News and Opinion

The shadows of impeachment hanging over the White House have darkened massively… thanks to the New York Times which might yet end up emulating the Washington Post in bringing down a disgraced president. The string of damning emails Donald Trump Jr was forced to release in the wake of the newspaper’s investigation clearly show the […]

Both will be as bad as the other. Julia Hartley-Brewer is a nice person. There, I said it. No, really; I’ve worked with her a few times over the years on various radio things (although last time we actually conversed on Twitter she insisted she had no idea who I was, which is entirely possible) […]

Uncertainty over the final outcome of Brexit negotiations has left Britain’s healthy credit rating ‘under pressure’. Moody’s, one of the worlds leading rating agencies, said it remained unclear whether the Government would be able to deliver a ‘reasonably good outcome’ from Brexit, and warned that growth prospects over the medium term will be ‘materially weaker’ […]

Don’t bet against it. Predictions, predictions….sometimes you can get them right and passionately wish you hadn’t. Take June last year when, as a staunchly pro-Remain columnist, I forecast that Leave would win the EU referendum despite the polls telling a different story. That was a forecast based on my own research among contacts in Labour […]

Deep in the Arctic is a vault built to help save the world from disaster. But it may not be as secure as we had hoped There is a fearful irony to recent news of flooding at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. This was supposed to be humanity’s most impregnable bulwark against famine, […]

In Romanian Moldavia,the Csángós are oppressed by their Romanian neighbours and misunderstood by their Hungarian ‘relatives’. Photo: Contributed – Credit: Archant Hungarian is a language which is generally considered to have no close linguistic relatives, in any sense of the word ‘close’. Its nearest linguistic relations seem to be the Mansi and Khanty languages, which […]

Matt Kelly recalls an eventful year for The New European Ten of the best New European front pagesCreate line charts .

Our culture correspondent on the filmmaker Francois Ozon, whose latest works veer from comparatively chaste to France’s answer to Fifty Shades of Grey. The French film-maker Francois Ozon was already having a stellar year. Frantz, his film about Franco-German relations in the aftermath of the First World War, has had rave reviews around the world. […]

An ice cold San Miguel on a Spanish beach, or a glass of a Bordeaux in a Paris restaurant might seem like the ultimate in European drinks, but these ten classics are underrated examples of the continent’s cocktails, cordials and concentrates. Ireland’s most famous export, or ‘The Black Stuff’. – Credit: Archant 1. Guinness From […]

The government’s offer to EU citizens living here swaps freedom of movement for a different set of rights, protected under UK law. Far from being generous the offer is way off the mark For some years in my work I have argued that freedom of movement does not necessarily lead to settlement. There are many […]

From strong and stable to weak and feeble – a year of failure and fiasco in May’s Number 10 For long spells it looked as though she was a long-term fixture as Britain’s Prime Minister but now, after just 12 months, she is teetering on the political abyss. From her largely unchallenged anointment to the […]

Shortly after the outbreak of WW2, a polemic was published identifying the ‘guilty men’ who had led Britain to such a moment of weakness and peril. Now, following Brexit, a new version has been released. It’s a curious case of the dog that didn’t bark. Not only was it silent during the entire Brexit referendum […]

The A of austerity, plus the B of Brexit may be heading to the C of a crashing economy, but there is still time to change things. After the past weeks of horror, terror, turmoil, and hubris that has brought chaos – only the Greeks had adequate words for both – anyone who offers forecasts […]

The European Parliament’s top Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt has rubbished Theresa May’s offer on citizens’ rights. Verhofstadt said the offer was a ‘damp squib’ which would create ”second-class citizenship’. In a joint article with a cross-party group of senior MEPs, Verhofstadt said the Prime Minister was casting a ‘dark cloud’ over people’s status. The MEPs […]

