Back in December I wrote that trying to break UK party politics was not the way out of Britain’s Brexit conundrum. The events of this past 7 days underline this even more. Back in December, 117 Tory MPs voted to No Confidence May as Tory leader. 118 voted against her […]
Cowed and weakened after the events of the past few months, Theresa May will nevertheless stagger into the New Year as Prime Minister of the UK. And what she does between now and 17th (or possibly 21st) January will shape the path of Brexit – whether we like it or […]
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn might be atypical leaders of their respective parties, but in one way they are as traditional as they come: the extent to which they are partisan. Tribal. Defenders of their own parties above pretty much anything else. May emphasised her commitment to the party when […]
I am not sure this answer to a troll by Jean-Claude Piris this morning will change the guy’s mind. But “I have written a good part [of it]” when it comes to understanding the Treaty of Lisbon is a tremendous put down. That’s not all though. I am followed by […]
Even by the standards of the two and a half turbulent years since the Brexit referendum, the last 7 days have been quite something. Four major events shaped the week, and will shape what happens to Brexit now and – I think – perhaps not in the ways that many […]
So we have a Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration. A Brexit “Deal”. And at the time of writing it looks pretty unlikely that such a deal will manage to get through the “Meaningful Vote” in the House of Commons (more on that here), a second referendum (so-called “People’s Vote”) on […]
Theresa May stumbles on. Disliked by all in equal measure, she nevertheless has managed to survive through an awful election result in 2017, to get a Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration signed off in Brussels and, most recently, has seen off a poorly organised putsch by the ERG group […]
Sometime in 2000 or 2001 when I was still an undergraduate, Bogdanor and Butler had invited Jack Straw to one of their workshops about British politics at Brasenose College. Whether Labour might eventually get around to reforming the UK’s election system was all the rage back then, and Straw was […]
This was my speech at the Grüne Bundesdelegiertenkongress yesterday in Leipzig. It was enough to get me more than 200 votes for position 14 on the list, and 299 votes for position 20. But not enough to get an electable position. Why? The structures of power in the party won […]
There was a fascinating piece in the FT yesterday by Alex Barker and Arthur Beesley entitled “How the Irish border backstop became Brexit’s defining issue“. “The backstop: How a ‘meaningless’ clause now risks derailing Brexit” by Edward Malnick in The Telegraph deserves a read too. But fascinating though those pieces […]
As explained in this blog post, I am seeking a place on the German Grüne European Parliament election list. The decision as to who makes it onto the list will be taken at a party conference on 10th November in Leipzig. This is my first campaign video, examining whether Germany […]
Brexit negotiations are heading towards their hardest phase. With less than 6 months to go, with no solution to the Irish Border problem in sight, and with Theresa May in a precarious position within her own party, the chances of actually getting a Withdrawal Agreement that is acceptable to both […]
