Posts Tagged “europe”
Who gets what from the EU Budget
by Stephen Tall on November 26, 2012
A very handy graph from The Economist, showing how well/badly the EU’s nation states do out of the budget process — and also showing the impact of the rebates received by Britain and others:
I don’t agree with Nick. We should be in Europe to reform the EU
by Stephen Tall on November 1, 2012
Nick Clegg will today make the kind of speech which makes it very hard for Lib Dems to push the idea that our party is serious about reform of the European Union. According to the BBC, he will dismiss the chances of any significant changes to the EU’s budget: In a speech to be delivered [...]
David Cameron’s a hostage to his party and the right-wing press. Thank goodness for Nick Clegg
by Stephen Tall on December 12, 2011
The shockwaves from David Cameron’s decision to reject the proposed ‘Merkozy’ EU treaty is still shaking politics. The UK stands isolated from the other 26 member states. Tory Eurosceptics and, early polls suggest, a majority of the British public think the Prime Minister has played a blinder, ‘sticking up for Britain’. This is difficult territory [...]
Lib Dem MPs split on Euro referendum?
by Stephen Tall on January 21, 2010
Almost two years ago, in the early weeks of Nick Clegg’s leadership, the Lib Dem parliamentary party managed to tie itself in knots over the question of whether to support a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. In the end three frontbenchers, David Heath, Tim Farron and Alistair Carmichael, quit after defying the party’s three-line whip [...]
LDV readers say: overwhelming NO to idea of EU President Blair
by Stephen Tall on November 18, 2009
A couple of weeks back, LDV posed the question, Do you support or oppose Tony Blair becoming the first President of the European Union?
There’s no room for doubt about the overwhelming view of readers of this site (who may or may not be representative of Lib Dem supporters more generally) – here’s what you told [...]
Daily View 2×2: 2 November 2009
by Stephen Tall on November 2, 2009
With just 59 days til the end of the third millennium’s first decade, we can celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the birth of BBC1, and that it’s 49 years to the day since Penguin Books was found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case.
2 Big Stories
Johnson faces backlash over decision to [...]
The Kaminski row: 2 must-read articles
by Stephen Tall on October 30, 2009
The row over David Cameron’s decision to pull the Tories out of the main centre-right European grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), and set up a new group of “extreme and rag-bag” assorted right-wingers, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), has been simmering for months.
It’s burst into the political mainstream this week, courtesy of [...]
1999 – the year I tipped Tony Blair to become the first President of Europe
by Stephen Tall on October 28, 2009
All this talk of Tony Blair becoming the first President of the European Union reminded me of one of my first forays into political journalism … It was an article I wrote for the Oxford University student magazine, Isis, in (…)
Nick's pick of the greatest Parliamentary speeches in the last century
by Stephen Tall on April 6, 2009
A big tip of my hat to Michael White in today’s Guardian for his feature, Greatest speeches in parliament of the past 100 years, 1909-2009, which links to a number of the Hansard transcripts of Parliamentary speeches nominated by ’46 (…)
Clegg: refusing to discuss the euro is a “failure of political leadership”
by Stephen Tall on January 21, 2009
Cast your minds back to the Lib Dem conference, and you may recall a coordinated drive by Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne to signal that the Lib Dems’ attachment to the Euro was no longer a top priority. (…)
