Current Affairs

We are a few weeks past Andy Burnham’s speech about wanting to re-open the question of the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU. Since then, there has been a fair amount of (sometimes hyperventilated) comment and discussion about what this relationship might look like, usually in flavours of Why My Prior Preference Was Right Then […]

A short post this week, partly because I’ve got other things on, more because my cunning plan to summarise where parties are on ‘Europe’ came a bit unstuck. Either they’ve kept quiet on the matter or they’ve offered much talk. Probably only the LibDems of the national parties have both adopted a new policy objective […]

Well, it feels like I picked a good time to start trying to blog more. Andy Burnham’s speech to the Labour party conference has fired the gun on something that felt pretty unlikely just a few weeks ago: a debate about the UK’s relationship with the EU. Given that one month ago I myself was […]

It’s party conference time, so everyone’s pushing their ideas into the public domain, hoping they will get picked up by the faithful (and the media) just at the point that policy might get changed. The IPPR have a useful report on the costs of not having mutual recognition of conformity assessment with the EU, highlighting […]

The arrival of the seventh Prime Minister in Number 10 since the 2016 referendum is an opportunity to try once again to get to grips with British European policy. In practice, this is not a problem of wrestling Lots of Things, but instead more about trying to work out whether the absence of visible activity […]

Although I am currently immersed in the London local elections — speaking with residents, listening to concerns, and experiencing democracy at its most immediate level — I didn’t want to miss the chance to reflect on Hungary’s 12 April vote. I have analysed Hungarian politics for many years, and this election is among the most […]

By Dimitris Bouris (University of Amsterdam), Saul Kenny (Article 109), Hanna L. Mühlenhoff (University of Amsterdam) In our recent article for JCMS we set out to queer the European Union Foreign and Security Policy. But what does this mean? Queer, once a slur, is now a popular term that captures the variety of sexual orientations […]

By Agnese Pacciardi (School of Global Studies, University of Sussex) In June 2026, the European Union’s Pact on Migration and Asylum will enter into force. The Pact explicitly recognises the role of civil society organisations and NGOs in EU migration management, acknowledging their practical expertise, especially in working in contexts that are outside the EU. […]

This piece was originally published on the UK in a Changing Europe site.   It’s something of a truism to say that Brexit is a process, not an event, but nowhere is this more evident than in the UK’s continuing difficulties in managing the pieces of legislation it adopted during its time as a member […]

Following the EU-UK summit last month, I’ve finally got my ducks in a row on trying to track the substance of what follows. You’ll recall that apart from the Security & Defence Partnership, there was not a single definitive legal instrument. Instead, there was lots of language about ‘working towards’ things or ‘exploring possibilities’: all […]