Cultures clash as fracking comes to the stockbroker belt
You could call it a culture clash – or possibly a PR car crash. This week an American oilman came to town, or rather to a pretty Sussex village, and ran straight into the formidable combination of...
View ArticleThe assisted suicide debate needs grown-up arguments, not Rowan Williams's...
In 1997, the state of Oregon voted to pass the Death With Dignity Act, allowing the terminally ill to end their lives at a time of their choosing, using prescriptions fom their physicians of lethal...
View ArticleBritain is a rare nuclear bright spot as public opinion shrugs off the...
This week the world’s longest-running nuclear power station ran out of steam. At 11am on Wednesday, the appropriately named Oldbury in Gloucestershire – once a location for a Doctor Who storyline – was...
View ArticleDo we really want to live in 'Britzerland'?
As the UK sinks back into recession – a misfortune that happened in spite of Gordon Brown’s decision to reject the euro in favour of his own single currency – voices are sometimes heard urging not...
View ArticleWhat a cost-benefit analysis of EU membership might reveal
You can see why LibDems don't want a full audit of the impact of EU rules on Britain. To be fair, they're not alone; the entire political establishment had, until yesterday, displayed the same...
View ArticleWhy is David Cameron using Barroso’s talking points on the EU?
In today’s interview with The Telegraph’s Robert Winnett, David Cameron rules out campaigning for British withdrawal from the European Union if a referendum is held, arguing that an exit would hurt...
View ArticleThe EU is not a free trade area but a customs union: until we understand the...
Here’s your starter for ten: what’s the difference between a free trade area and a customs union? It might sound like a technical question, but it goes to the heart of our relationship with the EU....
View ArticleDoha climate talks; a Gulf between need and action
Talks on averting catastrophic climate change are opening again in Doha, Qatar, as emissions climb and global warming increases. In this week's Daily Telegraph column I assess the chances that they...
View ArticleJacques Delors and the Union of European Federalists have finally said...
First Jacques Delors called for Britain to be given a 'privileged partnership' with the EU: participation in the single market, but not the common political structures. Now the Union of European...
View ArticleHow to satisfy (almost) all sides on Europe
The best possible preparation for another year in the European Parliament is to spend a few days in Switzerland. The sunrise gilding the Alps gladdens the soul, and the cold mountain air – air that...
View ArticleThe Europhile CBI continues to be wrong about almost everything
The CBI, in its various incarnations, has managed to get virtually every big call wrong. In the 1920s, it wanted to go back to gold at the pre-war rate. In the 1930s, it was for appeasement. In the...
View ArticleIt's precisely because we want free trade that we should leave the EU
To understand why we'd be better off outside the EU, here are three facts. Fact One: trade talks between India and the EU have stalled, and no one expects a deal in the forseeable future. Fact Two:...
View ArticleThe business debate on the EU has flipped around: most firms now want to be...
The EU, as Euro-enthusiasts keep telling anyone who'll listen, accounts for half our trade. Actually, it's slightly less than half, and falling by the hour, but let's not cavil about the details:...
View ArticleWhat would life be like outside the EU?
David Campbell Bannerman, formerly an MEP for UKIP, now for the Conservatives, considers our options in the film above. He suggests that Britain aim for what he calls "EEA Lite": something between...
View ArticleSyria peace talks: when people are heckling one another, you know the peace...
Throughout history, peace conferences have always fallen into two categories. Sometimes they happen because the belligerents have reached the point of exhaustion and genuinely want to settle their...
View ArticleThe EU can't afford to punish Switzerland
"I will do such things—what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth!" The EU, like the unfortunate Lear, is issuing furious but unspecific threats. One after another, MEPs...
View ArticleIf you want to win the Brexit referendum, shut up about tyranny and talk...
It is abundantly clear that the UK can have a positive economic future either inside or outside the EU. Canada, a smaller economy than the UK, prospers alongside its much larger neighbour, the United...
View ArticleThe Swiss listened to Churchill. Why didn't we?
On 19 September 1946, Winston Churchill told an audience in Zurich something that, he promised, would "astonish" them. France and Germany, he declared, must come together to form the core of "the...
View ArticleWe should pay MPs less for doing less
We don’t like MPs. They are, we assure one another, a bunch of unemployable layabouts, guzzling at the teat of public funds. Read the letters pages, listen to the phone-ins, follow the comment threads:...
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