16 11, 2020

Ireland: A shared island – Brexit and a Celtic future ?

By |2020-11-16T12:35:35+00:00November 16th, 2020|Categories: Brexit, Europe, Europe, UK Devolution|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

An atmosphere of crisis in Ireland north and south is dominating discussions of the future among seasoned observers and commentators there. It is occasioned by the impending decision on Brexit due to be made shortly ahead of the end of the transition period on 31 December. While the wider public [...]

9 11, 2020

Get ready for friction?

By |2020-11-14T13:14:41+00:00November 9th, 2020|Categories: Brexit, Europe, Europe, Trade|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

Political slogans, by their nature, often tend to over-simplify or even deceive. This tendency is presumably eternal and certainly preceded the Brexit experience. However, the insistence on certain questionable mantras has been exceptionally prominent to the project of removing the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). They have [...]

2 11, 2020

They come to bury the European Convention on Human Rights, not to praise it

By |2020-11-14T13:01:17+00:00November 2nd, 2020|Categories: Citizens’ rights, Europe|Tags: , , , , , , , |

70 years ago, on 4 November 1950, the European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome. The ECHR was a remarkable achievement. Like its better known cousin, the EU, it has become a foundation stone of post-war peace and stability in Europe. We should heap praise on the ECHR, [...]

22 10, 2020

A Difficult Choice for Johnson: A Brexit deal or no deal

By |2020-11-14T12:42:26+00:00October 22nd, 2020|Categories: Brexit, Europe, Europe|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

News that the Brexit talks were to be resumed sent the external value of the pound back up again. Political commentators, especially in the UK, began to predict the relatively rapid conclusion of an agreement on future trade relations between the UK and the EU. They pointed in particular to [...]

13 10, 2020

Germany’s miles better…

By |2020-11-14T12:34:49+00:00October 13th, 2020|Categories: Europe, Europe, Views from the Federal Trust|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

This article was first published on Sceptical Scot. Thirty years ago, on October 3 1990, I was standing among a million people in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin observing and reporting on the ceremonies celebrating the rebirth of a united Germany. A streaker briefly interrupted the profoundly good-natured, [...]

13 10, 2020

Brexit: removing the connective tissue of the United Kingdom?

By |2020-11-14T12:25:11+00:00October 13th, 2020|Categories: Brexit, Devolution, Europe, Europe, Federalism, Federalism, Scotland, UK Constitution, UK Devolution|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

The United Kingdom (UK) and what is now the European Union (EU) were intertwined for nearly half a century. Consequently, Brexit means more than the UK removing itself from the EU. It involves extracting the EU from the UK. The four years after the EU referendum of 23 June 2016 [...]

9 10, 2020

Scottish Politics Heading Into Turbulent Waters

By |2020-11-14T12:02:34+00:00October 9th, 2020|Categories: Brexit, Devolution, Scotland, UK Devolution|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Crucial Election Looms In just seven months time, Scottish voters will head to the polls to elect a new cohort of MSPs to the Scottish parliament. From recent polls, the Scottish National Party looks set for a majority of seats and of the overall vote. But we live in highly [...]

8 10, 2020

The Red Wall – Myths and Reality

By |2020-10-09T12:29:14+00:00October 8th, 2020|Categories: Blog, Brexit, UK|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Photo credit: UK Parliament/ CC BY 3.0 by Baroness Quin Former Europe Minister and Labour MP         The biggest myth about the Red Wall is that it was all about Brexit and that the Red Wall seats, which had voted Leave in the 2016 Referendum, [...]

2 10, 2020

EU-UK talks look like “tunnelling” toward a fudged deal

By |2020-10-09T11:46:02+00:00October 2nd, 2020|Categories: Brexit, Europe, Trade, Trade & Financial services|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Will there be a No Deal Brexit or a Free Trade Agreement, of some kind, by 15th October 2020?  This was the date by which UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted an accord should be reached or, as he put it, Britain would simply walk away. Regaining British sovereignty? Given [...]

1 10, 2020

Don’t just blame Johnson, blame the Brexit he enabled

By |2020-10-09T11:24:51+00:00October 1st, 2020|Categories: Brexit, Europe, Europe|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Photo credit: Steve Nimmons / CC BY There is a celebrated passage in Marcel Proust’s “Sodom and Gomorrah” where the narrator sums up the nature of a character, Charles Morel, who in some sense encapsulates all that is vile in the values of his milieu. Morel, we are [...]

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