If there’s one area where Britain can benefit from better post-Brexit regulation, it’s pulling ourselves away from blanket bans on chemicals that are critical to making the modern world cleaner, cheaper and faster. PFAS, or Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of over 4,700 individual chemicals, each with specific purposes, that are fundamental to […]
At 6.30am on Monday morning, the Northern Ireland Protocol saga took a sinister new twist. In the predominantly unionist town of Newtownards, two masked and armed men hijacked a double-decker bus and set it alight, seemingly in protest against the Irish Sea border. The leaders of unionist political parties, including the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, […]
The pandemic did strange things to our sense of time. Days stretched out, months slipped by. So when a row with France over fishing rights ended up at the top of the news agenda again, I had to actually check that this story really has been playing out for almost a year. Back then, I […]
When we voted to leave the European Union, it was to escape the rule of Brussels. Freedom to decide our own laws for ourselves was as a key reason why so many people voted the way that they did in the 2016 referendum. Exiting the EU has given us a new mandate to take a fresh […]
So, it turns out that the original version of the Northern Irish Protocol wasn’t the best of both worlds after all. Nor was it the inevitable and necessary consequence of Brexit. Those of us who were paying attention throughout the negotiations with the European Union knew this already, of course. But there has been a […]
In the late 2000s, Tony Blair’s name was being touted as a potential president of the European Council. It never happened but I made a short film for Andrew Neil’s late-night BBC politics programme arguing that it would be a good thing if it did, and that the European cause and Britain’s own interests would […]
Just when you begin to think there is nothing new under the sun in British politics, along comes a conference fringe event to set you straight. So, thanks then to Chris Loder, the Conservative MP for West Dorset, who yesterday said that he hoped supermarket supply chains would ‘crumble’ and ‘break’ so ‘the farmer down the […]
Sir Keir Starmer had waited 17 months and 23 days to deliver his first conference speech as Labour leader – and some of those watching probably felt it took almost as long for him to finish making it. If the central aim of the near 90-minute speech was ‘to understand and persuade the voters who […]
Yesterday, Northern Ireland’s four explicitly unionist parties issued a ‘declaration’ affirming their opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol. This statement was timed to coincide with the anniversary of ‘Ulster Day’ in 1912. 109 years ago, on the 28th of September, almost half a million people in the province expressed their commitment to a ‘cherished position […]
The Government in Madrid still does not like the fact that it does not own Gibraltar. I can understand the sentiment. It took this country 350 years to sign a treaty accepting that France won the Hundred Years War. But Madrid’s political stance today is an obsession. Forget the hypocrisy of the Spanish exclaves in […]
As the temperatures in Ulster reached an unprecedented 30 degrees plus this week, the Government briefed that Lord Frost and the Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, were about to turn up the heat on the EU and its Northern Ireland Protocol. Journalists expected a “tough new line” from ministers and there was speculation that a […]
Much hullabaloo is being kicked up because Brussels is now estimating the Brexit divorce bill at £41 billion over whatever period in their latest accounts, a £2 billion (or was it £6 billion?) increase over the previous OBR estimate of £35-39 billion. The Centre for Brexit Policy made it clear last year that the wording […]
To anyone who has been trying to follow the thread of the Government’s policy on the Union, the current stand-off over the Northern Irish Protocol cannot help but be confusing. Boris Johnson is, after all, the man who cast aside his promises to resist a border in the Irish Sea in order to ‘get Brexit […]
How is it that Britain can embrace international bodies such as Nato and the World Trade Organization, but have such problems with another international body, the European Union? It may sound like an exam question, but the answer comes down to the difference between supranationalism (when an international body overrides national governments) and intergovernmentalism (international […]
The key to a successful policy choice is maximising opportunity and minimising disruption. From the beginning of my involvement in the UK’s decision to leave the EU, I’ve always said that Brexit should be judged by these two tests. The reason the UK could not remain in some version of the customs union and single […]
Today marks five years since the Brexit vote and how things have changed. There is consensus, even amongst the Brexiteers who had fought so hard for it. “80% achieved” was how one leading light in the campaign described things – praise indeed from one of the ‘Spartans’ who had helped bring down the May government. […]
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