Angela merkel

Britain has shown Germany how to handle a migrant crisis

Only now does Angela Merkel concede that she made mistakes when admitting a million refugees last year. It was obvious to most people in Europe at the time that her undoubtedly warm-hearted gesture would lead to catastrophic results. In declaring that all Syrian refugees would be welcome if they made it to Germany, she doubled the fortunes of the human trafficking industry. The asylum seekers came from Syria and North Africa through Austria and Hungary, having landed on the shores of Italy and Greece. Thousands died on the way. When Theresa May addressed the United Nations in New York yesterday, she was able to point to a British way of handling

Portrait of the Week – 8 September 2016

Home David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, made his first statement to the Commons and said that if membership of a single market meant having to give up control of United Kingdom borders, ‘that makes it very improbable’. The official spokesman for Theresa May, the Prime Minister, who was away in China, disagreed, claiming that Mr Davis was merely ‘setting out his opinion’. ‘Saying something is probable or improbable,’ she said, ‘I don’t think is necessarily a policy.’ Speaking in China about freedom of movement after Brexit, Mrs May said: ‘I want a system where the government is able to decide who comes into the

How Alternative für Deutschland forced German politics to the right

‘When the world ends, I’ll go to Mecklenburg,’ quipped Bismarck, ‘because there, everything happens a hundred years later.’ Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has always been seen as somewhere behind the times, but has this sleepy backwater now become a portent of momentous things to come? In last weekend’s regional elections, Germany’s fledgling anti-immigration party, Alternative für Deutschland, came second, pushing Angela Merkel’s CDU into third place – in her own constituency. So was AfD’s Leif-Erik Holm right to say that this could be the beginning of the end for Merkel? And does this shock result mark the end of the beginning for AfD? I have a soft spot for Mecklenburg (my father’s family used

Brexit won’t finish the EU, insist Merkel, Hollande and Renzi

It’s no surprise that Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi chose to host a press conference with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande on an aircraft carrier; this was a piece of theatre designed to show the EU is fighting back. ‘Many thought the EU was finished after Brexit,’ said Renzi. Not so, he claimed. Instead, Britain’s decision to leave the EU was the chance to ‘write a future chapter’ and ‘relaunch the powerful ideas of unity and peace, freedom and dreams’, the Italian PM insisted. All very well, you might think, but what does that mean? Defending the continent against the threat of Islamic terrorism was a key topic. Angela Merkel

Forget the ‘Norway model’. Germany suggests UK could get ‘special’ EU status

Britain’s decision to leave the EU sent shockwaves crashing throughout the continent. As Europe struggled to interpret the outcome of the referendum, we heard calls for Brussels to drive a hard bargain with the UK in order to contain the ‘Brexit contagion’. The European Council President Donald Tusk’s warning that the UK must not be allowed to ‘profit’ from leaving the bloc summed up this mood. But now, it seems, our neighbours in Europe are coming to terms with Brexit. And with it, the desire to punish the UK appears to be dampening. Michael Roth, Germany’s European Affairs minister, has this week suggested that a ‘special status’ could be achieved

High life | 11 August 2016

Gstaad   ‘He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze.’ As everyone knows, life’s unfair, but this is ridiculous. An American daredevil falls out of an aeroplane at 25,000 feet without a parachute and manages to land on a postage-stamp-size net without a scratch. The poor little Greek boy falls off a balcony ten to 15 feet high, lands on gravel and breaks many bones in his body. Being encased in plaster is similar to living under a strict dictatorship, North Korea, for example. There’s no crime, no muggings, but as far as doing what comes naturally, fuggetaboutit. Self-doubt and

The Spectator Podcast: Summer of terror | 30 July 2016

After a week where both Germany and France suffered terror attacks, the question of the relationship between Islamic terrorism and Europe’s refugee crisis is once again rearing its head. In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that whilst the public knows that ‘Islamism comes from Islam’, Europe’s political classes are still refusing to tackle the problem at its core. So how can we bridge this gap between what politicians are saying and what the public are thinking? And does Europe have to come to terms with a new reality of domestic terrorism? On this week’s podcast, Douglas Murray speaks to Lara Prendergast. Joining them both to discuss Europe’s summer of

