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
This week saw the publication of an update of one of the major studies of the impact of Brexit on UK trade, conducted by John Springford of the Centre for European Reform. It uses a method which compares the actual UK economy with the ‘doppelganger’ UK that didn’t leave the EU single market and customs … 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
In recent posts I’ve been using the analogy of a slow puncture for the damage caused by Brexit with the political consequences being muffled as a result. An excellent piece by Rafael Behr this week makes an essentially similar argument: “Brexit is an unspectacular failure” and this precludes “a realistic conversation about the relationship that … Read more
In my previous post I wrote about the effects of Brexit as being a slow puncture gradually degrading the economy and well-being more generally. I mentioned that one aspect of that is the structural, demography-related, problem of labour shortages across all sectors, but hadn’t at that point read an excellent Bloomberg report published a couple … Read more
At the corner of my road is a display board for local notices and, recently, the council have put one up about a project to support local businesses and community organizations to re-open as Covid restrictions ease. Prominently and, to my mind, poignantly displayed on the sign is an EU logo, for this project is … Read more
As pre-figured in my previous post, UK-EU relations are now entering a crunch period which started with Wednesday’s meeting of both the Partnership Council and the Joint Committee (the former overseeing the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the latter the Withdrawal Agreement). It took place at a time when, in the apt title of Tony Connelly … Read more
It has been a pretty standard week for directly Brexit-related news – I put it that way because in many ways almost everything the government does, from demanding that the BBC project ‘British values’, to badging the new rail system as ‘Great British Railways’, to giving British people the borders they ‘deserve’ can be seen … Read more
There are numerous obvious connections between Brexit and the Dominic Cummings lockdown affair that has dominated the last few days. For one thing, the very existence of the present government is down to Brexit, its composition is based on the central test of Brexit loyalty, and its advisers, from Cummings downwards, came from the old … Read more
Once again, there’s not a great deal to say. But, once again, for as long as there is no change to the Brexit timetable it is worth looking at what has been happening because, as things stand, we’re less than nine months away from the transition period ending with, potentially, no future terms deal in … Read more