Germany

‘What was it like growing up in Liverpool?’ a journalist asked John Lennon. ‘I didn’t grow up in Liverpool,’ he replied. ‘I grew up in Hamburg.’ My father grew up in Hamburg too, at the end of the second world war. The city had been bombed to smithereens. Cigarettes were the only currency, and my grandma had to trade her jewellery for food. When she met a British soldier who offered to take her to England, she grabbed this lifeline with both hands. If only she were alive to see her smart home town today. When the Beatles came here in 1960, they stayed in St Pauli, the dockside red-light

One of the great moments of my student life was opening the door and seeing visitors step back, shocked. I’d shaved my hair off to an eighth of an inch. It felt like velvet but looked spiky and hard. It was all down to Ulrike Meinhof, co-founder with Andreas Baader of the Red Army Faction, who’d just hanged herself in Stammheim prison, in Germany. My friends liked my haircut as we conflated Ulrike the martyr with images of a mullet-haired Jane Fonda raising her fist against the US army on behalf of the tortured Viet Cong. I was reminded of that haircut — and my shocked visitors — by the

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.

‘The Greek people,’ the Financial Times leading article said on Monday, ‘would be well advised to listen closely to the words of Ms Merkel. The plebiscite will be a vote for the euro or the drachma, no less.’ It is interesting how menacing powerful ‘moderate’ institutions can become when popular feeling challenges them. In the eurozone theology to which the FT subscribes, its statement above cannot be true. It is not possible (see last week’s Notes) for a member state to leave the euro, any more than it is for Wales to renounce sterling. Eurozone membership, once achieved, is a condition of EU membership. So the Greeks cannot vote to

This podcast is sponsored by Berry Bros, The Spectator’s house red. Germany has just as much to worry about from a Grexit as Greece. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, economist Fredrik Erixon and James Forsyth discuss this week’s Spectator cover feature on the challenges Angela Merkel faces to keep her beloved European project on the road. It also presents an opportunity for David Cameron to get a better deal for Britain during his renegotiations — can he make the most of the present situation? Freddy Gray and Owen Bennett, author of Following Farage, also discuss Ukip’s flirtation with the American right and the impact it had on the party’s election performance. What role did Farage’s ex-senior adviser Raheem Kassam

Normally, the phrase ‘continent in crisis’ is hyperbole. But it seems appropriate today as we contemplate the situation Europe, and more specifically the EU, finds itself in. In the next few days, Greece could default, triggering its exit from the single currency and financial disruption across the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Rome is on the verge of unilaterally issuing Mediterranean migrants travel documents enabling them to travel anywhere in the Schengen area because—as Nicholas Farrell reports in the magazine this week—Italy simply cannot cope with many more arrivals. Those involved in the British government’s preparations for a Greek exit put the chances of it at 50:50. If Greece did leave, which would