The Spectator Podcast: Summer of terror

In a week in which both Germany and France have suffered terror attacks, the question of the relationship between Islamic terrorism and Europe’s refugee crisis is once again rearing its head. In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that whilst the public knows that ‘Islamism comes from Islam’, Europe’s political classes are still refusing to tackle the problem at its core. So how can we bridge this gap between what politicians are saying and what the public are thinking? And does Europe have to come to terms with a new reality of domestic terrorism? On this week’s podcast, Douglas Murray speaks to Lara Prendergast. Joining them both to discuss

Douglas Murray

Europe’s summer of terror

How is your Merkelsommer going? For now, Britain seems to be missing the worst. True, a couple of men of Middle Eastern appearance tried to abduct a soldier near his base in Norfolk for what was unlikely to have been an interfaith dialogue session. But Britain’s geographical good fortune, relative success in limiting weapons and our justified scepticism of the undiscriminating ‘open borders’ brigade mean that we have so far been spared the delights of what Angela Merkel’s growing army of critics refer to as her summer of terror. Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss Europe’s summer of terror: It is now a fortnight since Mohammed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’

Is Theresa May Britain’s Angela Merkel? The German press thinks she might be

As Britain’s second female Prime Minister, Theresa May has inevitably been compared to Margaret Thatcher. But she’s also been linked to a contemporaneous politician: Angela Merkel. Whilst some have dismissed the comparisons, it’s not only British journalists drawing on the similarities between Theresa May and the ‘Iron Frau’ – German newspapers are now doing the same. The initial parallels are clear; two middle-aged women who have fought their ways to the top of the male-dominated world of politics. However, both Bild and Die Welt – two of Germany’s biggest newspapers – believes there is much more which unites May and Merkel and has uncovered a surprising number of similarities to

Merkel tells Juncker: Britain needs plenty of time to invoke Article 50

Der Speigel has published a fascinating write-up giving last week’s extraordinary events from Angela Merkel’s perspective. Specifically, it seems, she’s had enough of Jean-Claude Juncker, the egregious president of the European Commission, and has told him to bow out from future negotiations with the UK. She’s fed up of him insisting that Britain rushes to invoke Article 50. Indeed, her “utmost concern,” says the magazine, is “giving Britain as much time as possible” for an orderly transition. Here’s an extract:- At 1 p.m. on the Friday after the Brexit referendum, Merkel makes a statement to Berlin journalists in which — in contrast to Schulz — she does not demand a rapid British withdrawal. One

Project Hope

Boris Johnson famously said that Winston Churchill would have voted for Brexit. The wartime leader’s grandson — staunch Remainer and Tory grandee Nicholas Soames — dismissed such claims as ‘appalling’ and ‘totally wrong’. This bad-tempered referendum rift between two traditionalist, Old Etonian Conservatives symbolises, somewhat incongruously perhaps, the broader state of the nation. Deep and traumatic divisions have been drawn between friends and families everywhere — and, of course, within political parties. David Cameron’s dignified resignation speech has quickly given way to a grim determination to ‘Stop Boris’ from taking the Conservative crown and the Premiership. Labour, meanwhile, is in self-destruct mode, the parliamentary party in full rebellion against Jeremy

William Astor: Why voting Leave won’t mean we leave the EU

It is difficult not to be Eurosceptic. The euro is in trouble, Greece has been bankrupted by Angela Merkel’s fiscal rules, and the Schengen agreement on open borders is collapsing as economic migration seems impossible to stop. Genuine refugees are sadly lost in the human tide of misery landing on the shores of Greece and Italy. And the democratic deficit which allows the European Union to be so unaccountable is leading to the rise of extreme nationalist political parties all over Europe. The result – Bulgaria has a lamentable justice system, Poland has introduced illiberal media laws and Hungary’s constitution has been hijacked. The EU is in danger of collapse unless it undertakes serious

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 June 2016

‘No one can seriously deny that European integration brought an end to Franco-German conflict and has settled the German question for good,’ wrote Niall Ferguson in the latest Sunday Times. I hesitate when confronted by such an assertion by such a learned professor. But I think I would seriously deny it, or at least seriously question it. Surely what brought an end to Franco-German conflict was the utter defeat of Nazi Germany. European integration was a symptom of that end, not its cause. As for settling the German question, isn’t it too early to say? The eurozone is the first large non-German area to have been dominated by Germany since

Tom Goodenough

Angela Merkel wades into the Brexit debate. But what made her decide to speak out?

