NOTE: this is a piece commissioned by the Norwegian online magazine Vox Publica, and was translated into Norwegian for that purpose. The Norwegian version can be found here: Skottland: Hvorfor uavhengighet etter 300 år? The English original is here with permission from Vox Pubica, but – unlike other posts on […]
Tag: Referendums
Volksentscheid Tempelhofer Feld – what’s happening?
A concise summary of what is happening with the Volksentscheid Tempelhofer Feld (Tempelhof Field Referendum) was hard to find in English. So this is my effort to write one, to help explain this rather complicated issue. At the end I’ll give my personal view. What’s happening? On 25th May 2014 a Volksentscheid […]
Pro-EU organisation building in the UK
“I don’t want anything to do with the European Movement. They are federalists!” Those were the words a British friend of a friend in Brussels said to me this week as we were discussing what sort of organisations would be needed in the UK to make sure any eventual in-out […]
Denmark’s possible EU Patent Court referendum – an opportunity?
[Please note: this is not a piece about referendums in general, and nor does it call into question my overall position as a referendum-sceptic. It relates to a very specific Danish case.] The Danish Ministry of Justice, in the final page of this note (in Danish, PDF), has once more thrust […]
Enlightenment pro-EU, versus values based pro-EU – some thoughts about Garton Ash and an in-out referendum
So Timothy Garton Ash has nailed his colours to the mast in The Guardian, and stated the case for an in-or-out of the EU referendum in the UK to be held sometime between 2015 and 2020. Loads of people are jumping up and down about TGA’s piece – everyone from […]
Time, and Scotland and the EU
Oh here we go again. It seems the question of how an independent Scotland could work in the EU will never go away. Rather than focusing on the EU’s Nobel Prize, BBC’s Hard Talk asked Barroso about Scotland and the EU in an interview today and, as before, Barroso reiterated […]
If you’re British and care about UK-EU relations, then you’re either in a state of permanent delusion or permanent depression
Two grandees of UK politics were at it again today. Peter Mandelson, while at least acknowledging an in-out referendum for the UK, was nevertheless pompous and deluded in the FT: “pro-Europeans […] should acknowledge that their case has largely been won by default and that it needs to be re-articulated […]
Britain, perhaps it’s time to hold a referendum and to leave the EU
I’m going to start this blog entry with the assertion of my basic views, for these remain unchanged. For it is the circumstances that have altered, as I will explain. Now, as before, I am strongly of the view that the UK should remain a Member State of the European […]
Public Service Europe | Calls for EU referendum in UK ‘a distraction’
Calls for EU referendum in UK ‘a distraction’ – Public Service Europe.
What would leaving the EU actually mean in practice?
In 2005 I went to France to campaign in the referendum on the European Constitution, making the case for oui. One thing about that campaign has been with me ever since: it was clear what oui would mean (France would ratify) while it was never clear what non would mean. […]
Britain national interest in the EU, or citizens’ interests in the EU?
It’s so easy for non-EU-phobic politicians in the UK to slip into it: a discourse that membership of the European Union is ‘in Britain’s national interest’. Wayne David’s recent piece for Labour List uses the term three times. Ben Fox, writing for the same site, says: But an In/Out referendum […]
How the current ‘debate’ about election reform is giving precisely the opposite of a principled outcome
So wrangles about how and when to hold a referendum on the future of the UK’s election system rumble on… and how messy the whole thing gets. The only given is that there will be a referendum sometime in this parliament – it’s in the coalition deal. So even if […]