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The political situation in Greece remains unclear this morning. George Papandreou’s government survived last night’s confidence vote. But the main opposition party has rejected the idea of a national government and Papandreou’s finance minister appears to be maneuvering to replace him. Papandreou’s victory in the no confidence vote means that there probably won’t be elections in Greece this year. But the huge difficulties involved in implementing the austerity plan remain. The measures continue to command little public support and the opposition will continue to criticise them. The debt deal proposals will also have to win parliamentary approval at some point soon and the French and the Germans are, The Independent

Confusion has reigned today in Athens, clouding the first day of the G20 summit in Cannes. Reports at midday that the Greek Prime Minister was to resign turned out to be false. Papandreou’s staying put, for now at least. Instead, it seems there will be no referendum on Greece’s bailout package. In a sharp reversal, Papandreou reportedly told his Cabinet: “The referendum was never an end in itself. We had a dilemma – either true assent or a referendum. I said yesterday, if the assent were there, we would not need a referendum.” It seems he may have gained that assent, in that the opposition New Democracy party will support

The British electorate, in a referendum held on Thursday 19th June 2014, votes to leave the EU. On Monday, 23 June 2014, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition send the following joint letter to the President of the EU Council, the President of the Commission and the heads of state and government of the other twenty-six EU member states. Dear Herman, José-Manuel, Angela, Nicolas, Silvio etc. etc. …, UK Resumption of Sovereignty On 19 June 2014, in a referendum, the British electorate voted decisively to leave the European Union. Her Majesty the Queen, in her capacity as Head of State of the United Kingdom, consented to her

Let’s end the working week how it began: with talk of a European referendum. The talk, in this case, is provided by Daniel Hannan, who wrote an article for us in 2008 about his efforts to promote a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty from within the European Parliament. Here it is, our latest excavation from the Spectator archives: For MEPs, public opinion is merely an inconvenience, Daniel Hannan, The Spectator, 22 November 2008 I’ve just done the most pointless thing an MEP can do: I’ve delivered a speech to the European Parliament. Actually, ‘speech’ is rather a grand word for my little soliloquy which, under the rules, had to be

The picture of Nicolas Sarkozy not even turning around to shake David Cameron’s hand rather neatly sums up the Prime Minister’s problems right now. The danger for him is that the 17 Eurozone countries start writing a new set of rules and riding roughshod over the interests of those countries that are outside. This would be bad enough at anytime but with the Conservative party on the warpath over Europe it is a clear and present danger to the Prime Minister. As one ally of the Prime Minister said to me today the PM’s predicament is made even harder by the fact that many of the 10 countries outside the

Having spent five hours in the debate last night, one thing was absolutely clear: we are all Eurosceptics now. So why did I choose to vote against the motion? It is because I believe that anger and frustration alone will not resolve our justifiable grievances towards the EU; we need a clear-eyed strategy to move forward.    We can all agree that Europe in its current form is not working for us. We have passed powers to Brussels at the cost of undermining the sovereignty of Parliament. Regulations that hinder our growth have not only been adopted but gold-plated, and with the Lisbon Treaty we are saddled with a constitution

The scale of tonight’s rebellion is quite remarkable, 43 percent of Tory backbenchers have defied a three line whip—and we are only 18 months into the parliament. Indeed, if you factor in the abstentions more than half of Tory backbenchers rebelled. This should be a wake-up call to David Cameron. He needs to develop a proper policy for repatriating powers from Brussels, change his style of party management, and reform the Whips office.  This rebellion will encourage the hard-line Euro-sceptics to try again and again. They will reckon, rightly, that as the parliament goes on the number of potential rebels will grow. If they can get this number of rebels