Angela Merkel has waded into the Brexit debate. Her stance won’t surprise anyone – she hopes that Britain stays put. But what’s interesting about her intervention is that it comes after it seemed she was reluctant to speak out, for fear of helping the leave cause. The Sunday Times reported earlier this month that Downing Street believed such an expression of her views on Brexit would be counterproductive. Admittedly, when she made her comments today, she clarified that they were her personal view. They also appeared to be, to say it mildly, lukewarm. Here’s what she said: ‘Obviously, it is up to the citizens of the UK themselves how they

Angela Merkel and David Cameron fail to work out who’s in the driving seat

At times in David Cameron’s EU renegotiations, it’s seemed as though the Prime Minister struggled to be in the driver’s seat. Now evidence has come to light that confirms Cameron’s power struggle with one of Europe’s main leaders. Speaking at the Hay Festival, Neil MacGregor — the former director of the British Museum — let slip the difficulties he encountered when Angela Merkel and Cameron arranged a visit to see an exhibition he on German history from the past 600 years. Of all the objects in the exhibition, MacGregor thought the VW Beetle would make a great prop for a photo opp for the two leaders. Alas, it wasn’t to

Merkel says Brexit would bring “instability” to Europe. A bit like her migrant crisis

Each week before June 23, I would like to nominate a ridiculous comment of the week. With the amount of folk around claiming that Britain’s exit from the EU would herald World War III, pestilence, famine and every other horseman of the apocalypse, there is no shortage of candidates. At the beginning of last week I rather assumed that David Cameron would win for attempting to posthumously recruit the British dead of Two World Wars to  the cause of the EU, claiming that the fallen had laid down their lives solely in order that Britain should not to be sovereign.  But then the PM’s predecessor, Gordon Brown, stepped up in the middle of the week

The internet’s war on free speech

The dream of internet freedom has died. What a dream it was. Twenty years ago, nerdy libertarians hailed the web as the freest public sphere that mankind had ever created. The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, written in 1996 by John Perry Barlow, warned the ‘governments of the industrial world’, those ‘weary giants of flesh and steel’, that they had ‘no sovereignty where we gather’. The ‘virus of liberty’ was spreading, it said. Now it seems that the virus has been wiped out. We live our online lives in a dystopian nightmare of Twittermobs, ‘safety councils’, official procedures for ‘forgetting’ inconvenient facts, and the arrest of people for being

The Spectator podcast: Erdogan’s Europe

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Has Erdogan brought Europe to heel? In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that the Turkish President has used a mixture of intimidation, threats and blackmail to do just that and throw open the doors of Europe to Turkey. Douglas says Erdogan is a ‘wretched Islamist bully’ who has shown just how the EU works. But in pushing Europe around, is Erdogan now more powerful than Merkel, Juncker and Cameron? And how does the Turkish PM’s resignation this week changed the country’s

Turkey’s triumph

Update: Since this article was published Ahmet Davutoglu has resigned as Turkey’s Prime Minister. Reports suggest this comes as a result of a rift with President Erdogan caused by the increasingly ‘Presidential’ nature of Turkey’s politics. Is Turkey part of Europe? For most of our civilisation’s history, to have even asked such a question would have been to invite derision. The Ottomans were kept out of Europe not by some early-onset prejudice, but by the armies of Europe having to beat back their repeated invasions. The question became slightly more plausible a century ago with the rise of Ataturk and the modern Turkish state (one of the only successful efforts