Two weeks ago I posted about the ongoing schism between ‘Brexitists’ and ‘Traditionalists’ within British Conservatism. Then, last week, I wrote about the battle for the post-Brexit polity in terms of whether a scenario of ‘rapprochement’ with the EU will emerge, or one of a constant ‘repetition’ of antagonism towards the EU. Clearly these two … Read more
This week saw the third anniversary of the UK’s departure from the EU, and with it a flurry of assessments and opinion polls. These broadly reflect what I have been recording for some time. The mounting evidence of, especially, economic damage coinciding as it does with the centrality of ‘the economy’ as a political issue … Read more
Three years ago, when the Brexit process was in a limbo whilst the Tory Party held the leadership election that Boris Johnson eventually won, I wrote of a Brexit aporia, meaning a pathless path or a place you can’t go back or forward from. In brief, the idea was that Britain was suspended between an … Read more
Last weekend’s results of the Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) elections marked a significant moment both in the history of Northern Ireland and also in the Brexit process. That does not mean, as the front-page headline of last weekend’s Sunday Times had it – in line with many other reactions – that Sinn Fein’s victory “reignites … Read more
I don’t have time this week for my normal long post, but in any case last Friday’s largely continues to cover the current political situation, dominated as it is by Boris Johnson’s lawbreaking, lying, and refusal to resign over them. It is a scandal described by the eminent, and generally measured, political historian Professor Lord … Read more
The refusal of Boris Johnson to resign, despite being the first sitting Prime Minister ever to have broken the law and despite all the lies he has told about having done so, is shocking, but not surprising to even the tiniest degree. Nor is the spectacle of his ministers wheeling out embarrassingly feeble defences of … 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
Five years have now passed since the Referendum, so for once I’m not going to provide the usual analysis of the week’s developments (perhaps the most important being that it looks as if the EU will agree to extend the grace period for chilled meats going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland). Nor am I … Read more
Readers who subscribe by email may have noticed that in recent weeks I have been flagging up that the existing Feedburner email alert service is coming to an end in July. I’m pleased to say that I have now found a viable solution, and email alerts will from now on be sent by follow.it You … Read more