Daniel Hannan

Or, as we Old Brussels Hands say: “Hört auf euch ausnehmen zu lassen!”

No country does as badly out of the EU as Germany. It pays more into the system than anyone else, and has the lowest per capita representation in the Brussels institutions. The fiscal transfers made by German taxpayers to French farmers under the terms of the Common Agricultural Policy go beyond anything envisaged by Clemenceau when he demanded war reparations at Versailles. The Cohesion Fund, under which Mediterranean states got hand-outs in advance of the launch of the euro, was underwritten by the German treasury. It was only natural that, when Greece collapsed, the other euro-zone countries should look to the Angela Merkel for yet another cheque.

I have blogged before that Germans resemble us in temperament.  They are a patient people, but there comes a point when their patience runs out, and they appear to be reaching that point… Read More

ConservativeHome wants your opinion. Take the survey here.

Here are highlights of the draft budget proposed by the European Parliament for its own building programme:

€40 million for new office space in Brussels to accommodate the 150 new staff members and 66 contract staff
€586 million to renovate and extend the European Parliament building in Luxembourg (you didn’t know that the European Parliament had a building in Luxembourg as well as Brussels and Strasbourg, did you?)
€80 million to provide an additional office for each MEP for the accommodation of a third or fourth assistant
€10 million for a second creche in Brussels
€20 million for a “House of European History”

Although the member states are working to constrain their expenditure, one item in their national budgets keeps rising: contributions to the EU budget. Recession? What recession?

In a few weeks’ time, Álvaro Uribe will return to his hacienda, as Cincinnatus to his plough. The most popular leader in the Western world will defy the clamour of his people, who had wanted, by a large majority, to amend the constitution so as to allow him to serve a third term. Uribe has completed the task he set himself. Colombia is more or less at peace. The narco-terrorists are broken, the paramilitaries of Left and Right in prison, the writ of the legitimate government in force across almost the whole of the national territory. Colombia has come through the economic crisis better than most, and her external foes have been repulsed.

Now ask yourself this. Can you see Hugo Chávez respecting the constitution and standing down? (It was reported today that the comandante has somehow contrived to create an energy shortage – in Venezuela!) Can you envisage… Read More

Whenever I take my elder daughter to the National Gallery, she pulls me excitedly to Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey. Since the age of four, she has been fascinated by the painting. I’ve lost count of how many times she has made me tell her story of the unhappy pretender on our way home.

She is not alone. The painting has long been a favourite with visitors – as, indeed, it was in Paris when it was first exhibited in 1834. Experts, by contrast, have tended to be snotty about Delaroche, dismissing his work as sugary, bourgeois sentimentalism. Still, the sheer popularity of his oeuvre seems to be prompting a mild reappraisal: he at last has his own exhibition at the National Gallery.

We are drawn to The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by its immediacy, its tenderness and its realism…. Read More

This is starting to feel like an episode of Life on Mars. For years, now, Labour has been determinedly taking us back to the 1970s, with public sector strikes, stagflation, power cuts and a good old-fashioned sterling crisis. Now, Alistair Darling has completed the Denis Healey revival. He wants to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak. Sixty per cent of the debt that he and Gordon Brown have created, he says, will be paid off by the top five per cent of taxpers.

Oh no it won’t: the seriously rich don’t hang around waiting for Chancellors with distinctive eyebrows to expropriate them. They move their money and, if necessary, themselves, to friendlier jurisdictions. It happened in the 1970s, and it’s happening again today. I’m afraid Labour’s debts will have to be met by the entire country. Indeed, the tithing has already started. If you pay income tax or national insurance, drive… Read More

In our everyday lives we do not borrow to pay for our household bills. We cut back and seek to live within our means. The same strictures apply at national level. Borrowing hundreds of millions a week to pay for day to day spending is just not on. Stabilising the deficit is the next key milestone in our plan to deliver economic recovery for this country.

Some have argued we should continue to borrow and wait for the economy to grow again before tackling the budget deficit. There are three reasons why this is not a viable proposition.

First, we know from the 1980s how large deficits, left unchecked, can lead to a dangerous spiral of mounting debt and ever increasing interest payments. Never again should we return to a position where all of our income taxes go to pay interest on the national debt.

Second, international debt markets have… Read More

Across the EU, national governments are reducing their budgets. Portugal is means-testing benefits. Ireland has slashed public sector pay by between 5 and 10 per cent across the board. Greece has imposed a ten per cent pay reduction on government employees. Spain is finding savings equivalent to 2 per cent of GDP.  Germany is raising the retirement age.

And the European Parliament? The European Parliament is increasing its budget by £119 million, a 6.5 per cent rise. It is taking on 177 staff, expanding the entertainment allowances of senior MEPs and building a “House of European History” (don’t get me started). The EU, of course, is able to spend money without having to justify itself directly to taxpayers. At least, not yet.

I’ve been meaning for some time to welcome back Gawaine Towler’s blog, England Expects. After a sparse and sporadic stretch, Gawaine is now posting several times a day. He is more partisan than he used to be, which is no great surprise as he is now a UKIP press officer. Still, he’s often the first with EU-related stories.

Have a look at his take on the horrible profile written about his boss on Sunday. You don’t have to be a UKIP supporter to sympathise with Nigel Farage on this. I’ve seen some wretched pieces of journalism, but to attack a man for having had cancer is exquisitely disgusting.

Sometimes I don’t understand the British media. Two political stories over the past 18 months have struck me as truly scandalous. First this one, in which legislators were caught on tape offering to move amendments in return for cash; now this one, in which an MP cheerfully describes himself as being like a taxi for hire. Both episodes take us into the world of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: a world in which businessmen and politicians conspire together against the public weal. Yet, for some reason, neither has generated anything like as much public anger as the revelation that MPs were using their allowances to buy sofas and saucepans.

Stephen Byers

Casting around for explanations, I have come up with the following possibilities.

1. The Sunday Times story is too complicated. Few of us truly understand how lobbying is supposed… Read More