Current Affairs

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 […]

One of the joys of listening to Radio 4 is that while having my regular daily walk yesterday I heard a lovely discussion about the 50th anniversary of Jaws, the film that created the summer blockbuster and gave us some top meme-worthy comment. It feels apposite to mention this because one of my main takeaways […]

Not so much a post as a list of links for you this time, as I’ve been working up from a thread on BlueSky to a graphic to a podcast. The central theme here is how the UK-EU relationship is affected by the chaotic Trump administration in the US, particularly in the wake of his […]

Maybe it's some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, but since the Tories left office I have not felt the same urge to write about British European policy. Equally possibly, it might be because I feel a bit broken by another government with a lack of clear purpose in this domain. Labour, like their predecessors, seem to be stuck at the point of realising this whole Europe thing might be a bit more complicated than they thought, so extemporise until they can work it all out some more.

Given that the past decade of British politics has arguably been shaped by the question of Europe more than any other single issue, one might have expected to find the matter to be front and centre in the election campaign. The economic and social consequences of Brexit still reverberate, with profound dissatisfaction among the general public about how it has been handled and with previously strong advocates on both sides of the Leave-Remain divide still very present in the political debate.