Angela merkel

Thursday

James Forsyth

Obama’s failure is Putin’s opportunity

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/parisattacksaftermath/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Ben Judah discuss whether the West should work with Putin” startat=824] Listen [/audioplayer]The principal strategic objective in the war on terror has been a failure. Ever since 9/11, the aim has been to deny terrorists sanctuary. That, after all, is why the United States and Britain went into Afghanistan — troops were sent in only after the Taliban refused to hand over the al-Qaeda leadership and shut down the terrorist training camps. But now, a large terrorist enclave exists in the very heart of the Middle East. President Obama’s reaction to this massive strategic failure has been lack-lustre. His main concern is to stress that,

Thursday

The Spectator

The Australian example

For many years, Australia has been turning away boats filled with migrants. From a remove, this looks cold–hearted — a nation built by immigrants showing no compassion for others who want a better life. But it is precisely because Australia is an immigrant nation that it understands the situation: if you let the boats land, more people come. People traffickers will be encouraged, migrants will be swindled, and their bodies will wash up on your shores. Any country serious about immigration needs a more effective and robust approach. Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister of Australia, made that point clearly this week on a trip to London. Delivering the Margaret

Hans Kundnani

Germany’s dark night of the soul

As Angela Merkel approaches her tenth anniversary in power, Germans are talking about a possible Kanzlerinnendämmerung — a ‘twilight of the chancellors’. Anger is growing at Merkel’s handling of the migration crisis. Germany, which has only recently reconciled itself to the idea that it is a ‘country of immigration’, must now integrate vast numbers of asylum seekers, beginning with the million who are expected to arrive this year. At the same time, the country has been hit by two huge corruption scandals, involving Volkswagen and the DFB, the German football federation. The odds are that Merkel will survive — it’s hard to see at the moment who can replace her.

Wednesday

Ed West

The new East-West divide: multiculturalism vs sovereignty

We all know that relations with Russia are at their lowest ebb since 1991, when Boris Yeltsin brought down Communism during one of his alcoholic blackouts. What’s becoming increasingly clear, though, is that there is a new ideological cold war – and I’m not sure we’ll win this one. The German approach to dissent over these past few months has been revealing. Earlier this month, a leading eurocrat chided the Hungarians for refusing to accept that ‘diversity is inevitable’, using that strange Marxist language these people love. Another accused that small central European country of being ‘on the wrong side of history’. Meanwhile Angela Merkel compared those who lock others out

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

The EU is sucking up to Turkey to help reduce migration – but it could seriously backfire

You might have thought, mightn’t you, that a million arrivals in a year to a single European country, Germany – well, more than 800,000 and counting – would be enough to be going on with, wouldn’t you? After that, you wouldn’t actually be going out of your way to solicit more incomers into Europe in the long term, even if you were going to be sensible about the influx and were admitting refugees on a purely temporary basis until they could safely return home? But that’s not how the EU works. Turkey at present hosts about two million refugees, mostly from Syria.  EU governments would obviously prefer them not all

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Has Boris just set an impossible bar for Cameron’s EU renegotiation?

Boris Johnson’s speech today was the best that I have ever heard him give. It was a potent cocktail of political vision, humour and optimism. But the most significant line it was about Europe. He declared that: ‘It should be up to this parliament and this country – not to Jean-Claude Juncker – to decide if too many people are coming here’ It is impossible to read this as anything other than a demand that freedom of movement rules are fundamentally altered as part of the UK’s renegotiation with the EU. Now, Number 10 are clear that they aren’t seeking to challenge the principle of freedom of movement, they know

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Facebook posts about the migrant crisis should be the least of Angela Merkel’s worries

So the German Chancellor has just been caught on microphone talking with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: German Chancellor Angela Merkel was overheard confronting Zuckerberg over incendiary posts on the social network, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, amid complaints from her government about anti-immigrant posts in the midst of Europe’s refugee crisis. On the sidelines of a United Nations luncheon on Saturday, Merkel was caught on a hot mic pressing Zuckerberg about social media posts about the wave of Syrian refugees entering Germany, the publication reported. The Facebook CEO was overheard responding that “we need to do some work” on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. “Are you working on this?”

