Eu

Tories preparing the ground for David Cameron’s renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe are to take MPs from other parties with them as they visit European cities, Coffee House has learned. The Fresh Start Project, made up of Conservative MPs campaigning for reform of the European Union, has already visited Prague, Warsaw and Berlin to hold preliminary meetings setting out the need for change. Its next round of visits will include members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for European Reform, which is co-chaired by Fresh Start’s Andrea Leadsom and Labour’s Thomas Docherty. The Conservative MPs organising the visits think including other parties will help them secure more meetings and

Tensions between some ministers and the civil service are at boiling point, with vicious briefings taking place on both sides. Seemingly keen to keep the pen-pushers sweet, former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell lashed out last week at colleagues who have been winding up Sir Humphrey: ‘This behind-the-hand rubbishing of public servants is extremely unattractive.’ Spoken like a man who has certainly never been rude himself. A ‘former minister’ also told Sue Cameron in the Telegraph: ‘This is not good management and it’s not good politics, either. If it’s a choice between politicians and civil servants, there’s no doubt that the public will side with the civil servants.’ One wonders if

Alas, now we know William Hague has joined the list – and it’s a long list – of British government ministers who do not understand how the European Union works. His idea that national parliaments should demand a ‘red card’ system so they can block unwanted EU legislation is muddled in several ways. First is that, if national parliaments are where EU laws should be vetoed, where does that leave the prime ministers who make up the European Council?  Prime ministers – and foreign ministers, and agricultural ministers, and the rest — go to Brussels and put their vote or their veto (when they’ve got one) on the table when

The Conservatives know that the best way of detracting from the binary In/Out? debate about Europe in the Westminster bubble is to jolly well get on with making the case for reform in Europe. It is vital that ministers give the impression that there are changes that other European leaders would quite happily sign up to, rather than an impossible shopping list. William Hague’s speech to the Konigswinter Conference in Germany today was part of that attempt. The idea he floated – of giving national parliaments a ‘red card’ to veto unwanted EU legislation – is something ministers and Tory MPs paving the way for a renegotiation have been discussing

The EU has said it will not renew an arms embargo on Syria which ends this Saturday. That should pave the way for countries wanting to arm the rebels, something both Britain and France have been saying they will consider. It is a tired truism, but nonetheless one still worth restating, that not all the Syrian rebels are jihadists. This is precisely what has motivated Britain and France to explore ways of working with the rebels, although there are currently no plans to supply them with arms. But arming the rebels would be a mistake. It is clear Assad must go and that a future Syrian state will need to

This morning two European Commission technocrats and a spokesman held an off-the-record press briefing to explain the EU’s economic ‘governance.’ (Governance is the word eurocrats use instead of the more precise word ‘government’, because that word panics the Anglo-Saxons.) They gave it an hour. That’s called optimism, but an hour is about the maximum level anyone in the press corps is going to give on this one, so an hour it was. Why an explanation had to be off the record I have no idea, but, okay, my lips are zipped. If you want to know how the economic government of the EU is going – and you ought to,

Parliament is a “brothel”. The state is an enterprise of “thieves” engaged in a conspiracy against “the good little people” and the “humble housewife”. Time, then, for a party that will stand up for “the little man, the downtrodden, the trashed, the ripped off, the humiliated”. Not, as you might suspect, the most recent UKIP manifesto but, rather, the sentiments expressed by Pierre Poujade during the run-in to the 1954 elections to the French National Assembly. Poujade’s party, the Union to Defend Shopkeepers and Artisans,  shocked France’s political elite by winning 2.5 million votes and sending 55 deputies to Paris. Charles de Gaulle sniffed that “In my day, grocers voted for

Ben Goldsmith, Partner at WHEB Partners and signatory to Business for Britain In the private sector, every business must provide regular and accurate accounts. Yet when you try to look into the European Union’s income and expenditure there is just obscurity, masking a black hole of inefficiency and waste. The EU’s finances are a mess – the Court of Auditors has refused to sign off the EU’s accounts for eighteen years successively. The costs of EU membership to the UK are high – around £8.9 billion in 2010/11, with the threat of increases to come.  The EU is haemorrhaging cash and making the private sector pay for its financial recklessness, not

Lord Lawson’s announcement that he intends to vote for Britain to leave the European Union has been interpreted by some as reinforcing demands that David Cameron holds his referendum this year or next, rather than 2017. But it does no such thing. Follow Lawson’s arguments and the logical conclusion is that the best chance of securing a British exit from the EU is for a vote to be held as planned, in four years’ time. As the Prime Minister has said in a letter to MPs, he is powerless to bring in a vote while in coalition because the Liberal Democrats are so vehemently against it. Nick Clegg’s commitment to