In terms of the big picture of Brexit, nothing has really changed since the post I wrote just before Christmas. The gist of it was that until political leaders face the truth about Brexit nothing will be done to address its failings, which also carries the danger of a revival for Farage or a similar … Read more
It is difficult to make sense of what Johnson’s Brexit government is doing, or trying to do, as regards the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP). I discussed the background in last week’s post, much of which remains relevant, but since then there have been daily, almost hourly, contradictory signals and reports. What has been confirmed is … 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
In today’s Daily Mail one of the most longstanding and hard line Brexiters, the former Tory Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, yet again put forward a series of arguments against the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP). It was no doubt timed to coincide with today’s ‘stocktaking meeting’ of the Joint Committee overseeing the NIP and … 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
The Brexit process has been going on for so long now that its recurrent phases have taken on the predictability of seasons. Currently, we’re in one of the ‘will there, won’t there be a deal?’ periods, marked as always by windy rhetoric from the UK and strained patience from the EU. Also not for the … 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
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
It’s impossible to escape the fact that Britain is now caught in an escalating crisis. It has multiple moving parts which interact in complex ways, but each of them is to a greater or lesser extent linked to Brexit. Daily, the dishonest promises made for Brexit and the reckless irresponsibility with which it was implemented … Read more
There’s something like an emerging consensus that the Afghanistan crisis has also created a crisis for Britain’s post-Brexit geo-political strategy and, in particular, shows both the emptiness of the ‘Global Britain’ slogan and the urgent need to increase co-operation with the EU. It’s a message that can be found in recent articles by former National … Read more