Eu

Taught to be stupid

Enough! Enough! For months, the so-called liberal elite has been writing articles, having radio and TV discussions, giving sermons (literally) and making speeches in which it has struggled to understand those strange creatures: ordinary people. The elite is bemused by what drives these people to make perverse decisions about Brexit and Trump. Are they racist, narrow-minded or just stupid? Whatever the reason, ordinary people have frankly been a disappointment. Time, ladies and gentlemen, please! Instead, let’s do the opposite. Let’s try to explain to ordinary people what drives the liberal elite. The elite persists with some very strange and disturbing views. Are its members brainwashed, snobbish or just so remote

Britain was wrong to back the U.N’s anti-Israel resolution

Like all the best mistakes, it was done for the right reasons. Knowing that for once the US wouldn’t veto, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning settlement building in the occupied Palestinian Territories. The UK was no doubt keen to be with the consensus but we were wrong to back the Resolution. This time was different. Not because Israel has changed, nor the expansion of the settlements is exacerbating the efforts towards a settlement, but because the world has changed and so have we. The Arab Spring showed that the Israel-Palestinian conflict doesn’t matter. This may sound harsh for a country generating more news than any people can

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Sir Ivan ‘the terrible’ or a terrible loss?

Sir Ivan Rogers is stepping down from his role as the UK’s ambassador to the EU – but is his departure really such a great loss? In his explosive resignation email, Rogers urged his colleagues to challenge ‘muddled thinking’ and ‘speak truth to power’, in a parting shot at Theresa May. So is this evidence of a Brexit botch-up? Not so, says the Sun, who calls the departing diplomat ‘Ivan the terrible’ and says it won’t weep over his decision to quit. A quick glance at the ‘pathetic empty shell’ of David Cameron’s EU renegotiation deal is all you need to see as to why Roger’s resignation is no great loss,

Germany won’t break the rules for Britain’s sake

Back in the summer of 2015, a year before the Brexit vote, I was summoned to the German Embassy in London for a special briefing by a senior member of Germany’s Social Democrats. The man from the SPD didn’t mince his words: David Cameron might secure a few small concessions in his forthcoming renegotiation with the EU, but it was inconceivable that he could obtain any significant changes in Britain’s relationship with Europe. For Germany, free movement of people within the European Union was sacrosanct – and even if Deutschland had been willing to change the rules for Britain’s sake, any major alteration would need to be ratified by all

Brexit means that few years will be as memorable as 2016

Few years will live as long in the memory as 2016. Historians will ponder the meaning and consequences of the past 12 months for decades to come. In the future, 180-odd years from now, some Zhou Enlai will remark that ‘it is too soon to say’ when asked about the significance of Brexit. The referendum result shocked Westminster. Michael Gove was so sure it would be Remain that he had retreated to bed on the evening of 23 June and only found out Leave had won when one of his aides telephoned in the early hours of the morning. Theresa May admits in her interview with us that she was

2016 has been one of the greatest years ever for humanity

Nothing better sums up the aloofness of the chattering class, their otherworldliness in fact, than their blathering about 2016 being the worst year ever. It’s the refrain running through every Brexitphobic column, every historically illiterate comparison of Trump to Hitler, every tear-sodden list of the big-name celebs who’ve died this year. 2016 is ‘the f–king worst’, says Brit comic in America John Oliver. These people don’t know what they’re talking about. The worst? 2016 has been one of the best years yet for humankind. This year it was announced that global life expectancy is increasing at a faster rate than at any time since the 1960s. The World Health Organisation

Populism vs post-democracy

Europeans are usually alarmed or sniffy about American concern for democracy’s fate, but this time liberal opinion on both sides of the pond sings in unison: populism is a threat to democracy. A recent issue of the Journal of Democracy (a sober publication published by America’s National Endowment for Democracy) provided a handy compendium of all the parties, policies and histories that can be included in the vast cabin-trunk of populism. A lead article by Takis S. Pappas, a Greek political theorist living in Hungary, lists 22 different parties he cautiously calls ‘challengers to liberal democracy’. He breaks them down into three categories: anti-democrats, nativists and populists. (All are commonly

James Forsyth

Europe’s year of insurgency

After the tumult of 2016, Europe could do with a year of calm. It won’t get one. Elections are to be held in four of the six founder members of the European project, and populist Eurosceptic forces are on the march in each one. There will be at least one regime change: François Hollande has accepted that he is too unpopular to run again as French president, and it will be a surprise if he is the only European leader to go. Others might cling on but find their grip on power weakened by populist success. The spectre of the financial crash still haunts European politics. Money was printed and

Germany remains a prisoner of its past

In 1942, a man called Manfred Alexander turned up, unannounced, on my grandfather’s doorstep in Berlin. My grandfather knew him only slightly. He hadn’t seen him for several years. Like countless Jews, Manfred had been herded onto an eastbound train the year before, bound for God knows where. He’d ended up in a Concentration Camp in Minsk, run by the Ukrainian SS. There, after a terrible winter, a German guard whom he hardly knew hid him beneath the coal in the tender of a steam train which was carrying wounded German soldiers back to Berlin. Back in Berlin, cold and hungry, Manfred headed straight for my grandfather’s apartment on Grolmanstrasse.

