Latest Blog Posts

In these dog days of summer, there’s not much happening in the world of EU politics. Except the on-going debates on the third Greek bailout, arguments about managing asylum applicants and immigrants and the simmering British renegotiation. And the third of these is very much the least, certainly in Continental terms. To date, the renegotiation has been […]

There is much to give concern in the world of European politics these days. From Greece to the UK, the Mediterranean to Finland (even Austria), you don’t have to look far to find examples of ‘how it’s all going belly up’ (to quote one of my colleagues). It would be simple to take the counsel of […]

Even this is not going to cut it… Earlier this morning – a bit before 8am, in fact – a family friend turned up at our house, ‘for breakfast’. This turned out to be a misunderstanding of what we had thought was a jocular exchange of texts last night and certainly was not one the […]

This week I’m in Moldova, for a workshop of our TEMPUS project INOTLES. You’ve probably not been to Moldova, but Chisinau is a very pleasant city around which to walk, albeit one in which the local UNDP office looks like one of the more important buildings. To be here – in a country that has possibly the lowest GDP […]

So here we are, about a month into the new government. How’s it shaping up with the EU referendum thing? For me, four things stick out so far. Firstly, David Cameron has conformed to type in his approach to the matter. Assuming that he was a surprised as the next man (that next man being Ed […]

On Tuesday I went to one of my alma maters, LSE’s European Institute, to listen to a panel on Britain’s EU policy. As well as storifying it, I’ve also been thinking about the discussion and particularly three of the things mentioned by Simon Hix, one of the panellists. “Never underestimate the EU’s ability to find a way to muddle through” […]

Since Ryan Heath‘s been kind enough to mention all the work I do on this site on Brexit, it seems like a good opportunity to mention a new project I’ve been working on. ‘A Diet of Brussels‘ is a podcast about the referendum here in the UK on EU membership. In it, I want to try […]

“…and on the third day, he rose again.” Last week was both a triumph and a disappointment for UKIP. On the one hand, they secured almost 4 million votes in the General Election, a performance almost unsurpassed for a third party in the UK. On the other, the inequities of the electoral system meant that […]

So we now have most of the major manifestos for the General Election. None of them – possibly bar the LibDems –  give me much cause to change my mind about the continuing failure of British politicians to talk about the detail of European integration. UKIP’s effort – released today – is a case in point. On one hand, it’s very […]

One of the recurring themes in talks I give about the EU is the notion of entanglement: the idea that ‘Europe’ is not some distant agency, doing things to us, but rather IS us (at least in part) and that we are caught up in it, whatever we feel about it. A couple of stories […]