A Brexiteer MP who used a racist term to describe quitting Europe with no deal has been suspended. https://twitter.com/mk1969/status/884474334370254849 While talking to a meeting about the financial sector post-Brexit, Anne Marie Morris said: ‘… then we get to the real n***** in the woodpile which is in two years what happens if there is no […]

As Spanish women score a significant success against excessive space-taking by men, we find out why manspreading was an issue they felt needed addressing. Photo: nevermindtheend – Credit: Archant ‘Manspreading’ is the neologism coined to label the practice of men sitting, usually on public transport, with their legs spread wide apart. Its etymology goes back […]

The marmalade-eating bear is a symbol of refugees and shows how we should treat them. A children’s story about a bumbling bear with a heart of gold is perhaps not the first place you would expect to glean insights into the trauma of the Second World War or the plight of the refugee. But Michael […]

Everyone is buying Europe just when Britain is selling La construction européenne est ‘fragilisée par la prolifération bureaucratique’ et ‘le scepticisme croissant qui en découle’. The European construction is ‘weakened by bureaucratic proliferation’ and ‘the growing scepticism that ensues’, Emmanuel Macron announced at his gathering of legislators at Versailles. Summoning what could only be described […]

Could Brexit encourage us to be a bit more European when it comes to the fish we eat? https://twitter.com/TheNewEuropean/status/884359244568555521 It was little over a year ago that Nigel Farage led his Alan Partridge-esque fishing flotilla up the Thames, horns a-hooting. It was a savvy marketing stunt: most fishermen are less than buoyed by EU quotas. […]

Get ready for price hikes, diminished quality and less choice in the shops post-Brexit. That is the stark warning former boss of supermarket giant Sainsbury’s believes will become a new reality for British shoppers once the country quits the European Union. Justin King said consumers are ‘completely in the dark’ over the effect leaving the […]

How an emboldened Parliament can halt the descent to Brexit chaos The descent into Brexit chaos accelerates on a daily basis. Turn away from a news outlet for more than an hour or two and there is some new twist. From close to the Brexit department David Davis’ former adviser reveals that his old boss […]

A key ally of Brexit secretary David Davis has allegedly called for the embattled prime minister to quit. Andrew Mitchell supposedly told a private dinner the PM was ‘dead in the water’ on the very day she struck a £1 billion deal with the DUP to prop up her failing premiership. The former chief whip […]

Amid a growing sense that Brexit is doomed Sir Vince Cable told the Andrew Marr Show: ‘The problems are so enormous, the divisions within the two major parties are enormous. The former Cabinet minister, who is the only candidate to replace Tim Farron as Lib Dem leader, said he believed FCorbyn’s popularity would dwindle as […]

The forces of history are with Remain. The only question is when we will win Now that the dust of the general election is settling, some of the outlines both of the Brexit issue and the state of the UK’s political order have become clearer. We are dealing with a moving three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle (if […]

Theresa May has further risked infuriating business leaders by shunning calls for Britain to remain in the customs union. The Confederation of British Industry has urged the Prime Minister to soften Brexit. In a speech this week CBI general secretary Carolyn Fairbairn called for Britain to remain a member of the single market and the […]

We explore the wonders of European languages with some of the continent’s quirkiest sayings 1. leben wie die Maden im Speck (German) to live like a maggot in bacon (ie, live the life of Riley) 2. van een kale kip kan je geen veren plukken (Dutch) you can’t pluck feathers from a bald hen (you […]

Hope: we all want to live by it, but lately hopefulness has been in short supply. The past year has been punishing for many, Brexiters and their opposite, with one bad thing after another in the 12 months following the referendum vote. You’d be forgiven for feeling our suit is hopeless. But now, there is […]

A victim of bad timing and Nazi disapproval meant the curiously-titled Schlump vanished into obscurity. But it has been recently re-evaluated and its anonymous author unmasked. Hans Herbert Grimm – Credit: Archant Alone In Berlin opened in British cinemas last week starring Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson as the working class couple Otto and Anna […]