By Brendan Donnelly Director, The Federal Trust 23rd April 2018 Last week saw two potentially important developments in the continuing campaign against Brexit. There was a significant defeat for the government in the House of Lords on the subject of the Customs Union (CU); and a coalition [...]
By Brendan Donnelly Director, The Federal Trust 27th March 2018 Last week was a difficult period for those inclined to argue that the Labour Party is or may become an effective political vehicle for opposition to Brexit. To the applause of John Redwood, Jeremy Corbyn dismissed Owen [...]
by Brendan Donnelly Director, The Federal Trust 3rd March 2018 After her speech yesterday about the Brexit negotiations, the Prime Minister was asked by a German journalist whether she thought Brexit was worth all the effort and disruption it entailed. Although British withdrawal from the EU is probably the [...]
by Brendan Donnelly, Director, The Federal Trust 19th December 2017 The frenzied negotiations to conclude the first phase of Brexit negotiations have usefully clarified the real choices faced by the British government in the second phase. The ambiguous and variously defined terms “soft” and “hard” Brexit have outlived their usefulness. [...]
by Brendan Donnelly, Director, The Federal Trust 5th December 2017 Even during the European referendum last year it was clear that those who wished the UK to leave the European Union fell into two quite different camps, those who wanted Brexit to mark a decisive break in the economic and [...]
By Brendan Donnelly, Director, The Federal Trust 1st November 2017 In his recent testimony to the House of Lords, Sir Ivan Rogers, former British Permanent Representative to the European Union, criticized as premature and ill-prepared the Prime Minister’s triggering last March of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. [...]
BREXIT: Labour makes a move but is it in the right direction? By Brendan Donnelly, Director, The Federal Trust 1st September 2017 The recent article by Keir Starmer, Labour spokesman on Brexit, setting out the Party’s commitment to continued British membership of the EU single market and [...]
by Brendan Donnelly, Director, The Federal Trust 15th August 2017 On almost every day since Theresa May went on holiday in late July, the British public has been treated to the contradictory and often self-contradictory thoughts of various ministers about the desirability, inevitability or unacceptability of a “transition” [...]
by Brendan Donnelly, Director, The Federal Trust 20th July 2017 David Davis has been criticized in some quarters for spending only two hours in Brussels this week negotiating with Michel Barnier before returning hurriedly to London. This criticism is misplaced. As Secretary of State for Exiting the European [...]
The dilemmas of Brexit have not been changed by the election by Brendan Donnelly, Director, The Federal Trust 13th June 2017 The parallels between the European referendum of 2016 and the General Election of 2017 are striking. Both were risky and avoidable events, called into being exclusively [...]
