Europe Archives | Page 2 of 5 | MelaniePhillips.com

Jo Johnson’s Brexit muddle

November 9, 2018November 9, 2018 Melaniebrexit, eu, Jo Johnson, Theresa May

Currently in Los Angeles, which is coping with an enormous forest fire and the aftermath of a crazed gunman shooting dead 13 people at a suburban bar, I woke up today to the news that the transport minister and Remain supporter Jo Johnson had resigned from the government over the Brexit negotiation. In this account of why he resigned, he says one thing on which Remainers and Brexiteers will doubtless agree. This is the appalling way Theresa May has conducted the negotiation, bringing Parliament to the brink of a choice…

Britain Europe

All that matters now to save the UK: Theresa May has to go

October 21, 2018October 21, 2018 Melaniebrexit, eu, No Deal, Theresa May

According to the Sunday Times, Theresa May has 72 hours to save her premiership before a crucial back-bench 1922 Committee meeting on Wednesday. In my view, that should read 72 hours to save the country. Let’s cut to the chase. Forget the Irish backstop, transition extensions, the role of her chief Brexit official Oliver Robbins and all the other interminable details and lurches involved in this process. If the UK is actually to leave the EU, May has to go. If she stays as Prime Minister, it won’t. It is…

Britain Europe

The leverage for Britain in the art of the No Deal

September 16, 2018September 17, 2018 MelanieBarnier, brexit, Chequers, No Deal

According to a report in the Mail on Sunday, a “gang of four” has emerged inside the British Cabinet to get Brexit through without breaking the government and Conservative party apart. The quartet, said to comprise two Brexiteers, Michael Gove and Dominic Raab, and two Remainers, Sajid Javid and Matt Hancock, have reportedly formed a “pragmatic” alliance to “get Brexit over the line”. Apparently, these four ministers will seek to hose down both ultra-Remainers and ultra-Brexiteers who are all likely to object to the final terms of the deal. What…

Britain Europe

The memorandum by Martin Howe QC on the Chequers position

July 8, 2018July 8, 2018 Melaniebrexit, Chequers, Gove, Howe

The erstwhile leading Brexiteer, the Environment Secretary Michael Gove, was on TV today defending the UK government’s Brexit negotiating position reached at Chequers on Friday evening. You can read here my opinion that this represents a betrayal of the Brexit vote. Gove maintained that, although the government’s position wasn’t perfect, it upheld the spirit of Brexit. Specifically he claimed that “the draft deal would mean Britain was outside of the European Court…” and that “the common rule book would mean unified rules for 20 per cent of the British economy…

Europe Israel

A strange and unfamiliar sound

June 1, 2018June 1, 2018 Melanieeu, Iran, Israel, US

A strange, startling and deeply unfamiliar sound was heard this week. A Trump tweet imploding, perhaps? Kim Jong-Un finally destroying his nuclear arsenal? A distant rumble from the Hawaii volcano? No. It was the sound of the European Union and United Nations loudly supporting Israel against attack. In the heaviest onslaught since 2014, southern Israel was attacked from Gaza this week by Islamic Jihad and Hamas launching dozens of rocket and mortar attacks, as well as bursts of machine-gun fire. An Israeli kindergarten was hit, although no one was hurt.…

Britain Europe

In Britain and Europe, antisemitism’s ugly history repeats itself

April 20, 2018April 20, 2018 Melanie

Violent Islamist attacks on Jews in mainland Europe are causing acute concern. But fanatical religious belief which creates the impulse to murder Jews in the service of God, however appalling and terrifying, is not hard to grasp. What is even more unsettling is that people from the European mainstream, who have gone to great lengths to show they have learned the lessons of the Holocaust, or who display affection for the State of Israel, or who are obsessed with anti-racism and human rights – that such people are now coming…

Europe

The toxic reality of antisemitism in Europe

April 13, 2018April 17, 2018 Melanieantisemitism, Europe, holocaust

Antisemitism in Europe has become mainstream and normalized at a level “not seen since the Second World War.” So says the president of the European Jewish Congress, Dr. Moshe Kantor, who states: “There has been an increase in open, unashamed and explicit hatred directed against Jews.” It’s as if a veil lowered after the Holocaust has now been lifted to reveal that little has changed. Poland is seeking to deny its own history of antisemitism, with a new law criminalizing anyone who accuses Poland of having been complicit in the…

Europe

The ethnic cleansing of the Jews of France

February 18, 2018February 18, 2018 Melanie

I don’t normally post other people’s articles here, but this one by Guy Milliere for Gatestone paints such a horrific picture of Jew-hatred in France that I am reproducing substantial extracts below. Friday, January 12, 2018. Sarcelles. A city in the northern suburbs of Paris. A 15-year-old girl returns from high school. She wears a necklace with a star of David and a Jewish school uniform. A man attacks her with a knife, slashes her face, and runs away. She will be disfigured the rest of her life. January 29, again…

Europe

Poland unleashes its own inner demons

February 15, 2018February 20, 2018 Melanie

If Poland wants to demonstrate it really did have nothing to do with the Holocaust, it’s going a mighty strange way about it. A new law passed by the Polish parliament criminalizing any suggestion that Poland was involved in the Holocaust has produced a crisis in Polish-Jewish relations described as the most serious since the fall of communism in 1989. Poland is well known for its sensitivity to the false description of Nazi concentration camps on its soil as being “Polish camps.” But the new law goes much further. It…

Europe

The Poles use Holocaust denial to wash filthy hands

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018 Melanie

How did Poland choose to mark the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day and the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz? Its lower house of parliament voted to criminalise the truth about Poland’s complicity with the Holocaust. Poland has long objected to the term “Polish death camps” to describe Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps situated in Poland. It is true that these camps were built and operated by Nazis, not Poles. It is also true that thousands of Poles regarded as dissidents were incarcerated and murdered in these camps. Nevertheless,…