Ask any Brits whose formative political years were the 1990s and they can answer you this question: “When will Britain join the Euro?” The answer, of course, is: “When the five economic tests are met!” The thing was that no-one could ever remember what the five tests were (they are here […]
I am often confronted with the line of argument that because something or other may or may not happen sometime into the foggy future, opposing Brexit is hopeless now. A Twitter conversation with Rachel Heyburn and A C Grayling this morning was a case in point. Now I am always someone who wants […]
“Brave MPs” was how Guido Fawkes described the 6 Members of Parliament who represent constituencies that nominally voted Leave in the referendum, but who voted against the opposition motion* in the House of Commons this week that supported the government’s Brexit timetable and demanded a Brexit plan from the government […]
Yesterday was a significant day for those who follow the minutiae of Brexit, for those of us who try to ascertain what is actually going despite the cloud of obfuscation and media distortion. For months the answer to what Brexit means has been “Brexit means Brexit“, and when Theresa May has […]
So often the political debate about migration and integration sees the issues at the level of the society as a whole. What can city/region/country do with X thousand new people? How will those areas change? What opportunities or burdens will all of this present to that area? How will the […]
I count a pretty senior UKIP person as a friend. Yet whenever I tell that to some liberal lefty pro-EU contacts of mine they are repulsed and perplexed. They assume the person in question must be a Paul Nuttall or Roger Helmer, someone so hopelessly dim, racist or inconsistent that they cannot […]
Imagine you have just been thrown into a tank at a sewage treatment plant. It reeks like hell, you have nothing solid to grip, and you’re flailing around madly trying to grasp something firm to hold onto, but you never manage. That’s what it has felt like to try to […]
This event is co-organised by the Parliamentary Group of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in the State Parliament Berlin (Abgeordnetenhaus), the Green Party of England and Wales and the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament – I am providing the live stream. Full details of the event here! Live Stream of the […]
My earlier post about immigration in the UK and Labour’s response to it prompted this reply from Rob Ford at the University of Manchester: [tweet id=”803884593510223872″] At one level this is right – my post does not propose any reform of immigration rules as part of the solution. But this […]
One of the most unusual post-EU Referendum stories to date has been the news that UK slaughterhouses face a possible shortage of workers. As the BVA outlines, in the meat hygiene sector some 95% of veterinary surgeons graduated overseas. Britain, it seems, does not train enough of its own veterinary staff […]
[UPDATE 9.12.2016, 1515] Guy Verhofstadt has given some more detail about how important this associate citizenship thing is to him – see The Independent. However all the main issues with it I outline below still stand! There has been quite some heated reaction to Guy Verhofstadt saying he backs the […]
Back on Sunday I wrote this tweet about François Fillon winning the first round of the centre right primary in France: [tweet 800444200089042944] Then, out of the blue and without asking me anything, four days later I get this: [tweet 801744792195633152 hide_thread=’false’] “unabashedly anti-Catholic” Karnitschnig says some Greens are (as […]
