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
I’ve noticed recently that I’ve started making cynical jokes on my Twitter account, which I set up to disseminate serious news about Brexit, as well as posts on this blog. They aren’t funny enough to be worth linking to (well maybe this one is), but I think my new-found levity reflects a certain grim despair … 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
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
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
For over a year now the Johnson government’s response to Covid and its handling of Brexit have not just occurred in parallel but have exhibited numerous parallels. This week’s ‘freedom day’ fiasco is the latest example, with its blind insistence on meeting an arbitrary pre-set date having echoes of, amongst other things, the mulish obstinacy … Read more
As predicted in recent posts, including last week’s, there is no sign that the government’s confrontational approach to the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) is going to change. Neither the Biden intervention nor the EU’s agreement to extend the chilled meats grace period, plus other recent flexibilities, is going to make any difference. What may just … Read more
In my previous post, I argued that I did not think that Joe Biden’s intervention, for all that it was reported to be diplomatically forceful, would make much difference to Boris Johnson’s conduct. In brief, my suggestion was that, by talking in terms of a pragmatic negotiated solution between the UK and the EU to … Read more