Out – and into the world: Why The Spectator backed Brexit

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 6: Our leader article from June, in which the Spectator backed Brexit The Spectator has a long record of being isolated, but right. We supported the north against the slave-owning south in the American civil war at a time when news-papers (and politicians) could not see past corporate interests. We argued for the decriminalisation of homosexuality a decade before it happened, and were denounced as the ‘bugger’s bugle’ for our troubles. We alone supported Margaret Thatcher when she first stood for the Tory leadership. And when Britain last held a referendum on Europe, every newspaper in

The six reasons why I voted ‘Remain’ in the referendum

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 7: Matthew Parris’s article, written two weeks before the referendum, in which he called on Spectator readers to vote ‘Remain’ Like almost everyone, I’ve piled angrily into this fight. But as the debate nears resolution I feel ashamed of all my furious certainties. In the end, none of us knows, and we shouldn’t pretend to. So I’ll try now to express more temperately six thoughts that persist as the early rage subsides. From the first three you’ll see that I’m beginning to understand that for many the EU is now a whipping boy. ‘Europe’ has become

Anis Amri’s unchecked passage across Europe is nothing short of a scandal

That the Tunisian terrorist who slaughtered 12 people in Berlin on Monday was even in Europe, let alone able to move about Europe with ease, is a scandal. It shows that the policy of the European Union and its member nations on the migrant crisis is a complete and dangerous failure. The collective refusal of the European liberal elite to face up to this fact promises further disaster. Anis Amri, 24, had no legal let alone moral right to be in Europe, and yet he had been here since 2011 when he arrived in a migrant boat on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. Shortly afterwards, he was jailed for four

Why Leave voters are my heroes of 2016

It’s rare that an opinion poll brings a tear to my eye. But this week one did. It was the CNN/ComRes poll published on Monday. It found that 47 per cent of British adults would vote Leave if the EU referendum was held today, and 45 per cent would vote Remain (eight per cent said they didn’t know how they’d vote). This means, as the CNN headline put it, that ‘Six months on, Brits stand by EU referendum decision’. Leavers haven’t budged. Regrexit is a myth. Even after months of being branded as idiots, libelled as racists, and charged with bringing about a hike in hate crime and possibly the

It’s no surprise Spain has already blocked Nicola Sturgeon’s half-baked Brexit plan

It should come as no surprise that the Spanish government has so swiftly rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s proposal of a bespoke Brexit deal for Scotland. Although Spain might have finally ended its ten month political freeze a couple of months ago, the febrile issue of Catalonian independence remains unresolved. Far from quietening down or going away, the secessionist movement in Barcelona is becoming more aggressive and radical. As it does so, the central government in Madrid adopts tougher measures to try and suppress it including, last week, another ruling by its constitutional court against a referendum on the region’s independence. Mariano Rajoy’s administration was never going to agree to a deal for Scotland that

Nicola Sturgeon’s Baldrick moment

Yesterday, the Scottish government published its ‘plan’ for life after Brexit. It was, at 60 or so pages, more detailed than anything we have yet seen from Theresa May’s ministry. But then it would be, given that Nicola Sturgeon will not be leading the UK’s negotiations as and when they begin. Still, plenty of nationalists crowed that, whatever else might be said of the Scottish government’s document, at least Sturgeon has a plan. But so did Baldrick.  That a plan exists does not make it a good plan. Or even an achievable one. And since we are still in the early stages of the Brexit waiting game the Scottish government’s proposals

A conversation about Brexit

Now that almost six months have passed since the EU referendum, might it be time for old enemies to find common ground? Matthew Parris and Matt Ridley, two of the most eloquent voices on either side of the campaign, meet in the offices of The Spectator to find out. MATTHEW PARRIS: Catastrophe has not engulfed us yet, it’s true. But I feel worse since the result, rather than better. I thought that, as in all hard-fought campaigns, you get terribly wound up and depressed when you lose. Then you pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again. But my animosities — not just towards the Brexit argument,

Nicola Sturgeon’s Brexit plan is flawed

There is a smart, hi-tech media room in the Scottish government building which overlooks Holyrood – but it has been all but abandoned since Nicola Sturgeon took over. That’s because Scotland’s First Minister prefers Bute House, her official residence in Charlotte Square, for announcements that have a chance of attracting a decent TV audience. She knows the Georgian grandeur makes her look authoritative – even presidential – and there she was again this morning when she unveiled her plans for a separate Scottish Brexit deal. It was no surprise that she was flanked – yet again – by just the Scottish saltire and the European flag. The Union flag was nowhere to be

Could the German left join forces to oust Angela Merkel?

German party politics has been overshadowed by yesterday’s atrocity in Berlin. But in light of this tragic event, which Angela Merkel has said was probably a terrorist attack, party politics actually matters more than ever. Increasingly, it seems next year’s Bundestag elections will be the defining event of 2017, not just for Germany but for Europe – and last week’s change of government in Berlin was a sign of things to come. On the face of it, ‘Social Democrats take control of Berlin’s city council’ looks like an inconsequential story. Berlin has always been an SPD stronghold after all. However, there’s more to this story than meets the eye. Before September’s

Matthew Lynn

Scotland has nothing to gain from staying in the single market

The Scottish economy will be left in ruins. Tens of thousands of people will be thrown out of their jobs. The tax base will shrivel. To listen to the latest round of complaints from the Scottish National Party, membership of the single market is absolutely vital to the country’s economy. Indeed, it is so important that it now wants to maintain it, even if England and the rest of the UK leaves. That might be clever politics, if it can be turned into a platform for a second referendum and if you choose to believe that the constitutional lawyers in Brussels can come up with a way of keeping one

How Angela Merkel divided Germany

Crisis? What crisis? Here in prosperous Munich, it’s hard to believe the EU has taken such a battering this year – but then again, the Bavarian capital has always been a place apart. It has the strongest economy and the lowest unemployment of any German city. It is the headquarters of world beating companies such as Allianz, Siemens and BMW. Its cultural scene (and its football team) is among the best in Europe. During Advent, its city centre is especially handsome – a boozy maze of Christmas markets. People are earning and spending, having fun and getting tipsy. I mean to say, what’s not to like? Superficially, Munich’s residents seem to