The elevation of David Frost to Cabinet, and him largely replacing Michael Gove as the UK Government’s coordinator of all things Brexit, understandably generated considerable debate. Jill Rutter penned a piece for UK in a Changing Europe about what we do and do not know about the UK Government’s new...
Prior to the 2014 European Parliament elections I examined all the runners and riders for President of the European Commission and other EU top jobs (2014 posts on President of the Commission: EPP, PES, Others | President of the European Council | High Rep for EU Foreign Policy). Now, with...
As today’s predictable fuss about the border in Ireland post Brexit rumbles on, it has brought a deeper and more troubling issue into view. The British Government is now not actually trying to do Brexit, at least in a practical sense. Note that I do not mean here that the...
EXCLUSIVE – Nigel Farage says "just maybe I’m reaching the point of thinking that we should have a second referendum on EU membership".@Nigel_Farage | @Matthew_Wright | #wrightstuff pic.twitter.com/T0fROToskr — Jeremy, Storm & Vanessa On 5 (@JeremyVineOn5) January 11, 2018 When I saw this breaking on Twitter earlier I sort of...
Brexit transition. Often mentioned by politicians but seldom understood. In this blog entry I am going to try to make sense of it, and to try to explain why the current effort devoted to this is all probably a waste of time (at least the way the UK is approaching...
So Theresa May is going to make her highly awaited speech in Florence tomorrow. There has been plenty of analysis and speculation about what she is and is not going to include. Here – in a blog post I will update as more sources are available – are some of...
29th March: Theresa May notifed the EU of the UK’s intention to leave the EU through the Article 50 procedure. Then 29th April the European Council agreed its negotiation guidelines for Michel Barnier, the chief Brexit negotiatior on the EU side. A summary of the guidelines – that committed the...
After the problems the UK has caused the EU over the years, and the short term headache posed by the Brexit referendum last year, Theresa May ending up with a hung parliament having hoped for a huge win last week resulted in plenty of mirth in the rest of the...
In the period immediately after the Brexit referendum I often heard the line from pro-Brexit people in the UK that it would only be a matter of time before the EU would be begging the UK to somehow stay in the European Union, or at the very least that the...
Back in the early summer of 2013 I wrote a detailed series of blog posts about the future President of the European Commission. There were posts about EPP, PES and other candidates. Overall those posts have stood up well over the last 6 months. But with the EP elections just...
2014 is the big change-over year in the EU institutions. A new European Parliament will be elected in May 2014, and a new European Commission will take office in late autumn 2014. Some Commissioners will stay on, but probably with new portfolios, and others will not return after 2014. Some...
The European Commission, and Commissioners themselves, have progressively taken to Twitter over the past couple of years as a way of communicating with (at?) EU citizens. So how are they doing? This blog entry gives a quick summary. My starting point is that a good Twitter account is an engaging...