Days before the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) finally emerged on Christmas Eve, the European Parliament had already expressed its concern at the process, and refused to be bounced into last minute ratification as the House of Commons was. Chair of the EPP Group Manfred Weber wrote this at […]
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, […]
“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 […]
“He doesn’t like not being liked,” said Katie Perrior of Boris Johnson in this 2016 of the then outgoing Mayor of London in this 2016 essay by Jeremy Cliffe. Those words have stuck with me since reading that essay back then, and today it is perhaps time to revisit those […]
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 […]
When Theresa May delivered her Florence Speech a fortnight ago, my first reaction was “Is that it?” The speech had to outline something on citizens rights, the financial settlement to leave the EU, and on the Northern Ireland border, yet – especially on the last of these – it offered […]
I don’t care what side of the EU referendum debate you were on. This isn’t about that. This is about how much the referendum matters to you or not. And – importantly – how it seems to not matter to the very people who ran it. The story of referendum […]