Monday

James Forsyth

Merkel’s response to the refugee crisis has made the situation worse

Having, effectively, unilaterally ripped up the EU agreement on how to handle refugees, Germany is now desperately trying to re-impose the rules. At the start of this month, Angela Merkel’s government declared that any Syrian who could reach the country could claim asylum in Germany. This was contrary to the Dublin Convention of 1990 which set out that refugees should seek asylum in the first EU member state that they arrive in. Predictably, Germany’s actions led to a huge surge in the number of refugees trying to reach the country. The volume of people coming is now so great that Berlin has had to put in place controls on the

Thursday

James Forsyth

Angela Merkel is making the refugee crisis worse

There have been plenty of bad decisions taken by European politicians in the last few years. But few will cause as much misery as Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. Her decision to rip up the Dublin Convention and announce that any Syrian can claim asylum in Germany will lead to more people putting their hands in the lives of unscrupulous human traffickers as they try desperately to make it to Germany. This will, tragically, lead to more deaths. In the magazine this week, I argue that Merkel’s policy is flawed on several levels. First, she has chosen to prioritise those Syrians who have already made it to Europe. These people are

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Angela Merkel’s mistake on refugees — and is Tom Watson Labour’s saviour?

Angela Merkel’s offer to welcome any Syrian refugees who reach Germany will have far reaching, potential devastating consequences. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, James Forsyth debates this week’s Spectator cover feature on Merkel’s grandstanding with Holly Baxter from the Independent. Has David Cameron done the right thing by not offering asylum to more refugees? Are all European countries pulling equal weight in dealing with the crisis? And what will the European Union as a whole do next to help the refugees? Dan Hodges and former Labour adviser John McTernan also discuss whether Tom Watson could be the man who holds the Labour party together. The former Brownite bruiser has made plenty of enemies in the party, but he is expected to be elected Deputy Leader on Saturday,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Merkel’s folly

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/merkelstragicmistake/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Holly Baxter debate Merkel’s offer to Syrian refugees” startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]Of all the irresponsible decisions taken in recent years by European politicians, few will cause as much human misery as Angela Merkel’s plan to welcome Syrian refugees to Germany. Hailed as enlightened moral leadership, it is in fact the result of panic and muddled thinking. Her pronouncements will lure thousands more into the hands of unscrupulous people-traffickers. Her insistence that the rest of the continent should share the burden will add political instability to the mix. Merkel has made a dire situation worse. On Tuesday last week, Germany declared that any Syrian who reaches the

Monday

Julia Hartley-Brewer

Cameron’s impossible dilemma

If you spot the Prime Minister squirming and wriggling on the Syrian refugee issue, there’s a very simple explanation. The Prime Minister is in a very tight spot, caught between a rock and a hard place. And it is clear that he hasn’t yet decided the best way to extricate himself. After winning an outright Tory victory at the general election in May and the likely prospect of another win in 2020, he only has one major hurdle left during his term in office: winning the EU referendum. Whether he calls, as many expect, a vote as early as this spring, or waits until the end of his own self-imposed

Thursday

Tony Hall

Diary – 23 July 2015

There’s nothing quite like a First Night — and last Friday we launched the Proms, the most celebrated classical music festival in the world, now in its 120th year. There’s the thrill of walking into the Royal Albert Hall for the first time; taking your seat with thousands of other music fans; the ‘heave ho’ chant from the Prommers; the quiet before the music begins. It’s a vast space, but it can also feel very intimate. So it was perfect for the opening concert with moments of quiet reflection in works by Mozart and Sibelius, as well as great walls of sound in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. With almost 300 players

