groups since 1997. New research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance today shows just how much the different groups have received. The European Environmental Bureau, an umbrella group for a number of the others who are funded directly, has received nearly €11 million. More familiar names funded under the LIFE+ programme include Friends of the Earth Europe, which has received over €7m million, and the European Policy Office of the World Wildlife Fund, which has received nearly €8 million. The European Union isn’t the only government to hand taxpayers’ money over to the environmentalists. But they are particularly shameless. When DEFRA funds

Sunday

James Forsyth

No. 10’s response to its difficulties

Two issues are dominating Number 10’s thinking at the moment: Europe and the cost of living. How to deal with Europe is the biggest strategic challenge facing David Cameron. Cameron has to work out how to use this moment to advance the British national interest. But he also knows that Europe is an issue that could split the coalition and the Tory party.   Inside Number 10, it seems that it is becoming a question of when to announce a referendum not whether to call one. As I say in the Mail on Sunday today, senior figures there are pushing for the Tory commitment to a future referendum on the

Thursday

David Blackburn

Miliband resists temptation

There has been much speculation that Labour might insist on a referendum on Europe. This has been fuelled by numerous factors: the parlous state of the Eurozone, the increasingly likelihood of a 2-speed Europe and, above all, the fact that David Cameron doesn’t want the Tories to ‘bang on about Europe’, especially when in coalition with the Lib Dems. There have been a series of high-profile Labour interventions on the subject in recent weeks. Both Peter Mandelson and Ed Balls, arch-schemers both, have mulled the question in public, and the appointment of Jon Cruddas, a pronounced Eurosceptic, as the party’s policy reviewer, tickled fancies still further. But, today Ed Miliband

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne’s City safeguards

Before David Cameron’s trip to Berlin later today, George Osborne appeared on the Today Programme to emphasise that in the event of a Eurozone banking union, Britain would require safeguards.   Given the importance of finance to this country, Cameron and Osborne can’t accept anything that creates a two-tier single market for financial services. The Tory leadership is also acutely aware that it was this issue that led to Cameron vetoing a proposed treaty last year. It would be politically dangerous for Cameron to do anything that could be characterised as undermining his own veto.   One option being floated by some Tory Eurosceptics is a British veto on financial

Saturday

Rory Sutherland

Divided we stand

Many Native American tribes would consult a shaman before embarking on a hunting expedition. In one tribe, a shaman would take a caribou bone, carve on it images of the kind of prey the tribe were keen to find (buffalo, deer, trailer-park video-poker addicts) and then place it on a fire. At some point the heat of the fire would cause the bone to split. The hunting party would then set out unquestioningly in the direction of the line of the crack. This is of course a completely insane practice; the kind of irrational, superstitious nonsense that would have Richard Dawkins foaming at the mouth. Except it isn’t. In fact,

Friday

James Forsyth

The push for a European Banking Union

The warning by Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, that the euro is ‘unsustainable unless further steps are undertaken’ is about as stark as they come. I’m informed that what Draghi is pushing for behind the scenes is for the ECB’s remit to be expanded to include Eurozone financial policy. This would lead to, to put it crudely, the creation of a European Banking Union. It would see the ECB take over from national governments when it comes to bank bailouts and the like. This would, in turn, ease some of the pressures on countries like Spain whose borrowing costs are being driven up by the market’s

David Blackburn

Euphoria gives way to worry

The slaughter of the innocents in Houla, Syria, has concentrated the West’s collective mind. The Times declares (£), not unreasonably, that there is a desire to stop what the UN, while making Robert Mugabe its tourism envoy, has tepidly described as ’18 months of violence’. The paper adds that ‘all options are on the table’. Western voices are emitting decibels of disgust. Secretary of State Clinton has castigated the Russian regime for its intransigence in the Security Council, and has said that Russia’s policy will ‘contribute to a civil war’. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain has repeated his view that the Obama administration’s inaction on Syria denies what it is to be

Thursday

David Blackburn

Osborne’s gambles

There is now a general acceptance that the Tories’ 2015 election manifesto will contain a pledge, dare one say a cast-iron guarantee, that voters will be offered a referendum on Britain’s relationship with the EU. James first revealed this in his magazine column a few weeks ago. The aim is to see off the surge from UKIP, prevent Labour from opportunistically seeking Eurosceptic ground, and to counter Boris Johnson’s popular adoption of the People’s Pledge. Since then it has been taken as read that George Osborne is responsible for this gambit, which is reasonable given that he is the Tories’ chief strategist, and a likely contender in a future leadership

David Blackburn

Hunting season distracts from Euro-calamity

As James observed yesterday evening, the Westminster media has its eyes on one story today: Jeremy Hunt’s career-defining appearance at the Leveson inquiry. A deafening cacophony has broken out from a host of tweeters, talking heads and irate scribblers. It will be a diverting piece of political theatre at the very least. There is drama of a different kind in the Eurozone. Irish voters will go to the polls today to approve an EU budgetary restraint treaty, which they are expected to approve. Meanwhile, Spain’s borrowing costs have reached ‘perilous levels’ (6.65 per cent) according to the Times’ commentary (£). The European Commission has indicated that the European Rescue Fund is

Wednesday

Matthew Sinclair

The deeper problem behind Europe’s rising carbon emissions

The Government takes a lot of stick for blaming the weather when there are queues at airports or lacklustre growth figures. Now the European Union is blaming a ‘colder winter’, as well as ‘economic recovery in many countries’, for emissions in 2010 being 111 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent higher – about 2.4 per cent –than they were in 2009. They are insistent that ‘the increase could have been even higher without the fast expansion of renewable energy. ’ Looking at the record of emissions in the European Union and the United States though, it is clear there is a deeper problem. Even ignoring emissions exports — the amount emitted in