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June 18, 2012
By David Gow “Crisis delayed” – as the BBC’s Chris Morris summed up on Today – is how virtually all political and market analysts view the outcome of Sunday’s extraordinary re-run Greek election. Stocks rose in Asia and Europe, yields on Italian and Spanish bonds fell, slightly, and EU political leaders headed off finally for… » read more
History has a way of repeating itself. Once again the nations of Europe are about to embark in an unprecedented process of integration, just like they did after the 2nd World War, and once again Britain chooses to remain on the side-lines, unable and unwilling to help shape the structures that are bound to affect… » read more
June 13, 2012
Banking union + continuing crisis = referendum (sooner than expected) By Peter Wilding Today, all media are focused on the pain in Spain after Spanish borrowing costs hit a record euro-era high amid continuing concerns over Madrid’s bail-out and a Greek exit. So, with no tools left in the box, up steps EC President José… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, UK in Europe |
June 12, 2012
Miliband calls for UK leadership in Europe, as even sceptic think-tank rejects withdrawal from EU By David Seymour Once again David Miliband has used his position as a youthful eminence grise and outsider to put the case for Britain’s position in Europe perfectly. On The World This Weekend, in a few sentences, he expressed the… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, UK in Europe |
June 11, 2012
By David Gow Britain’s finance minister is either disingenuous or self-deluding. Yesterday (Sunday), writing in the Sunday Telegraph, George Osborne blamed the eurozone crisis for “killing off” Britain’s economic “recovery” (double-dip recession) which was taking place despite “high oil prices” (now falling for the most prolonged period for a dozen years) and “the debt burden… » read more
June 10, 2012
Britain is buzzing with talk of a referendum on “Europe”. In May Peter Mandelson was advocating a national vote some time after 2016, when a new Europe of fiscal union will have been defined. He sees it as a way of resolving divisions within Britain’s political parties. Last week it was David Owen’s turn. He… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, UK in Europe |
By David Gow While a spurious* referendum fever has gripped post-Jubilee Britain in recent days, arguably the most important decisions affecting Europe have been taken in Beijing in the same period. Today the Chinese government cut petrol and diesel prices for the second time in a month by more than 5% – just 24 hours… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, UK in Europe |
May 31, 2012
Single currency takes blame for profligate Governments and banks By David Seymour Spain is in trouble. Of that there can be do doubt. And once again, as with Greece, the euro is getting the blame. But it wasn’t the single currency which got the Spanish into this mess – it was the profligacy of their… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, UK in Europe |
Some leaked rehearsed yet redacted Hunt quotes and speaking points for the Leveson Inquiry: By Johan De Rycker Given the spin-doctors’ preparation of Mr. Hunt’s deposition to the Inquiry, by pure accident, we have been able to lay our hands on some of his prepared answers – apparently all duly written in line with the… » read more
May 30, 2012
David Seymour In an age when too many leading politicians take the easy way out by avoiding answering difficult questions, let us give thanks for Ken Clarke. The Justice Secretary doesn’t appear to know what evasion is. Even if he is being ribbed as to why he fell asleep at a Test Match. When it… » read more
May 29, 2012
As Greece prepares to shuffle of this mortal coil, things are looking overcast for Spain By David Gow “This is a movie we’ve played three times already,” Shahin Vallée, a visiting fellow at Bruegel, the Brussels-based think tank, told Bloomberg TV this morning (Tues) of the efforts of Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy to shore up… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, Member States, UK in Europe |
By Peter Wilding The PM is caught. The Times headline this morning suggests that the more the Eurozone crisis continues, the more likely a referendum is. Or is it? First, the headache. No solution is in prospect. The informal European Council did not produce any decisions. The Wall Street Journal Europe said: “a meeting of… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, UK in Europe |
May 23, 2012
By David Gow “Getting the disappointment in early” is the tenor of the tweets in the euroblogosphere as 27 weary, crumpled and increasingly hapless heads of state and government head for their 13th summit in two years in Brussels. Yesterday the FTSE was up 1.8% on the vaguest of hopes that the café-cognac might produce… » read more
By Johan De Rycker Quite curious how all those experts and professors surrounding Paxman Monday night (21st May) were discussing the lack or presence of a correlation between OECD country regulation on hiring and firing workers and their subsequent economic prosperity just blithely bypassing the issue of Member State “Culture”, and organisation. Or as was… » read more
May 22, 2012
By Paul Everitt Europe is facing major political, social and economic challenges. The aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis continue to reverberate around national governments and European institutions. There is uncertainty in financial markets, increasing public discontent at the squeeze on living standards and concern for the future of the growing number of unemployed, particularly… » read more
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English, EU Priorities 2020, Innovation & Enterprise, Social Europe & Jobs, UK in Europe |
As the Eurozone crisis hogs the headlines again, BBC’s Newsnight’s take last night on “Austerity” highlighted how important language is in persuading the people to back or sack their governments. Only last week Cameron’s government starkly replaced the word ‘austerity’ with ‘efficiency’ not because of any policy change but because some words are simply too… » read more
May 16, 2012
By David Gow It’s a dangerous game of chicken: the fear and loathing in Europe is driving stock markets down, forcing bond yields on Italian and Spanish debt up to pre-”easy money from the ECB” levels and even President Hollande can’t get to Berlin without his plane being hit by lightning. Götterdämmerung in der Eurozone.… » read more
May 15, 2012
The Eurozone crisis changes everything. If by the end of the year, the Eurozone is left limbless and the economy sits in deep freeze, the binary in/out argument for continuing EU membership will no longer be left just to Nigel Farage and the Tory Bufton Tufton’s out in the shires. If enough Tories don’t see… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, UK in Europe |
May 14, 2012
By David Gow It was far worse than Angela Merkel imagined: her CDU slumped to its worst post-war result in Sunday’s NorthRhine-Westphalia poll and scored just 26.3%. The social democrats (SPD) scored 39.1% and the Greens 11.3%, giving what had been a minority red-green government an absolute majority. The CDU’s top candidate, her environment minister,… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, Member States, UK in Europe |
Inexorably, it is dawning on a number of great British opinion-formers that if Greece falls out of the euro, the catastrophe that ensues will eclipse this country, too. Nucleus has been warning for some time that those who have been prophesying with glee that the Greeks would bring about the collapse of the single currency… » read more
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English, EU Institutions, EU Priorities 2020, Euro & Finance, Member States, UK in Europe |
