There’s a palpable sense that Boris Johnson’s reputation has reached an inflexion point. For years it seemed as if however dishonest and incompetent he was he could do nothing wrong in the eyes of his supporters. Suddenly, he can do nothing right. We know that he has reached such a point because almost every newspaper … Read more
Brexit is in limbo, with talks on the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) continuing. The situation is febrile, with Boris Johnson repeating the UK’s threat to invoke Article 16 and Maros Sefcovic re-iterating that doing so would have “serious consequences”. Today’s meeting between Sefcovic and David Frost is important as according to Irish Foreign Minister Simon … Read more
The ongoing Brexit process is in one of its periodic ‘quiet before the storm’ moments, with the storm threatening at times to be a hurricane and at others just some lingering drizzle. Over the last couple of weeks it was generally being assumed that the UK would ‘trigger Article 16’ of the Northern Ireland Protocol … Read more
It’s probably fair to say that Owen Paterson was not a household name until the events that led to his resignation last week. However, he played a significant role in the Brexit saga, albeit of a particular sort. During the 2016 Referendum he had neither the high campaigning profile of, say, Boris Johnson or Michael … Read more
It’s been a horrible week for Brexit news, and a depressing one for any hope that UK-EU relations will settle into harmony or, at least, pragmatic cooperation. Careful readers of this blog will have been primed for the resumption of the Jersey fishing rights row this autumn, and almost everyone expected a crisis over the … Read more
Over the last few years, one of the most acute commentators on Brexit has been Jonathan Lis, and in a recent article he concludes that the three fundamental consequences of Brexit are that “if you erect trade barriers, trade will be harder. If you gut the workforce, there will be fewer people to do necessary … Read more
When I was at school – it must have been about the time that Jim Callaghan was (not) saying “Crisis? What crisis?” – I once received a damning report on my term’s work. “He seems to have lost his way”, it read, before adding witheringly “and what is worse he does not appear to care”. … Read more
As has been expected for some months, the autumn crisis over the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) began in earnest this week. Its outcome is difficult to predict, but has the potential be pivotal for UK-EU post-Brexit relations. There is some time to run before we get to that point, though. Indeed it is perfectly possible … Read more
For years many Brexiters – and some remainers for that matter – have been saying that the vote to leave was little or nothing to do with economics, but all to do with a desire for sovereignty and ‘liberation’. I’ve consistently argued that this was a myth, and that the Vote Leave campaign was to … Read more
As the Brexit-related national crisis discussed in my previous post continues, including ongoing petrol shortages at garages, Brexiters are undecided as to what to make of it. Their boilerplate argument is that the crisis is nothing to do with Brexit, but something affecting countries around the globe including EU members, although this flies in the … Read more