Timothy Garton Ash's Blog, page 11
May 7, 2018
The EU’s core values are under attack as never before. It must defend them | Timothy Garton Ash
Boris Johnson should change his name and move to Hungary. “My policy on cake,” Johnson famously says, “is pro having it and pro eating it.” With this approach to Brexit, the British government will end up neither having its cake nor eating it. Viktor Orbán’s nationalist populist Hungarian government, by contrast, is triumphantly practising the Johnson doctrine. It receives more European Union cake per capita than any other member state while mustering nationalist support by biting the Brussels hand that feeds it. Boris Johnzsönhelyi would be a happy trooper on the Danube.
Increasingly, attention has turned to linking the money countries get from Brussels to respect for the rule of law
Related: Viktor Orbán: re-election of Hungary’s anti-immigrant leader is major challenge for EU
Friends in the centre-right parties say: “It’s still better to have Orbán inside because we can influence him there.'
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March 29, 2018
We have six months to foil Brexit. And here’s how we can do it | Timothy Garton Ash
If all goes according to the Brexiters’ plan, we will wake up exactly one year from today to find that Britain is no longer a member of the European Union. In practice, we anti-Brexiters have just six months to avert that outcome. For if, in its “meaningful vote” this autumn, the British parliament decides to accept whatever interim deal has been cobbled together by British and EU negotiators, that will be the effective point of no return.
Brexiters see this and now have a strategy of Leninist clarity: do whatever it takes to get Britain to that point. Even Nigel Farage is now on this Brexito-Bolshevik line. The end justifies the means. Never mind what compromises you make over the transition period, never mind which of your own previous red lines you cross, just get the country through the door marked Out. Everything else can be sorted out later.
Related: Theresa May refuses to back Boris's 'Brexit dividend' claim
A growing majority say Brexit will probably be bad for the economy and even for them personally
Related: MPs and peers flex muscles as countdown to meaningful vote begins
Continue reading...February 22, 2018
The last thing Germany – and Europe – needs is a grand coalition | Timothy Garton Ash
Sunday 4 March will be a turning point for Europe. On the same day as an important general election in Italy we’ll find out whether an internal referendum of German Social Democrat party members has produced a yes for the grand coalition government in Berlin, continuing its current partnership with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Conventional wisdom says this would be a good result for Europe. I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. Like putting on a medical corset to alleviate a serious back condition then carrying on with your life just as before, a grand coalition would be good in the short term but bad in the long. You need to address the causes, not just the symptoms. And there is an alternative.
Related: SPD set for new leader as main German parties look to promote youth
The worst argument of all for a grand coalition is that there is no alternative
Related: Angela Merkel defends 'painful' compromises that kept her in power
Continue reading...January 4, 2018
We can stop Brexit. But we’ll need some help from across the Channel | Timothy Garton Ash
This is the year to stop Brexit. There will not be another chance. If by the end of this year the British parliament has approved a transition agreement with the 27 other members of the EU, including the framework for a future trading relationship, Britain will exit.
This will constitute the most gratuitous and consequential act of national self-harm in Britain’s postwar history. It will also do significant long-term damage to the larger project of bringing the countries of Europe together to defend our shared values and way of life in a world increasingly shaped by China, climate change and job-threatening automation. Stopping Brexit is mainly a task for Brits, but it is also, in smaller part, a challenge for fellow Europeans who recognise this truth.
Related: I don’t like Brexit – I just don’t see how it can be stopped | Owen Jones
Related: Macron had a good year. In 2018, he could even stop Brexit | Natalie Nougayrède
Continue reading...November 16, 2017
Yes, we can halt the rise of the international far right | Timothy Garton Ash
The ugly nationalist march in Poland is part of an alarming global trend. It is for all of us – not just politicians – to resist it
Every journalism school should show its students the video clip of the moment on Saturday when a chirpy Polish state television reporter asked a man decked out in red and white national colours what it meant to him to participate in a march celebrating Poland’s independence day. “It means,” replied the man, “to remove from power … Jewry!”
