Current Affairs

So today sees the publication of the first tranche of ‘no-deal’ preparedness notices from the British government. I’m writing ahead of this, so maybe this’ll be out of date within a few hours, but let’s see what we can piece together so far. The basic issue for the government is that it’s now caught on the horns […]

Last May in Parliament, Prime Minister, Theresa May, summed up her promises for Brexit in just 15-seconds: no hard border on the island of Ireland, and as frictionless trade as possible with the rest of the EU. Of course, we already have that now. And of course, this cannot be delivered after Brexit. The Brexit […]

Professor Amelia Hadfield and Chris Logie: Tune in for another episode of ‘Make America Great Again!’ You’ll remember June’s episodes saw President Trump scupper the Canadian G7, cozy up to Kim Jong-Un and instigate wide-ranging steel and aluminium tariffs against the EU, Canada and Mexico. De-sensitized as we’ve become to Trumpian geopolitics, we were unprepared […]

The EU and Japan have just signed an unprecedented free trade agreement which will create one of the world’s largest trading blocs. The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is the largest trade deal ever negotiated by the EU. It will create a trade zone covering 600 million people and nearly a third of global GDP. It […]

Our Prime Minister, Theresa May, has urged the public not to be “worried” by her government’s plans to stockpile food and medicine to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. She is taking us all for fools. Gary Lineker got it right when he responded: “A wealthy nation putting itself in a position where it has to stockpile […]

It is a poor reflection of the pro-Remain campaign that even two years after the referendum, much of Britain is still basking in shocking ignorance about how the EU functions, the reason it exists, and how it is a democracy run by its members for the benefit of its members. We are leaving the EU […]

At a time when the EU is undergoing a number of crises, some seen as existential and provoking an upsurge in theorising on the disintegration of the EU, Luis Bouza and Alvaro Oleart offer intriguing reasons for suggesting there is room for more optimism. In a succinct summary of their larger article, recently published in JCER, […]

This week Prime Minister, Theresa May, told the House of Commons Liaison Committee that the UK could have frictionless trade with the EU, without being in the Single Market or the EU customs union. SNP MP, Angus Brendan MacNeil, told the Prime Minister that her plans were “pie in the sky”. Not only is he […]

Let’s suppose my university likes talking about the future. They might do fancy powerpoint presentations, with artists’ impressions of shiny buildings and other infrastructure, together with charts showing How It’s All Going To Be Great. Looks wonderful, I might think. But how do we get there, I might also think. And then it might turn […]

There are now calls for the EU referendum to be scrapped and run again. It follows the Electoral Commission’s ruling that Vote Leave, the official Brexit campaign group, significantly broke spending limit rules during the referendum. The group has been fined £61,000 by the electoral watchdog, which has also called for a criminal investigation. Former […]