Brexit has broken the EU’s equilibrium. Britain was seen as a vital counterweight to the calls for greater European integration by socially conservative countries like Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. With that individualist voice gone, the so-called ‘Visegrád Four’ have recognised the need to assert themselves – western Europe should be worried. As […]
“So then,” Brexiteers are being asked. “Now that you’ve got back your precious sovereignty what are you actually going to DO. Which particular regulations that we have inherited from the EU do you want to get rid of?” As Wormtongue says in Lord of the Rings, “A just question, my liege.” Yet some of the […]
There’s an omerta in Britain. Despite five UK number one albums, shifting over 100 million records worldwide and continuing to sell out huge arena tours globally: our cultural elites never talk about Iron Maiden. This is not a new phenomenon. In 1990, Maiden’s single “Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter” topped the UK charts, despite […]
The deal is done. And in his remarks at the press conference announcing it on Christmas Eve, the Prime Minister hit on one of its most important features – the opportunity for regulatory competition. Much of the debate on Britain’s future relationship with the EU has centred on concepts of sovereignty and independence. This very […]
Finally they got it. In the end the EU team realised that Brexit wasn’t a dumb, dry economic calculation by deluded Brits, but was about the desire to become an ‘independent coastal state’, with all the risks and opportunities that entails. Ursula von der Leyen however, having belatedly identified the stick, firmly grasped the wrong […]
It’s rare for something to be both comical and deeply tedious, but how else to describe the Scottish National Party’s contortions as it tries to justify voting against the Brexit deal after spending years alleging that a no-deal outcome was the worst possible? Whilst we must be careful not to over-egg the speed at which […]
I should probably begin this column with a confession. Which is that other than the relief which comes with finally avoiding the needless self-harm of the no deal option, I care little for the finer points of the Prime Minister’s newly minted Brexit trade agreement. There are of course legions of trade experts on social […]
“We rely on imports too much,” tweeted Jeremy Corbyn yesterday. “Let’s grow and make more at home.” I’m making it up, of course. These were the words not of Mr Corbyn but of Sir John Redwood, twice a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Yet they do bear a resemblance to the views […]
January The first real Westminster story of 2020 was Dominic Cummings’ appeal for “weirdos and misfits” to come work for him in Number 10, published on his blog, because where else would he publish something like this? I have to say I’d forgotten how wonderfully insane it was, and feel the need to remind you […]
The pantomime around the negotiations with the European Union has got slightly farcical. One paper reports that Conservative MPs are being primed for a deal, only for another to print a hasty warning that the two sides are still miles apart. Jacob Rees-Mogg explains that Parliament could theoretically ratify any agreement in days, if not […]
After four years of grand statements, red lines, ticking clocks, and all the rest of it, it is extremely easy to be cynical about the theatre of the European negotiations. Michael Gove’s arriving in Parliament, brandishing a shiny-looking but suspect deal on the vexed question of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, might have […]
Europe and the UK was always an ill-matched love affair. How happy we all were in the early days when croissants and moules-et-frites were new and exciting. But eventually, the passion waned as we came to understand what an imperfect relationship it was. Like many, I perceived it was time to move on. Late in the day I […]
Last week, Business Secretary Alok Sharma launched a couple of notable three-month consultations on workers’ rights. Does the law need to be changed so that employers can no longer insert terms into employment contracts preventing their lower-paid employees from moonlighting during their time off? And should something be done about the rather opaque law on how far […]
No Labour leader can easily escape his record. This is true of all the holders of that office. Even Tony Blair had to contend with observations (that did him no political harm, ultimately) that he had campaigned, as a Labour candidate in 1983, for a manifesto committing a Labour government to withdrawing from the EEC […]
At the weekend former PM Gordon Brown claimed that a ‘no deal’ Brexit would leave Boris Johnson isolated “with no friends around the world”. This is a familiar theme. In 2019, for example, Brown warned that the UK was ‘“sleepwalking into oblivion”, and that a nation once admired for its tolerance and pragmatism now presented […]
Even the most diehard eurosceptic accepts that leaving the EU is a risk. But a willingness to adapt to change is perhaps one of the most enduring qualities we have in this country. In the farming sector, it was difficult to see how meaningful change to the Common Agricultural Policy could ever be achieved. We, […]
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