Related: This weekend’s march in Poland proves the far right isn’t going away without a fight | Paul Mason
Continue reading...September 28, 2017
Only respect for the ‘left behind’ can turn the populist tide | Timothy Garton Ash
To those premature pundits who assured us that the global populist wave was already receding, Germany has just delivered an enormous raspberry. In one of the most prosperous countries in the world, with the strongest possible taboo on xenophobic, rightwing nationalism (A Hitler) and an existential commitment to European integration, one out of every eight voters has turned to a xenophobic, Eurosceptic, rightwing populist party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). One lesson to be learned is this: if we are to combat populism, we must understand that its deep driving forces are as much cultural as economic.
Of course there’s an economic component, even in Germany. Not all Germans are driving around in BMWs and contemplating their second holiday in Mallorca. Yet the economic motive is much less salient than it was in the votes for Donald Trump and Brexit. In a poll conducted for the German television channel ARD, 95% of AfD voters cited threats to “the German language and culture”.
Related: Merkel faces tough coalition talks as nationalists enter German parliament
Continue reading...July 27, 2017
After Trump and Brexit, is this the end for the Anglo-Saxon west? | Timothy Garton Ash
Some welcome the prospect of decline in Britain and the US. They should be careful what they wish for
• Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist
‘“You must be from England,” says the shop assistant at the CVS drugstore in Menlo Park, California. When I mention Donald Trump, he says: “Well, don’t get me started on how things are going on your side of the Atlantic. Your Mrs May there in Downing Street is being [expletive deleted] by the bureaucrats in Brussels …”
I can only agree. Having jumped from the Brexit frying pan into the Trump fire, I find myself comparing the two and wondering which is worse. The transatlantic difference is, in the first place, between Britain’s madness of the thing and America’s madness of the man. Theresa May may be wooden, rigid and out of her depth, but compared to Trump she looks like Mother Teresa.
Related: Dunkirk reveals the spirit that has driven Brexit: humiliation | Rafael Behr
Related: Hardliners won’t like this soft Brexit plan. Tough – we have little choice | Simon Jenkins
Continue reading...After Trump and Brexit, is this the end for the Anglo Saxon west? | Timothy Garton Ash
• Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist
‘“You must be from England,” says the shop assistant at the CVS drugstore in Menlo Park, California. When I mention Donald Trump, he says: “Well, don’t get me started on how things are going on your side of the Atlantic. Your Mrs May there in Downing Street is being [expletive deleted] by the bureaucrats in Brussels …”
I can only agree. Having jumped from the Brexit frying pan into the Trump fire, I find myself comparing the two and wondering which is worse. The transatlantic difference is, in the first place, between Britain’s madness of the thing and America’s madness of the man. Theresa May may be wooden, rigid and out of her depth, but compared to Trump she looks like Mother Teresa.
Related: Dunkirk reveals the spirit that has driven Brexit: humiliation | Rafael Behr
Related: Hardliners won’t like this soft Brexit plan. Tough – we have little choice | Simon Jenkins
Continue reading...June 22, 2017
A year after voting for Brexit, Britain’s divided, and in uncharted waters | Timothy Garton Ash
‘The Brits don’t know what they want”, explained a front-page headline in that great Swiss newspaper, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Exactly so.
Or to put it another way, the Brits can’t agree what they want and don’t know how to get it. On the first anniversary of the Brexit referendum vote, it’s painful to see Britain in such a shambolic mess.
Related: Brexit weekly briefing: day one of talks marks the first climbdown
Related: Brexit economy: UK faces slowdown amid living standards squeeze
Related: Brexit is a tragedy, but there’s much we can do before the final act | Timothy Garton Ash
Continue reading...June 6, 2017
When you go to the ballot box, think first of Brexit | Timothy Garton Ash
If you are still deciding how to vote on Thursday, you should know that Britain is heading straight for the rocks in its negotiations with the European Union. Since Brexit is the pivotal issue for Britain over the next five years, we should prioritise electing the parliament that will give us the least-worst Brexit deal, and keep us in the EU for as long as it takes until that deal is made. People call this tactical voting – but if ever an issue in British politics was strategic, it was this. So let’s vote strategically.
But first, a word about those rapidly approaching rocks. Over the past few weeks, I have talked to quite a few European leaders. Shockingly, they all say that Britain’s Brexit talks with the remaining 27 members of the EU will most probably break down: a 90% probability, reckons one very significant European figure; 60%, wagers another.
Since we can’t rely on the tin lady, we need a parliament that will stand up for national interests
Related: Fear of Brexit brain drain as EU nationals leave British universities
Continue reading...Timothy Garton Ash's Blog
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