6 years ago I published a book “Brexit. How Britain Will Leave Europe.” It came out before the May 2015 election. It set out all the reasons, based on 20 years of door knocking in what we now call a red wall seat, why I thought that if a populist [...]
“Take back control” was one of the main battle-cries of Brexit. Underpinning it was the notion that the UK had ceded its sovereignty to the EU and was no-longer an ‘independent’ country. We will leave aside the issue of whether or not Brexit really represents a return of sovereignty to [...]
In Scotland, there is a real sense of its politics and the constitutional debate moving into a new phase as the aftermath of the pro-independence SNP and Green parties’ success in the elections sinks in. Turnout, at 63%, was the highest it has been since the first elections to the [...]
Within ten days after the finalisation of the UK withdrawal from the EU, the European Union is to start an ambitious Conference on the Future of Europe. The aim of the Conference is to discuss the place of the citizens in the construction of the Union and to underpin European [...]
The first months of Brexit are a bit like the phoney war of autumn 1939 and winter-spring of 1940. No-one really know what its full impact will be. One thing is certain. Brexit has not been “done”. We are entering the era of “Brexiternity”. In so many ways Brexit is [...]
In May 2021 Northern Ireland will mark the hundredth year of its existence. These years have been marked by long periods of turmoil rather than any sense of contentment or stability. There has been and remains an atmosphere of unease. Governments in Northern Ireland have been marked by periods of [...]
The UK faces various serious difficulties at present that share a common cause. Brexit does not explain each of them in its entirety. But it is fundamental to an understanding of them all. There is already clear evidence of departure from the EU’s inflicting substantial economic damage on the UK. [...]
This article was first published by Yorkshire Bylines. Internationally, there is widespread recognition for the impressive reputation and record of the EU’s Erasmus Plus programme as a tried and trusted system of international educational collaboration. But a growing number of voices are being raised, within the UK and externally, asking [...]
The government’s new Integrated Review is by and large an unimpressive document. It is long and repetitive, with for example the phrase “S&T a core skill” appearing 48 times. It is intellectually self-contradictory in its constant tension between Britain’s post Brexit “independence” and the need for multilateralism. It is work [...]
Federalism is best defined as a system in which constitutional authority is divided between a ‘federal’ tier of government and a set of territorial ‘states’. It is a comprehensive and symmetrical model in which the entirety (or almost the entirety) of the country is covered by states, which have identical [...]
