HM Embassy in Warsaw: The Embassy EU/Economic team maintains a regular dialogue with Polish Ministries and civil society on EU budgetary issues, to secure the best outcome for the EU. An effective EU must be equipped with a budget that enables it to respond to globalisation – and for this […]
Update: welcome Iain Dale readers. Loftily principled Edward McMillan-Scott (MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber) weighs in on the Kaminski saga: On July 14, in Strasbourg, I stood and won against a Polish MEP, Michal Kaminski, for the post of Vice-President of the European Parliament, because he symbolised the rise […]
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has made an extraordinary intervention in the controversy about the Conservatives and Michal Kaminski: "The British public rightly judge politicians by their actions. So far, they haven’t had much to go on with David Cameron. But this reversion to the right-wing extremes of his own party […]
Timothy Garton Ash (whom I know and respect of old) bangs on again about the UK Conservative Party’s engagement in the newly formed European Conservatives and Reformists formation within the European Parliament: The farce of David Cameron’s Latvian legion becomes more ridiculous by the day. Last month, I deplored the […]
Chris Bryant, the new Foreign Office minister, who is gay, has started writing personal letters of congratulations to British diplomats who show public support for gay rights. He is praising them for such support even if it draws anger from national governments or local homophobic groups… In a letter to […]
Have we just had a vast new shift in the way the European Union is to be run, with we dopey Wimbledon- and Michael Jackson-obsessed Brits utterly missing the story? Germany’s top Constitutional Court has taken a view on the Lisbon Treaty and come up with some far-reaching conclusions. Which […]
What’s happening in the world? In my part of the UK, nothing much. It’s too hot. But in a more general sense we are seeing something Important. The end of an Idea. Namely that government can grow indefinitely without consequences. California has been trying to achieve this for years and […]
A reader writes re my posting on Locally Employed Embassy Staff: Yes, but you are rather glossing over the fact that a brutal regime can be far more brutal to its own nationals than it can to foreign diplomats. Indeed protection from brutality is the origin of the convention of […]
The BBC website picks up the musty tone of David Miliband’s recent speech on Europe in a headline which strongly suggests a direct quote from something or someone: Iran ‘must free UK Embassy staff’ The ensuing piece about an EU Foreign Ministers statement on the arrest by Iranian police of […]