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

A beginner’s guide to Euroscepticism

As a long-time Eurosceptic, I should be happy about the Johnny-Come-Latelys now swelling the sceptic ranks. Following Euro-institutions’ wicked treatment of Greece, many European liberals have finally realised that Brussels might not be the hotbed of liberalism, internationalism and bunny rabbits they thought it was. So, bit by bit, they’re becoming the thing they once looked down upon, the thing they once forcefielded their dinner parties against: Eurosceptics. But I’m not feeling very welcoming to these latter-day doubters, currently live-tweeting their Euro-existential angst and clogging their newspaper columns with tortured questions about whether the EU really is a ‘great achievement of enlightened internationalism’. (Answer: no, you donuts.) For two reasons.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Germans have just changed the whole dynamic of the Euro

The ancient Greeks used to drop iron bars into the sea to demonstrate the permanence of the agreement they were signing. The point was that the deal would last until the iron floated to the surface – that it was irreversible. The Euro was meant to be the same: once a country had joined it could —and would — never leave. It was for all time. But last night’s discussions have put paid to that notion. We now know from the German’s proposals for a ‘temporary’ Greek exit that a country can leave the single currency. This changes the whole dynamic of the currency union, weakening the position of countries

Monday

James Forsyth

Merkel strikes an uncompromising tone as the ECB tightens the squeeze on the Greek banks

François Hollande and Angela Merkel have both given brief statements to the media ahead of their dinner this evening. Hollande was keen to stress that the door remained open to Greece for negotiations and struck a generally more emollient tone. Merkel, though, did not sound so emollient. She claimed that the deal that the Greeks rejected was ‘quite a generous one’. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank—the key actors in this drama—have kept the emergency lending assistance they are offering the Greek banks at the same level. This means that the Greek banks will not be able to re-open. The ECB has also said that it will ‘adjust the haircuts on

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Does anybody still believe that the EU is a benign institution?

Ever since Margaret Thatcher U-turned in the dying days of her premiership, there has been a kind of agreement between Left and Right on what the European Union is. Most Conservatives followed the late-vintage Thatcher. They stopped regarding the EU as a free market that British business must be a part of, and started to see it as an unaccountable socialist menace that could impose left-wing labour and environmental policies on a right-wing government. As many critics have said, the Tory version of British nationalism that followed had many hypocrisies. It did not want foreigners infringing national sovereignty when they were bureaucrats in Brussels but did not seem to mind

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cheer up! The Greek crisis shows you were right all along

I don’t know whether the joy on the right was worse than the preening on the left last night but as the result of the Greek referendum swept across social media I found myself thinking that any result so cheerfully welcomed by Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn and Sinn Fein can’t be thought altogether cheerful. Of course you needn’t judge a cause by its followers but when a cause is followed and endorsed by such a collection of rogues, crooks and cranks it’s wise to begin to wonder about it. All this glee seemed especially shabby since, really, it didn’t really seem to be about Greece at all.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Greece says No, will Germany now try and kick it out of the Euro?

Greece has voted No in the referendum and resoundingly so. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, No is leading 61% to 39%. The result is a massive humiliation for Eurozone leaders who have spent the last few days telling the Greeks to vote Yes and warning them that this was really a referendum on whether the country should stay in the single currency or not. Tonight, Syriza have been making clear that the Greek government intends to remain within the Euro. However, the German government is making clear that it is not interested in further negotiations with Athens or a new bailout deal. Sigmar Gabriel, the deputy

James Forsyth James Forsyth

German rhetoric suggests that they are preparing to try and kick Greece out of the Euro

Greece has voted No, and resoundingly so. But the reaction from Berlin tonight does not suggest that Germany is prepared to have any further negotiations with the Syriza government. The vice chancellor, and head of the SPD, Sigmar Gabriel has declared that “With the rejection of the eurozone’s rules of the game, which has been expressed in this majority ‘no’ vote, negotiations on further multibillion euro programs are scarcely conceivable.” Given that the SDP is more doveish than the CDU and the CSU on the Greek question, this sounds like Germany has given up on trying to strike a deal and now wants Greece to leave the Euro. Indeed, one