There has been a palpable change in the last week. Brexit is suddenly being more widely talked about again, and not just talked about but questioned and criticised. Despite having scarcely been mentioned in last week’s ‘budget’ statement or Labour’s response, it was that budget which was the spark, although the tinder was already there … Read more
The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit. I discussed that silence in a Byline Times … Read more
A couple of weeks ago I wrote that, “the current political chaos and economic turmoil have served to crystallize what has actually been under way for a while. Having won the 2016 vote for Brexit, the Brexiters have comprehensively lost the battle for the post-Brexit narrative which began at the end of the transition period, … Read more
It’s becoming hard to write this blog without being repetitious and, in being repetitious, introducing a distasteful ‘I told you so’ tone. But distasteful as it may be, the deepening chaos of the fortnight since I last posted, which saw Kwasi Kwarteng sacked, the government’s economic policy abandoned, Suella Braverman resign, and culminated in the … Read more
We’re now six years on from the referendum, but I’m not going to do an ‘anniversary round-up post’ because I did that in April, to mark six years since the campaign got underway. That post was entitled ‘six years of failure’, and most of it still applies, although the saga of the Northern Ireland Protocol … Read more
It is now just over six years since the start of the official campaign for the 2016 referendum, years which have transformed and polarized British politics, economics and culture. What wasted years these have been. For whilst Brexit is mainly discussed, including by Brexiters, in terms of whether or not it has been as damaging … Read more
A few weeks ago, when it was revealed that the government does not keep records on delays and lorry queues at Dover, I remarked in passing that it was like babies playing peek-a-boo. Not realising that things exist even when they can’t see them, they get immense amusement from the sudden appearance of that which … Read more
It came with a whimper not a bang, but finally this week a government minister – Chancellor Rishi Sunak, no less – admitted at least some of the truth about Brexit. Speaking at a Select Committee hearing this week he, almost casually, said that “it was always inevitable there would be a change in our … Read more
Anniversaries matter, both in our personal lives and in the way that societies and nations define themselves. What we do and don’t celebrate or commemorate, and how, and what we feel about it are all part of collective identity and history. Brexit is replete with anniversaries – of the referendum in 2016, of the triggering … 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