Now confirmed! *before* Monday 7 December at 1945, European Commission President von der Leyen tweeted out the statement that a meeting between her and Boris Johnson would take place “in the coming days”. It is now 22 hours on from that statement (and it is only 570 hours until the […]
Recent Posts
The No Deal Brexit Terminology
OK, I might be jumping the gun – there may yet be a Deal between Britain and the EU – but as a result of this discussion with Catherine De Vries, it’s important to grasp the nettle – what terminology do we use for what comes in Brexit after 1st […]
Notes on the timetable for a Deal, and how No Deal might play out
28 days to go to the end of the Brexit transition period. Things are getting edgy. The press is full of rumours of progress towards a Deal (or not). I’ve been trying to get my head around what is happening, and this post is a sort of rough sketch of […]
Scotch Eggs are GREAT – and other sarcastic tourist posters
UPDATE! New posters – to celebrate this! I have always found the GREAT Britain campaign – those posters you see at airports and railway stations – rather nauseating. It’s a bit like a product that calls itself ‘de luxe’ – it probably isn’t. To scream that you’re GREAT… well, maybe […]
Is Brexiters’ absolutist notion of sovereignty going to lead the UK to a No Deal Brexit? We will shortly find out
Nicholas Westcott wrote an interesting piece for LSE last week entitled “A peculiar definition of sovereignty is the root cause of a failed Brexit“. The whole piece is worth reading, but one part struck me as especially apt. Brexiters “definition of “sovereignty” has made failure inevitable,” Westcott writes. “It is […]
Why – if there is a Brexit Deal – Labour MPs should abstain
(The original version of this blog post assumed how ratification would proceed was known and clear – thanks to this excellent discussion with George Peretz QC, Nick von Westenholz and Brigid Fowler it seems that is not completely clear, and parts of this blog post have been adjusted accordingly. This […]
€21.95 to make your webinars a whole lot better
I had to move flat in the middle of the Coronavirus lockdowns in Berlin and one of my aims for my new workplace in the new flat was that it would all be set up as well as possible for webinars – as a massive part of my work life […]
Brexit negotiation delay – is it due to indecision, or is it by design?
As one of my sarcastic Twitter followers put it, are these Brexit negotiations sponsored by Microsoft Windows Autoupdate as they’ve been stuck on 95% for so long? Deadlines come and go. Even the supposedly firm one, EU side, at the European Council video call last Thursday, was not respected. As […]
Brexit: where there is no consequence for those supposedly in control
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” Donald Trump famously said. Unlike the United States, British politics and society generally shies away from arms. But a sense of deep denial, and politics without consequence, seems the same. “I could […]
1 man. 7 days. Deal or No Deal Brexit. And yes, that man is Johnson.
There is scarcely a twist or turn in the Brexit story over the past 18 months I have not charted in my Brexit diagrams. The rationale is the same now as it was when I started: to work out what is really important for the next steps of Brexit, and […]
The Internal Market Bill and Brexiters still unable to face the Brexit Trilemma
On 8 September Brandon Lewis uttered the now famous words: that the UK Government’s Internal Market Bill would “break international law in a very specific and limited way”. That set in train a series of events that even now, two months later, have framed the discussion about that Bill as […]
Tegel Airport – good riddance
It’s finally happening. Almost 8 years late, Berlin Brandenburg Airport is at last opening this coming Saturday (31 October), and that means Tegel Airport will finally close by 8 November. That has prompted another round of outpourings of emotion about the old Tegel. So einen Flughafen wie Berlin-Tegel wird es nie […]