Back a decade ago when I was building websites for politicians as a job, one of my clients wrote the following: I was born in a council house in Kendray, a district of Barnsley, on the 9th April 1955. Apart from my time at university I have always lived in […]
42 days to go to Brexit. Just over 1000 hours. And we still do not know what is going to happen in the Brexit saga. Yet as the clock ticks, some things become clearer. My Brexit diagrams have fewer branches. There are fewer possible outcomes. An early general election (or […]
It has been a while since I last wrote about teaching about the EU through simulation games. Now, in light of further experience, it is high time to return to this topic. I’ve now run 4 negotiation simulations at the College of Europe in Bruges (together with my colleagues Pierpaolo […]
I gave a speech this week to PES members of the Committee of the Regions about digital communication in the run up to the European Parliament elections. The Q&A with the members was especially interesting, and one question – from a mayor from Greece – prompted me to write this […]
The House of Commons adopted two Amendments to its Brexit motion on Tuesday this week – the Brady Amendment to replace the Northern Ireland Backstop with “alternative arrangements”, and the Spelman/Dromey Amendment against a No Deal Brexit but lacking a mechanism to achieve that. The Cooper/Boles Amendment that would have […]
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 […]
Looking for new diagrams? There is a whole new series from May 2019 onwards here! Diagrams as featured by The New York Times! I have tried to make sense of Brexit through a series of flow diagrams that have evolved as Brexit decisions have been taken. This blog post gathers […]
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 […]
In a fortnight the House of Commons will almost certainly reject Theresa May’s Brexit deal when the so-called “Meaningful Vote” happens. After that the path ahead is unclear, but one of the ways forward would be for a second Brexit referendum – a People’s Vote – to take place. If […]
You are all joking, right? What would diverging just for the sake of it mean? How do you draft such a law? “We have to diverge”. “How?” “Don’t know. But we have to.” “In what respect?” “Don’t know. Make something up.” You are easily comforted if not having this dialogue suffices. https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1220404366231986183
NEW
CBI chief Fairbairn welcomes Chancellor “clarification” UK wouldn’t diverge “for sake of it”.
“Good to have clarification in terms of divergence from EU, that will be when its in economic interests of the country, not an obligation, a right we can use if we need to use it”
This is some thread. Read to the end.
About 20 years ago I moved to Germany for a little while. I'd been there twice before, both on school trips. But this time I moved to work, in Frankfurt. I spoke the tiniest bit of German, so I tried to learn a little bit more from some tapes made by a man called 'Michel Thomas'.
