Democracy & Citizenship

After decades of debate on where – and whether – to expand airport capacity in south-eastern England, the UK government announced two days ago that it would favour building a third runway at Heathrow Airport. This option, highly criticised on environmental grounds (notably due to the air pollution caused by road transport to the airport) […]

Anyone in hope of elucidation on Brexit this week will have been a bit disappointed, even by recent standards. With submissions to the High Court providing no killer arguments either side – and both sides firmly stating that any loss will be challenged up to the Supreme Court and an immigration debate that has sunk to the […]

Prime Minister Theresa May is determined to take Britain on a course to Brexit, but only six months ago she said it wouldn’t be in the country’s interest to do so. Mrs May, then Home Secretary, said in a pro-Remain speech in April 2016: “I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain […]

A Brexiteer in the BBC Question Time audience last Thursday compared the EU to the Soviet Union. It’s an entirely false and unfounded comparison. There is absolutely no resemblance between the EU and the USSR. Such comparisons are reckless, childish and nonsensical. It shows no understanding or respect for those people who truly suffered and […]

There is nothing else like it on the internet: the unique and growing portfolio of over 300 graphics and articles continuing to present the case every day for Britain to remain in the EU. I started the Reasons2Remain Facebook Community Campaign on Monday 4 April 2016. With a small team of supporters, for the following 11 […]

Now we’re back into the normal flow of things, I’ve been giving more talks about Brexit, and writing pieces for other sites. As I decried in my previous posts here (and here), a major challenge for pursuing Brexit is that there is no clarity on either side about what the objective might be. That in turn makes it almost impossible […]

So it turns out that Usherwood’s Law is simply that things can always get worse. It’s not quite my childhood dream, but (appositely) it could be worse. Since publishing The Brexit Clusterf**k earlier on, I’ve had lots of feedback on Twitter, essentially boiling down to “you forgot some other things”. Since I’m apparently on a roll here, […]

UPDATED: read a second installation here, after all your comments.   Summer is over: winter is coming in the world of Brexit. As politicians return from their sojourns in the sun, they open up their emails and briefings to find that things are going about as badly as they could. I’m writing this at the end […]

The summer of 2016, between the French Euro and the Brazilian Olympics has demonstrated once more to what extent sport has become an important showcase for contemporary nation-states. Not only for the hosts, but also for the participants (ask the Portuguese or the Icelanders, the British or the Jamaicans). The historians of nationalism have well […]

Despite the importance of the European Parliament in EU law making, MEPs have typically been marginalised in UK politics, writes Margherita de Candia. She argues this attitude on the part of national politicians may have contributed to the UK’s decision to leave the EU, and that the remaining Member States should recognise the importance of […]