“Right now in Brussels the heads of the 27 national governments of the European Union’s member states will be milling around. Gordon Brown will be lobbying for Tony Blair, Herman Van Rompuy will be trying to persuade people he is not as anonymous as many fear, and José Manuel Barroso […]
The Treaty of Lisbon has been ratified and Heads of State and Government are getting together on Thursday this week to try to hammer out a deal on the EU’s top positions – President of the European Council and High Representative for Foreign Policy. Once that’s in place the team […]
As quoted in this piece at EUObserver: A former British EU ambassador, Stephen Wall, also poured cold water on the scheme, saying that the appointment is about balancing national and political interests in Europe, rather than individual merit. “Given that they have to placate the right, the left, the north, […]
No fanfare on this blog about today’s 20 year commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not because I’m not super happy to commemorate such an event, but because understanding the division of Berlin, the division of Germany, and the division of Germany has been a fascinating, personal journey […]
I’m at the conference “Media and politics – the tension between freedom of the press and personal rights in print media and the internet” (more here) – refresh the page for the latest entries. 1921 – Hajo Friedrich is making the introduction, introducing Klaus-Heiner Lehne from the CDU, chair of […]
One of the major frustrations about the UK mainstream media’s coverage of EU affairs is that even if an article is eventually corrected on a newspaper’s website, or a correction appears in the printed press, the damage is already done – when it comes to the European Union it’s all […]
It has been widely trailed that David Cameron is going to outline his new European policy today, after capitulating yesterday on the Treaty of Lisbon issue. The feral members of the Tory Party are baying for blood, so what is Cameron going to give them? The most likely position that […]
David Cameron, as quoted on the BBC News website today: It looks like this treaty is no longer going to be a treaty, it looks like it is going to become part of European law and that is going to create a new situation. Does David Cameron simply not understand […]
It’s not often that something makes me angry enough to resort to language befitting of Devil’s Kitchen, but Googling for news of the recent European Court of Human Rights case about crucifixes in Italian schools brought me to this article in the Daily Mail with the headline shown above (they […]
In the presentations I make about the impact of the internet on politics and society, Youtube often gets a mention. Although not all explicitly political, these are 3 of my favourites. Think of what you could do with some inspiration like this… Dave Carroll, the singer in the first one, […]
It’s normally the first thing on my agenda when visiting a new city: take a trip to the best modern art gallery in town and spend a few hours wandering around. But I’m getting increasingly jaded, and here’s why. This describes the modern art gallery I’ve most recently visited: It […]
A small word of apology for the complete lack of activity here over the last couple of weeks… Life is beyond manic at the moment – too much travel for work, loads of teaching and business assignments all over the place. I’ll be in Den Haag Thursday, then at the […]
