Why has Cameron become so forceful about the issue of migration? The answer’s pretty clear, and it lies in 2014.
German leadership will have to choice to make: Whether to keep its promises and uphold the constitution or to do whatever it takes to save the Eurozone.
Germany provides an example of what happens when the right is divided
A Grand Coalition of the CDU/CSU and the SPD remains the most likely outcome. But the SPD will not go in with much if any enthusiasm.
“When you sneer at somebody who stacks shelves, you sneer at the whole cycle of work, and that’s not good.”
The new anti-Euro party, the AfD, fell just short of the 5 per cent threshold required to secure Bundestag seats. Without eurosceptic pressure, Merkel might well simply leave Cameron flapping in the wind.
If Merkel and her liberal FDP partners are just two or three seats short, don’t expect her to form a minority coalition, as a British leader might.
A few historical facts as we wait for results: If the AfD makes it into the Bundestag and the FDP survives, this will be the first Bundestag with six parties in it (counting CDU and CSU as one "Fraktion", or political group) since 1953.
By Andrew GimsonFollow Andrew on Twitter Angela Merkel is taking emergency action to try to avert the rise of Germany's new eurosceptic party. Allies of the Chancellor last night indicated via Bloomberg News that if elected to a third term on 22 September, she will "curtail the reach of European Union rulemakers" and align herself "with […]
J P Floru is a Westminster councillor and Head of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute. Follow J P on Twitter. “They call it austerity. I call it balancing the budget”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a book launch a few days ago. The principle of living within one’s means is familiar to many […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter CDU candidate David McAllister played on his Scottish roots The CDU had been expected to lose control of Lower Saxony for some time and, yesterday, by the narrowest of margins it did lose control of this North West German laender. It turned out to be a much closer contest […]
Andrew Marshall is Managing Director of Cognito PR and Marketing, and a Conservative councillor in Camden. He writes here in a personal capacity. Follow Andrew on Twitter. The latest polls in Germany put Merkel’s CDU (Christian Democratic Union) on 40-41%, up from 34% at the last election and more than 10% ahead of the opposition […]
Who said the Germans don’t have a sense of humour? Here, for instance, is an in-depth report from Spiegel Online on the prospect of a British exit from the EU, which contains one entire joke: “When then-President Charles de Gaulle blocked England's accession to the European Economic Community, one of the precursors to the EU, […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Another election result and another bad result for the incumbent. Angela Merkel's CDU won just 25% of the vote in the huge laender of North Rhine Westphalia. The Wall Street Journal warns it readers not to get excited about the result. Before 2005 NRW was a stronghold of the opposition […]
Christopher Caldwell knows how to grab our attention: “Once again, Europe has a country at its centre that is too big for its neighbours. Merely by keeping on its best behaviour, Germany has managed to reawaken the historic ‘German problem’.” However, as his troubling article for Standpoint makes clear, today’s German problem is very different […]