Anthony Browne MP is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Environment. He is a former Europe correspondent at the Times and environment editor at the Observer. He is now MP for South Cambridgeshire and a member of the Treasury Select Committee.
There we were in the gold embossed classical elegance of the Egyptian Room of Mansion House, all dressed up in black tie, politely listening to the Chancellor’s swan song – his last Mansion House speech – when the kerfuffle started at the back. Women in red dresses started pouring in from the rear doors with
The political dysfunction in Parliament seems to be rubbing off on much of our commentariat. Many have concluded that the whole political system is about to undergo an earthquake as seismic and landscape-changing as anything that mere plate tectonics can conjure up. The main political parties will no longer be Labour and Tory, defined by
Are we suffering a national humiliation? There has been a lot of commentary – not least from elements of the Remain-supporting press – about how the UK has become an international laughing stock. Papers in other countries have joined in the chuckling. Recent events have not been good for our reputation for stability and sanity.
Why us? Why is the UK the first – and only – country to decide to leave the EU? Greenland, Algeria (when it was part of the French empire) and the French Caribbean island of St Barthélemy have all been in the EU and are no more, but the UK is the first full member
Why us? Why is the UK the first – and only – country to decide to leave the EU? Greenland, Algeria (when it was part of the French empire) and the French Caribbean island of St Barthélemy have all been in the EU and are no more, but the UK is the first full member
I stood next to Jean Claude-Juncker, then president of the European Council and prime minister of Luxembourg, when news flashed up on the TV screens of the astonishing rejection by French voters of the draft European Constitution in their 2005 referendum. He could have responded in so many ways, to try to understand why the
Like everyone nowadays, I can predict everything except the future. But if MPs reject the government’s Withdrawal Agreement (whenever it ends up being put before the Commons), there is one outcome that many are campaigning for: a second referendum. It is particularly supported by Remainers, who see it as the only democratically legitimate way to
In the corridors of Westminster and the salons of some remainers, there is a lot of excited chatter about the “Norway option”. This would involve being a member of the EEA and single market, but not of the EU. Depending on who is pushing, Norway is presented as either a temporary or permanent alternative to
‘But what are you going to do with the powers?’ the minister asked, while I negotiated devolution of powers to London when Boris was mayor. The government wouldn’t grant powers unless we explained how we would use them. And that is what is missing in the Brexit non-debate. We are ‘taking back control’ — but
The euro crisis has prompted national parliaments across the continent to dump their Euro-federalist baggage It was the political equivalent of Mother Teresa announcing that she had converted to agnosticism. Bart De Wever, the leader of Belgium’s largest political party, was such a Euro-federalist zealot that a year ago he declared he wanted his country
The terrorist attacks of 7 July, as the ludicrous BBC refuses to call them, have raised many questions. We might ask what turned ordinary Muslim youths into mass murderers. Or we might wonder how a religion of peace can inspire people to terrorism across the world. A more pressing question, however, is: why Britain? Not
It wasn’t the television studios, or the boss’s office the size of an Olympic swimming pool. It wasn’t the auditorium for 200 people, or the ten-storey-high purpose-built building with a two-storey atrium. It wasn’t the overseas offices in Oman and Beijing, the staff of 400, the oak-panelled corridors, or the oil paintings lining the walls
It’s not hoodies. It’s not single mums. It’s not even jittery City whizz kids down to their last ten million. No, it’s lefties we should be furrowing our collective brow about. We shouldn’t worry about the threat they pose to society (even though successful countries can survive anything except civil war and socialism). It’s the
Say what you like about Ken Livingstone, you can’t accuse him of failing to spot a political opportunity. When the position of mayor of London was created in 2000, other possible contenders turned up their noses, saying its powers, finances and staff were so limited it was a ‘non-job’. But Livingstone — please don’t call
Europe is one of the most divisive issues in British politics. But on one thing most Europhiles and Eurosceptics agree: that enlargement, letting those benighted former communist countries into the warm democracy-enhancing embrace of Brussels, was a good thing. Just about all respectable, right-thinking people feel that the UK should congratulate itself for opening its
Anthony Browne reports on the EU’s unabated lust for control of national policies, from law and order to universities, from biotechnology to tax Brussels It was perhaps inevitable that the crash in central London of Banana Republic Airlines Flight 101, which killed 453 people and created a swath of destruction across Islington, provoked Britain’s withdrawal
Anthony Browne says the French model has failed. Britain must now show the way forward — and save the European Union by her example Brussels You might feel safe reading your Spectator, confident that you will die in a bed, but I can reveal that yet another world war is about to break out across
For most citizens of Iraq, the invasion meant the end of tyranny. For one group, however, it meant a new start: the country’s historic Christian community. When the war stopped, persecution by Islamists, held in check by Saddam, started. At a church in Basra I visited a month after the war ended, the women complained
Even by the grisly standards of ritual killing, it was shocking. On 2 November in Amsterdam the Dutch iconoclast and film-maker Theo van Gogh was dragged from his bicycle in broad daylight and murdered. His killer, a bearded Dutch-born Islamic radical of Moroccan descent, shot him six times and, as he pleaded for his life,
There’s no plot, says Anthony Browne: Islam really does want to conquer the world. That’s because Muslims, unlike many Christians, actually believe they are right, and that their religion is the path to salvation for all A year ago I had lunch with an eminent figure who asked if I thought she was mad. ‘No,’