Jon Worth's Euroblog

18.12.2020 Brexit

Deal or No Deal Brexit by the end of the year? Or delay via a mini Treaty?

The statement of the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament has been an interesting development in the Brexit saga this week. The European Parliament is trying to impose a deadline at the end of Sunday 20 December for a

10.12.2020 Brexit

The UK had only one card to play in the Brexit end game: the timetable. And even that did not work.

I don’t know if it was the intended strategy all along (I first mused about it in November), but in these fraught December days in the Brexit end game it has become abundantly clear that the UK’s negotiation tactic has

08.12.2020 Brexit

When is Johnson going to meet von der Leyen? The sequence of the Brexit end game is very important

Now confirmed! *before* Monday 7 December at 1945, European Commission President von der Leyen tweeted out the statement that a meeting between her and Boris Johnson would take place “in the coming days”. It is now 22 hours on from

07.12.2020 Brexit

The No Deal Brexit Terminology

OK, I might be jumping the gun – there may yet be a Deal between Britain and the EU – but as a result of this discussion with Catherine De Vries, it’s important to grasp the nettle – what terminology

03.12.2020 Brexit

Notes on the timetable for a Deal, and how No Deal might play out

28 days to go to the end of the Brexit transition period. Things are getting edgy. The press is full of rumours of progress towards a Deal (or not). I’ve been trying to get my head around what is happening,

02.12.2020 Brexit

Scotch Eggs are GREAT – and other sarcastic tourist posters

UPDATE! New posters – to celebrate this! I have always found the GREAT Britain campaign – those posters you see at airports and railway stations – rather nauseating. It’s a bit like a product that calls itself ‘de luxe’ –

30.11.2020 Brexit

Is Brexiters’ absolutist notion of sovereignty going to lead the UK to a No Deal Brexit? We will shortly find out

Nicholas Westcott wrote an interesting piece for LSE last week entitled “A peculiar definition of sovereignty is the root cause of a failed Brexit“. The whole piece is worth reading, but one part struck me as especially apt. Brexiters “definition

30.11.2020 Brexit

Why – if there is a Brexit Deal – Labour MPs should abstain

(The original version of this blog post assumed how ratification would proceed was known and clear – thanks to this excellent discussion with George Peretz QC, Nick von Westenholz and Brigid Fowler it seems that is not completely clear, and

27.11.2020 Technology

€21.95 to make your webinars a whole lot better

I had to move flat in the middle of the Coronavirus lockdowns in Berlin and one of my aims for my new workplace in the new flat was that it would all be set up as well as possible for

22.11.2020 Brexit

Brexit negotiation delay – is it due to indecision, or is it by design?

As one of my sarcastic Twitter followers put it, are these Brexit negotiations sponsored by Microsoft Windows Autoupdate as they’ve been stuck on 95% for so long? Deadlines come and go. Even the supposedly firm one, EU side, at the

13.11.2020 Brexit

Brexit: where there is no consequence for those supposedly in control

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” Donald Trump famously said. Unlike the United States, British politics and society generally shies away from arms. But a sense of deep

12.11.2020 Brexit

1 man. 7 days. Deal or No Deal Brexit. And yes, that man is Johnson.

There is scarcely a twist or turn in the Brexit story over the past 18 months I have not charted in my Brexit diagrams. The rationale is the same now as it was when I started: to work out what