Jasper Fforde’s dystopian novel, “Shades of Grey”, set in a distant future where social class in the UK is determined by how many colours a person visually perceives, has certain uncanny parallels with today’s political and media class’s black and white perceptions of Brexit. This is most strikingly apparent in [...]
Throughout the month of December commentators and politicians speculated tirelessly on the likelihood of a negotiated trade arrangement between the UK and EU before the end of the year. Many expected that the personal convictions of Boris Johnson and the intransigence of the Conservative Party would prevent the conclusion of [...]
This article was first published by Scottish Centre on European Relations As the start of 2021 looms, the EU and UK have a new relationship underpinned by their new trade and cooperation agreement. This agreement fractures, damages and complicates economic, political and social links between the UK and EU. And, [...]
The last weeks of 2020 will provide a slew of illustrative material for future historians wishing to highlight the moral and administrative decline of the British state in face of the challenges of Brexit and Covid-19. Pride of place will go to the twin nominations to the House of Lords [...]
In 2001, the late, great former Labour Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, was President of the Party of European Socialists. The start of his period of office coincided with the heyday of British influence in Europe, a time when strong alliances were being built by Labour at every level - inter-governmental [...]
With Covid gridlock in Kent, chaotic borders have arrived earlier than expected, although stockpiling ahead of the end of the transition was already causing queues and a glimpse into the UK’s difficult post-Brexit future. As talks and haggling continue over fishing, one thing is clear: deal or no deal, four [...]
by Anila Noor, Founding Director, New Women Connectors and Roger Casale, Founder, Secretary General & CEO, New Europeans Reproduced with kind permission from Voxeurop We have the historian Ferdinand Braudel to thank for the expression “la longue durée”. Braudel’s approach focuses on long-term, structural changes in society, rather than the short-term [...]
While sounding more optimistic on how restarted talks were moving this week after last week’s showdown, the EU chief Brexit negotiator, Michael Barnier, tweeted on the 14th of December that ‘Never before has such a comprehensive agreement (trade, energy, fisheries, transport, police & judicial cooperation, etc) been negotiated so transparently [...]
One relief from the ongoing general uncertainty surrounding the ongoing negotiations between the European Union and the United Kingdom on a post-Brexit Free Trade Agreement has been to study specifics, such as its likely regional impact. In pursuit of this I recently participated, by video, in an informal conference on [...]
by Stefan Collignon Professor of Political Economy at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa; Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics This article first appeared in Italian on Euractiv.it (translated by Roberto Castaldi) No other statesman has left a greater mark on Europe than Valery Giscard D’Estaing (1926 – [...]
