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Jeremy Cliffe
Writer at Large, @NewStatesman | Formerly Charlemagne columnist & Brussels bureau chief, Berlin bureau chief, Bagehot columnist, @TheEconomist
No more benefit of the doubt. Today proved that Germany is consciously and deliberately stalling on sending Ukraine battle tanks. My (non-paywalled) take for @NewStatesman :
Would be a mistake for Berlin to assume criticism of its hesitancy can only possibly be eurosceptic Germany-bashing (à la PiS in Poland). There was and is a strong - I'd argue, overwhelming - progressive, pro-European case for regretting the lack of greater initiative & urgency.
10 years ago today, David Cameron gave his fateful Bloomberg speech pledging an EU referendum
Germany can be exasperating. But the fact that it has twice in a decade (2015/16, 2022) taken in over 1 million refugees within a year and integrated them without breaking a sweat compares favourably with a UK currently in utter meltdown over a tiny fraction of that number.
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German president Steinmeier in TV address to the nation: "No, this pandemic is not a war. Nations do not stand against nations, nor soldiers against soldiers. Rather it is a test of our humanity. It brings out the best and worst in people. Let's show each other the best in us."
“The policies I represent are the policies represented […] by Mr Putin”, Marine Le Pen tells @maitlis in this 2017 interview underlining what a triumph for the Kremlin it would be if she becomes France’s president.
Germany hosts some 2m refugees, the UK hosts about 173k. Yet public services in Germany are not in crisis and housing is less dysfunctional than in Britain. Refugees, the ECHR, human rights lawyers etc are *not* the problem.
A quote for the ages: "when the generation that survived the war is no longer with us, we'll find out whether we have learned from history" - Angela Merkel today
Today's FAZ report on May's disastrous dinner with Juncker - briefed by senior Commission sources - is absolutely damning.
"Germany’s 3-month experiment with super-cheap public transport reduced carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to powering about 350,000 homes for a year." << low cost/free public transport probably the long term direction across Europe given climate targets
The absolute state of all these pious, preening resignation letters from MPs who knew *exactly* what Boris Johnson is like when they ran for election under his leadership and accepted jobs in his government
An annual London-Peterborough season ticket now costs £7,864. In Germany you can buy an annual BahnCard 100, providing travel on *every train in the country*, for less than half that (€4,270, or £3,797).
This account of Liz Truss’s world travels as trade secretary (from two well-sourced and Conservative-friendly journalists) is beyond parody: “no interest whatsoever” in developing trade but an obsessive focus on getting the right shots for Instagram.
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