Denis Macshane

Tuesday

Denis Macshane

How to lose an EU referendum

From our UK edition

Ten years ago France was in meltdown shock as the country that prided itself on being the most European and communitaire of all had said a decisive Non to European integration. Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, phoned Tony Blair with the result in some jubilation. Jack, one of the nicest senior ministers ever, was never much of a Europhile and the French No meant Britain avoided a plebiscite that would also have said No to Europe. What the French said no was called the EU constitution but in reality was just another treaty agreed between member states after arduous negotiations.

Saturday

Denis Macshane

Diary – 11 October 2008

From our UK edition

Parliament is back and I can relax. A tiresome cliché holds that MPs have a three-month summer break. If only. I have spent more time canvassing, selling tombola tickets and doing politics than ever before. And then on the eve of the Commons returning there is pure political Wagner. Boris fires Blair! Mandy returns! Like Churchill returning to office in 1939 the signal goes out: ‘Peter is back!’ Russia invades and dismembers Georgia! George W. Bush nationalises more finance capital than Lenin! The USA adds an extra S to become the United Socialist States of America as its ambassador quits Mayfair to open an embassy in the heart of proletarian south London. Now the Commons is sitting we can take it easy after the political dramas of recent weeks.

Wednesday

Denis Macshane

Putin’s Tories: welcome to the Vlad and Dave Show

From our UK edition

Denis MacShane says that the Conservatives’ refusal to align themselves with other centre-right parties on the Council of Europe has driven them into a shabby alliance with Russia As Vladimir Putin moves seamlessly from being president to prime minister of Russia, amid mounting worry that Russia is slipping its democratic moorings, there is a group of 21st-century fellow-travellers the Kremlin can count on: the Conservative party. Tory MPs are now toeing the Russian line in the new battlefield for democratic rights located in Strasbourg.

Saturday

Denis Macshane

The importance of being serious about France

From our UK edition

There is a new French ambassador arriving in London this week. He is Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, known as — what else? — MGM in Quai d’Orsay. It is fashionable to downplay the role of the ambassador in the modern world. Has not instant communication made the profession of diplomacy redundant? When the president of France and the prime minister of the United Kingdom see each other at EU, G8 or other meetings with more regularity than they talk to their ministers, who needs ambassadors? Moreover, with so much of the common business between France and Britain conducted at European level, surely it is in Brussels, not London and Paris, that problems between the two countries are resolved? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Saturday

Denis Macshane

Diary – 8 September 2007

From our UK edition

A lifetime’s ambition is fulfilled as I get to hear and see Wagner in Bayreuth... Bayreuth A lifetime’s ambition is fulfilled as I get to hear and see Wagner in Bayreuth. After 1945 it was touch and go whether enough support could be found to get the Bayreuth Festspielhaus back on its feet for the month-long festival of Wagner operas. It was the German trade unions who stepped in to support the reopening of the festival despite Bayreuth’s Nazi connections. As a result, 4,000 tickets at £50 a head are still reserved for trade unionists and German labour friends get me a ticket for the Die Meistersinger. As we take our seats my host whispers, ‘Just behind is the box where he sat. You know, the F— word.

Saturday

Denis Macshane

Cameron is the heir to Heath

From our UK edition

As David Cameron enjoys his Oedipal role in killing off any remnant of Thatcherism in today’s Conservative party, is he slowly revealing himself as the grandson Ted Heath never had? Mr Cameron seems happy with 1970s levels of taxation. He calls American policy against jihadi terrorism ‘simplistic’. He has apologised for Tory attacks on Nelson Mandela. As a hoodie-hugger he is soft on the causers of crime. The TUC had its stand at the Conservative conference and Mr Cameron is cultivating a relationship with Brendan Barber, the low-profile but very smart TUC general secretary.

Wednesday

Denis Macshane

We should have intervened in Spain

From our UK edition

Granada The papers have been full of the Suez story. Both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph have zeroed in on Eden’s adventure of 50 years ago to try to draw parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan. But there is another anniversary that so far has gone all but unnoticed. It also has lessons for contemporary history. Seventy years ago this month (July) a British pilot took off from Croydon airport. On his Dragon Rapide aeroplane were a Spanish newspaper man, an MI6 officer and two pretty young women for cover. They flew via France and Portugal to the Canary Islands. There they picked up a no-nonsense conservative general called Franco. The plane took him back to his soldiers at the Spanish Foreign Legion base in Morocco.