So the results are in. The Tory Party took one hell of a beating in the North Shropshire by-election. And this coming on top of the many other scandals and headaches for Johnson’s government. All of this means a leadership
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Tag: Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, and the accountability inversion
What two consenting adults get up to in their free time is a matter for them. Even if there are husbands and wifes and kids involved, best let those families sort the problems out between them. So that Matt Hancock
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A little lockdown project: Brexit Geoguessr
My father was a geography teacher, my mother also a geography graduate, and I grew up with a map in my hand. Years ago I discovered a little game called Geoguessr that used Google Maps and Google Street View and
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It’s easier to critique honest incompetence than deal with malevolent deceit
“When future historians try to understand how Britain ended up with a choice between chaos and becoming a satellite of the European Union, one question will stump them,” wrote Fintan O’Toole in this Irish Times column in November 2018. “Were
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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UK politics: not normal
A Minister who had presided over a fiasco as major as Gavin Williamson has with the A-Level results algorithm problems would – in normal times – have either resigned or been sacked. A Special Adviser who had admitted a major
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Boris Johnson the fragile
“He doesn’t like not being liked,” said Katie Perrior of Boris Johnson in this 2016 of the then outgoing Mayor of London in this 2016 essay by Jeremy Cliffe. Those words have stuck with me since reading that essay back
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