Some things are inevitable and predictable. The sun rises. The sun sets. England falter at the World cup. Shops put out Christmas decorations in October. The Spanish Government puts a spoke in the wheels of Brexit over Gibraltar. Under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, no one country has veto rights over the departure terms […]
Why are so many Eurosceptics (both openly and – if in Government – in pectore) so downbeat about the Chequers plan? To understand that we need to follow the advice of a certain singing nun and start at the very beginning – not of the clauses, but from the drafting process. As with the court […]
This week, French and British fishermen clashed over scallops. By “clashed”, I mean French boats reportedly rammed, and threw rocks, smoke grenades and lumps of iron at their British counterparts. This was not a bit of student level placard waving and fist shaking, but serious and dangerous – and illegal – aggression. It is not […]
This week the Government is finally beginning to release over 80 technical documents, setting out contingency measures if negotiations with the EU based on the Chequers draft break down. This is extraordinarily prudent. The consistent track record of the European Commission has been to grossly misjudge the public mood, and it is correspondingly highly likely […]
Brexit issues appear to be tidal. Proposals that have previously disappeared re-emerge from the mist like policy Brigadoons. On the same day that Professor Yarrow’s thoughtful piece on the Norway option appeared on CapX, the Financial Times reports that Michael Gove, a Leave-supporting Cabinet Minister, also recently mooted the EEA as a respectable way forward. […]
When the fisheries-rich countries of the North Atlantic applied to join the EEC in the early 1970s, it was an opportunity for ministers in Brussels that was too good to miss. To the nervous embarrassment of the Dutch, a last minute deal was pushed through that bolted the resources of national fishing grounds onto the […]
Delaying the triggering of Article 50 was meant to buy the government time. It would give Theresa May and her colleagues the chance to have a good look at the range of options that their European counterparts, including those occupying the increasingly hubristic top shelves of the Commission, were prepared to countenance. And so, it seemed fair […]
You’d be forgiven for thinking, as we saunter towards the Chancellor’s Budget, that the UK economy is a hub of economic prudence: Treasury minions sing of gold, and you’d imagine the spectre of debt had been banished. The truth is, the Treasury’s coffers are in a terrible state. And the Austerity Programme, which was supposed […]
Intelligence has been in short supply in Westminster of late. Much ado has been made about the celebrated Henry VIII powers – the use of secondary legislation to amend the text of primary legislation. But this Tudor Brexit route isn’t a new one. Lord Pearson’s proposed bill from 1997 alread recognised the practical need for a […]
Parliament is in recess, everyone is on holiday and there’s a shortage of news stories. Idle hands make the Devil’s headlines. So we should not be too surprised to find some of the vacuum being filled with even more hyperbolic hyperventilation over Brexit than usual. If you are fed on a diet of Remain-supporting columns […]
The core problem with Brexit – or rather the public debate around it – is a mirror of the problem generated for the nation state by the fundamentals of the EU itself. It is not the breadth of the topic. It is not the depth of the issues. It is a combination of both. EU […]
During the election, Conservative candidates looking for votes in the UK’s fishing communities were asked to explain what they thought Brexit would mean to their industry. The party’s fisheries policy had been somewhat ambivalent in the past. The important questions were whether, after leaving the EU, the UK would still sign up to a modified set of arrangements […]
In the bad old days, it was very easy to spot the most interesting documents published by the European Commission. They tended to be in French. Not just any old French, but technical French – like the 130-pager setting out the details of ERM II, which John Major’s government was quietly considering pursuing. They would […]
Notwithstanding certain desperate rearguard actions, Brexit is now inevitable. But what many people miss is that there were at least two opportunities to change that. In a recent article, former Conservative Europe spokesman Mark Francois explored some of the background to the Lisbon Treaty, and how its handling in Parliament started us down the road […]
