Eu

Thursday

James Forsyth

Don’t rule out a second referendum

As the Queen read out her government’s agenda on Wednesday morning, David Cameron could have been forgiven for thinking about his place in history. What will he be remembered for, other than having held the office? The so-called ‘life chances’ strategy is intended to be a central plank of his legacy. He wants to be able to say that he made Britain more ‘socially just’. Indeed, this is his principal reason for wanting to stay in No. 10 for a few more years. Cameron loyalists hope he’ll be remembered as the leader who made the Tories the natural party of government again. The man who moved them on from Thatcherism

Luke Coppen

Poles apart | 19 May 2016

Bono has a new opponent: Liroy, a tattooed Polish rapper whose hits include ‘Jak Tu Sie Nie Wkurwic’ (‘How can I not get pissed off?’). He was outraged when the U2 singer recently claimed that Poland is succumbing to ‘hyper-nationalism’. In an open letter Liroy wrote: ‘Your knowledge on this subject must be based on a rather questionable source and is far from the truth. Both as a musician and a Polish MP I would like to invite you to Warsaw to discuss the subject… and see for yourself the current vibe of Poland.’ It’s obvious where Bono got the idea. Everyone in western Europe seems convinced that Polish democracy

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Today’s inflation figures tell us nothing about Brexit. Why does the Treasury pretend otherwise?

We’re now at the stage in the EU referendum debate where every announcement is explained in terms of its relationship to Brexit – whether relevant of not. So today we learn that inflation is still flat, dropping to 0.3pc in April. As per usual. But bizarrely, the Treasury is pretending that this tell us about the misery coming our way if Britain walks away from Europe. Here’s what a Treasury spokesman had to say about the figures: ‘Today’s inflation figure continues the trend we’ve seen over the past year. Pay is growing faster than prices, boosting families’ spending power. Last week the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee warned that a vote to leave

Monday

James Forsyth

Which polls are you going to believe?

Today’s ICM phone and online polls are a reminder that the polls aren’t going to offer much certainty about the result of the EU referendum. ICM’s traditional phone poll has IN ahead 47 to 39, and with the don’t knows excluded up 55% to 45%. This would suggest that IN is on course for a fairly comfortable victory. But its online poll has Out up 47 to 43, and with the don’t knows excluded ahead 52% to 48%. Phone polls are generally regarded as slightly superior to online ones, they are certainly more expensive. So, I suspect that most people in Westminster will take these polls as a sign that

Saturday

James Forsyth

Why the Queen won’t be the centre of political attention next week

In normal times, the government clears the decks ahead of the Queen’s Speech. It wants to ensure maximum publicity for its legislative agenda. But these are not normal times: there’s an EU referendum campaign raging. Number 10 are being quite clear, as I write in The Sun today, that with less than six weeks to go to polling day, there won’t be a campaign ceasefire this week. ‘It is too close now’ one senior source tells me. So, why is the Queen’s Speech taking place at all? One IN supporting Minister complains that it is ‘moronic’ to be having it now, as it means that the measures announced it are

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Boris needs you! | 14 May 2016

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. Boris Johnson has kickstarted his battle bus tour of Britain which he hopes will convince people to vote out of the EU. But before he hit the road, he made a direct pitch to Spectator readers in an exclusive interview. The former mayor of London set out his Brexit battle lines, as he spoke to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson, saying: ‘It is unquestionably true that I’ve changed. But so has the EU. And of the two of us, it’s the EU that

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Immigration: a (belated) response to Andrew Neather

A while ago, I promised to write about my response to allegations by Andrew Neather that the government had covered up immigration. I got waylaid a bit, but in my Daily Telegraph column today I explain why I’m not convinced by it. To believe that mass immigration was a deliberate policy to screw up the Tories would imply that someone in power had a clue what was going on. No one did. It was a massive accident: the arrival of four million more people over 15 years. But here’s the thing: have the shops run out of food? Has M&S run out of underwear to sell? Has Ryanair started to

Tom Goodenough

The IMF serves up more Project Fear – and it’s working

Another day, another warning about the economic bombshell which would follow Brexit. This time it’s the turn of the IMF. In a press conference at the Treasury, Christine Lagarde spoke of the outcome of a vote to leave the EU ranging from ‘bad to very bad’. Whilst the IMF’s report said: ‘A vote to leave the EU would create uncertainty about the nature of the UK’s long-term economic relationship with the EU and the rest of the world. A vote for exit would precipitate a protracted period of heightened uncertainty, leading to financial market volatility and a hit to output.’ George Osborne was clearly grateful for the support of the

Andrew Green

Can we really trust the economists on EU immigration?

A recent Coffee House blog quite rightly noted that many British people are concerned that high levels of immigration have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life, and noted too that this anxiety is understandable as workers have had a rough ride in recent times. Yet the authors, self-styled data-crunchers from the LSE, say that ‘the bottom line is that EU immigration has not significantly harmed the pay, jobs or public services enjoyed by Britons’. One might think that the lack of harm, let alone significant harm, is a poor argument for anything. On pay, real wages are little different from a decade ago. The counterfactual — which surely is

Tom Goodenough

Is the Brexit campaign ‘morphing into Ukip’?

