Much of the responsibility in caring for refugees arriving in Germany has fallen to local authorities. (More…)
Europe
It rained yesterday morning. The first rain of winter. The air was sharp, cold and grey. The grey light of days gone by. The wet street a deep blue-black. The grey of winter recalls what I have left behind. (More…)
It’s normal to hear NATO described as an “internationalist project” in Western Europe. Even the centre-left has long stood by the Atlantic alliance. Britain was signed up to NATO by the post-war Labour government. By contrast, France withdrew from NATO under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle as part of his politics of grandeur. Yet the NATO project may not have been so lost in the Cold War as it is today. (More…)
In his latest speech, President Jean-Claude Juncker talked up the necessity of the EU creating its own military headquarters and work towards a common military force. Juncker claimed this new force would be complementary to NATO. He clearly wanted to reassure the Americans that the EU does not wish to usurp them. Yet its hard not to see the potential for a realignment here. (More…)
You can tell Jeremy Corbyn is worth supporting just by looking at his opponents: Owen Smith, Angela Eagle, Lisa Nandy, Hilary Benn, Chuka Umunna et alia. A long list of nobodies and know-nothings, each of them produced by the spawn pool of career politicians. The rise of Corbynism is a great revolt by people who are sick and tired of conventional politics. (More…)
In the wake of Brexit, we were told the vote was a great revolt by the white working-class. We were told it was grounded in racist discontent with an out-of-touch metropolitan elite. The Leave vote was entirely composed of ill-educated, poor racists living anywhere between the progressive bastions of London and Scotland. It’s worth asking what’s wrong with this view. (More…)
It was as though the Apocalypse was at hand. The big attack, or so it seemed, had finally arrived, ritually choreographed, within shouting distance of the 1972 Munich massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes died, at the hands of Palestinian terrorists, aided by Neo-Nazis. (More…)
The overwhelming influence of Russia has taken Europe at different epochs by surprise, startled the peoples of the West, and been submitted to as a fatality, or resisted only by convulsions. (More…)
Pakistan’s refugee crisis predates Europe’s by several decades. Islamabad currently plays host to 2.7 million refugees in total, including 1.5 million Afghans, who face disproportionate discrimination by the Federal Government. (More…)
The coup against Jeremy Corbyn has now fully transmuted into a leadership election. But the key challengers are unlikely to win over the membership: whether it is lacklustre Angela Eagle, or the mediocre Owen Smith. Corbyn is officially on the ballot, albeit with new barriers to his supporters. Sadly, the contest may take until September to conclude, while the Conservative government is busy regrouping. (More…)
So, the heir to Blair is gone, Theresa May has come to power, George Osborne has been replaced with Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson is now in charge of MI6. It’s plausible that the Tories may be returning to its wilderness period in opposition to New Labour. Cameron’s Blair-style of leadership is now over. All that’s left is the mess of party politics before Cameron took over in 2005: fools, creeps, lightweights and nobodies. (More…)
Brexit was powered by fantasies of border control, the Leave campaign playing to fears of too many migrants in the UK. Lawyer Simon Cox argues that the costs of making those border controls a reality would be unprecedented. (More…)