Current Affairs

So, has Corbyn seen the light at last on Brexit? Yes, according to columnist Polly Toynbee writing in The Guardian. After his brilliant performance at Prime Minister’s Question Time this week, Ms Toynbee was moved to write: ‘The Labour leader finally grasps what leaving the EU really means: the greatest harm inflicted on the very […]

In my house, “rock’n’roll” has a very specific meaning. When uttered in the context of getting people out of the house it denotes that we have arrived at the actual moment of departure and no more delays will be tolerated: everyone is moving to the door.* Put differently, I have established a credible set of […]

Senior Tory Brexiters demanded last night that Theresa May exploit Angela Merkel’s political weakness and suspend plans to offer billions of pounds more to the European Union, according to today’s front page of The Times. Talks to form a coalition in Germany collapsed yesterday, and Mrs Merkel said that she was ready for a rerun […]

Winning is undoubtedly a good thing and delivers nice feelings. Being a winner is a positive social role as well. But. There is always a ‘but’, particularly in politics. Including elections, the main championship in modern democracy. Here, being a too strong and clear winner can, after the euphoria from the lovely results is gone, […]

In Berlin this week our Brexit Secretary, David Davis, attempted to give a lecture to the Germans. “Don’t put politics above prosperity,” he said. That seems rich as the ideology of Brexit means doing exactly that: putting politics above the prosperity of Britain. But there were other oxymorons in Mr Davis’s speech. He said he […]

Der Schatz an Metaphern, den der Fußball für die Politik bereithält, ist immer wieder erstaunlich. Gar nicht so einfach, ihnen zu widerstehen; sie drängen sich ja oft geradezu auf. Und oft genug gehen sie semantisch nach hinten los. Aber jetzt, da sogar Jürgen Habermas der Versuchung erlegen ist, sei es gestattet, eine seiner Vorlagen aufzunehmen. […]

The abundance of metaphors that football holds in store for politics is amazing. Used by tongue-in-cheek commentators like Anand Menon – who recently compared the successive Theresa May speeches in Florence and Manchester to a European Cup away game and return leg – they can be funny and meaningful. Used by leading politicians – remember […]

An amendment by Labour to protect our EU rights and protections after Brexit has been defeated in the House of Commons. The Labour front bench sought to amend the EU (Withdrawal) Bill to ensure that after Brexit, EU derived employment rights, environmental protection, health and safety standards and consumer standards can only be amended by […]

The upsides of getting older are relatively few and far between, but one of the best is that you get to annoy younger people by dragging up things from the past that they have no memory of. And so it’s been this week: I’ve been musing on the late 1980s and the oddities of monetary […]

There is now mounting evidence that the Russians are using techniques to destabilise the European Union, and possibly attempted to influence a win for ‘Leave’ in last year’s referendum.