Is the Brexit campaign ‘morphing into Ukip’? That’s what Sir John Major will say he fears is happening later. In a speech at Oxford University, he’ll argue that those calling for Britain to leave the EU are ‘fuelling prejudice on immigration’. He’ll also say that: ‘As the leave arguments implode one by one, some of the Brexit leaders morph into Ukip and turn to their default position – immigration. I urge them to take care, this is dangerous territory that – if handled carelessly can open up long-term divisions in our society’. So does he have a point? It’s definitely credible to see how some elements of the leave camp

Steerpike

Vladimir Nabokov wades into the Brexit debate from the grave

So far in the Brexit debate, a range of figures — from David Cameron to David Icke — have chipped in to offer their two cents’ worth. However, no-one was expecting the latest literary figure to enter the discussion. In this week’s TLS, a talk by the late Vladimir Nabokov — given in 1926 — has been translated into English for the first time. In the talk — titled ‘On Generalities — the Lolita novelist discusses Europe. Nabokov appears to struggle with the concept of Europe — concluding that when people utter the word ‘Europe’ with ‘metaphorical, generalizing intonation’, he sees ‘precisely nothing’: ‘That is how history is treated. But I repeat, it is a

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 12 May 2016

Europe is already divided Sir: The Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster writes eloquently about the historical purpose of a ‘union’ in Europe as being primarily to eliminate the wars that for centuries had characterised Europe (‘Let’s renew the EU’, 7 May). He, and Pope Emeritus Benedict, both point to the shared Christian beliefs that defined all nations of Europe. But the EU, as it has evolved, is now no expression of such an underlying faith — in fact, the opposite. As he points out, it has removed any official reference to Europe’s common heritage, and is increasingly set on a shallow, utilitarian course. Europe is now more divided than ever, and it

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 12 May 2016

One of the many problems with David Cameron’s threat that leaving the European Union could plunge us into war is that it sits so strangely with how he spoke about the EU before he called a referendum. In those days, he was studiedly cool about the union: he had no sentimental attachment to it, he told us, just a pragmatic weighing of the advantages for Britain, depending on what he could obtain. His ‘deal’ for a ‘reformed Europe’, supposedly essential to recommending a Remain vote, contained no Tolstoyan themes at all, just stuff about when migrant EU workers could claim benefits and suchlike. When he now says, ‘By the way,

Nick Cohen

The English right’s Putinesque conspiracy theories

The right, as well as the left, is home to the kind of flaming conspiracy nut who, in Bertie Wooster’s words, make ‘strong men climb trees and pull them up after them’. In another life, the activists for Vote Leave might have joined the thousands of hollowed-eyed onanists who post abuse under newspaper articles from their parents’ spare rooms, or become columnists for the Mail; fringe figures, best ignored. But just as on the left of politics the fringe is becoming the mainstream, so on the right, brooding paranoids, who cannot face a hard fact or uncomfortable argument squarely, are moving in to take over the Conservative Party. Vote Leave

Tom Goodenough

Mark Carney isn’t butting out of the Brexit debate any time soon

The Bank of England isn’t going to butt out of the Brexit debate any time soon it seems. Today’s interest rate decision produced few surprises with the Bank sticking at 0.5%. But the headlines are focusing instead on its warning about the consequences of a vote to leave the EU. The wording about the dangers of Brexit was the starkest yet. The Bank of England said: ‘A vote to leave the EU could materially alter the outlook for output and inflation and therefore the appropriate setting of monetary policy. Households could defer consumption and firms delay investment, lowering labour demand and causing unemployment to rise’ As doomsday scenarios go, excluding

Tom Goodenough

In the EU debate about control, today’s NI migrant stats are particularly toxic

Statistics revealing the number of foreign workers in the UK are an age-old headache for the Government of the day. But with only six weeks to go until the EU referendum, today’s publication of National Insurance figures showing how many people from Europe are working here could prove particularly toxic. We now know that last year 626,000 EU migrant workers registered for NI numbers. But whilst there was a small drop from the last set of stats, the Brexit campaign will be keen to capitalise on the apparent gulf between that figure and the overall net migration to the UK last year, which had been estimated at only 323,000. In

Steerpike

Bus battle! Row brewing over Labour’s ‘corporate’ EU bus

Throughout the EU referendum campaign, Labour figures have been somewhat underwhelmed by the efforts of their party leader to fight for Britain to remain in the EU. However, progress did appear to be made on Monday when Jeremy Corbyn launched Labour’s big EU battle bus. The bright red bus will tour Britain for six weeks as they try and rally support for remain. Alas word reaches Steerpike that behind the scenes things are not so rosy. A little birdy tells Mr S that the Labour leader has raised concerns that the bus is not to his taste and is ‘too corporate’. The Labour leader apparently takes issue with the sheer size of the vehicle

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Boris needs you!

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. Boris Johnson has kickstarted his battle bus tour of Britain which he hopes will convince people to vote out of the EU. But before he hit the road, he made a direct pitch to Spectator readers in an exclusive interview. The former mayor of London set out his Brexit battle lines, as he spoke to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson, saying: ‘It is unquestionably true that I’ve changed. But so has the EU. And of the two of us, it’s the EU that

Hugo Rifkind

Vaping’s appeal isn’t about the nicotine. It’s about the gadgets

Probably you never visited the flats of middle-class student drug dealers in the 1990s, because crikey, neither did I, and look, let’s just move along. Even so, were there ever to be found a Platonic form of such a place, or, as the beer adverts might put it, If Heineken Did the Flats of 1990s Middle-Class Student Drug Dealers, then I now know precisely what such a place would look like. It would look like a vape shop. To be more specific, it would look like the vape shop I visited a few weeks ago in north London. It was perfect down to the last detail. Paraphernalia all over the

Martin Vander Weyer

Have we sacrificed a quarter’s growth to answer the European question?

Has the shadow of Brexit already cost us a slice of GDP — and if so, is it a blip or an omen? The Office for National Statistics says UK growth was 0.4 per cent in the first quarter of this year, down from 0.6 per cent in last year’s final quarter. And we can’t blame the neighbours, because the eurozone upped its game from 0.3 per cent to a positively breathless 0.6 per cent — with even France trotting in ahead of us at 0.5 per cent. We still look stronger on the jobs front, mind you, with our unemployment rate, at 5.1 per cent, well down on a year ago