One of the consequences of leaving it so late – 24 December 2020 – to agree The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was that ratification could not be completed before the Agreement entered into force on 1 January 2021. The European Parliament stated it would not have the time […]
Slam dunk. Lambast Michael Gove with a hasty tweet hammered out while drinking my morning coffee. Push the emotional buttons of both Remain people and Scottish pro-Indy people in one go. *So* much to unpick in a 10 word tweet! 1️⃣ So Michael, you now agree there is a hefty […]
A question has been on my mind for some time: when is the UK Government going to really begin to do the hard implementation work that is inevitable as a consequence of having signed the Northern Ireland Protocol and the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA)? The answer, I think, […]
Ah. Here we ago again. “Leak reveals Labour plan to focus on flag and patriotism to win back voters“. And the reactions are pretty predictable too – Clive Lewis MP expresses caution, Ian Dunt tries to separate patriotism from nationalism, Sunder Katwala puts up pictures of Labour leaders with union […]
My father was a geography teacher, my mother also a geography graduate, and I grew up with a map in my hand. Years ago I discovered a little game called Geoguessr that used Google Maps and Google Street View and turned them into a game – you used whatever you […]
⚠️ WARNING! Political communication is my area of expertise, NOT public health. This blog post is no recommendation as to what ought to happen from a health perspective! ⚠️ 🚨 This piece was written on 25.1.2021, i.e. before the decision for a Conditional Marketing Authorisation has been approved or not […]
So there it is, in black and white. Вперед, к Cуверенитету comrades! Onwards, to sovereignty! Today’s FT long read (€) on how the Brexit Deal was struck and what happens next is a remarkable piece of work, drawing together a series of disparate parts of the past 12 months of the […]
Early Saturday morning, 16th January 2021. Across Germany 1001 people look into their bathroom mirrors, wipe their eyes. And Armin Laschet stares back. And then, suitably refreshed, they each settle down in front of their laptops, and vote for Laschet as the new party leader of the CDU. Or, to […]
“When future historians try to understand how Britain ended up with a choice between chaos and becoming a satellite of the European Union, one question will stump them,” wrote Fintan O’Toole in this Irish Times column in November 2018. “Were these people telling deliberate lies or were they merely staggeringly […]
Anyone’s encountered one of my Brexit diagrams knows the score: I find the process of mapping out complicated political decisions as flow diagrams useful, in that it helps us better understand those processes. And Germany just now is confronted with a very complicated party political conundrum: who is going to […]
It has been a good week for the SNP. On two major issues – due to their own clarity of thought and the errors of others – they have banked clear political wins. On both issues the Labour Party by contrast looks contorted and confused. First the UK-EU Deal. Here […]
On page 218 and 219 of the UK-EU Trade Deal (full PDF here) is the following paragraph (emphasis is mine): In order to ensure an appropriate balance between the commitments made by the Parties in this Agreement on a more durable basis, either Party may request, no sooner than four […]
