“Social media is overhyped” a friend said to me in a social setting yesterday. “Look at the Arab Spring – it failed!” I agree with the latter part – what happened at Tahrir Square (and how people came to the square), and indeed Gezi Park, would seem to indicate the...
Holding a British passport, and at the same time being committed to EU integration and the democratisation of the European Union, has never been easy. The months since the UK general election, David Cameron’s EU ‘deal’, and the subsequent referendum campaign, have been harder still. The Leave and the Remain...
First it was #BERBritsBrexit. Then #HHBritsBrexit. And now we’re organising the next in the series of events about the impact of Brexit on Brits in Germany to Köln on 18th May. Together with local organiser Tobias Flessenkemper, we’ll be discussing: What’s likely to happen – will the UK leave? What...
I’m going to set aside my views about the rights and wrongs of Britain staying in the EU for a moment, and instead focus on the way the Remain campaign is trying to make its case. This is especially relevant today after the Dutch expressed their vague frustration towards the...
I have made the case for why progressives and federalists outside the UK ought to advocate Brexit (for the sake of the political integration of the rest of the EU), and I have also tried to examine in a bit more depth how the outcome of the vote might have...
So Jackie Ashley is angry I tell you. Angry! We need to be “brutally honest” that the “remain campaign is failing” she writes. Well, what a sodding surprise. A campaign entitled “Britain Stronger in Europe” was never going to light anyone’s fire, was it. Run by Will Straw, relying on...
Over a beer with some academic friends yesterday, conversation turned to Brexit. Boris Johnson will only become Tory party leader if Britain exits the EU was the consensus among my friends. It’ll be Osborne otherwise. I expressed my doubts yesterday, and have been pondering this more since, and have come...
If you read ex-PM John Major’s Telegraph piece from Saturday about the dangers of Brexit you’d think all is generally well in the fine and pleasant land of England. Our pick and choose with regard to the EU has worked, he argues, and “we have the best performing economy in...
“What do you think Brits in Berlin think about the prospect of Brexit?” Matt Hanley asked me. So we set about trying to find out – by putting on an event on 24th February entitled #BERBritsBrexit (details of the event here, Facebook event page here, Twitter search for the tag...
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The UK has floods once more – this time in Cumbria. 60000 homes are without power, and the region had record rainfall. That follows floods in winter 2013-2014 in the South West of England. On 14th February 2014, The Independent and a few more newspapers had stories that the UK...
With the date for the UK’s EU referendum not yet set, it still feels like the Remain and Leave campaigns are in their early, pre-preparation phases. The logos for the campaigns are above – Britain Stronger In Europe (the official Remain campaign), and Labour In For Britain and European Movement...