The EU

LibDem leader, Jo Swinson, has promised that if her party wins the general election, they will revoke Aritcle 50 and cancel Brexit. Some people are crying that would be undemocratic, as it would mean undoing the referendum result of 2016. Some are even claiming that it would represent an insult to the 17.4 million who […]

By Seán Hanley and James Dawson East European liberals’ accommodation of ethnic nationalism has left the region’s democratic institutions vulnerable The newer EU member states of East-Central Europe (ECE) were long held up as a textbook illustration of how the attractiveness of the EU’s political and economic model, backed by tough accession conditions, could keep shakier […]

The three Tory Prime Ministers of this millennium – David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson – could have been the solvers of Brexit if only they had been wiser, magnanimous and acted in the national interest. ▪ WISER – by realising that an advisory referendum, with such a narrow win for Leave, did not mean having […]

Everybody’s talking about it. We have to do it, don’t we? We should have done it three years ago. Why is it taking so long? Just get on with it! The ‘it’ in Brexit has never been defined. Nobody really knows what it means. But people keep saying we have to do it. After all, […]

The Conservatives used to be the party of Europe. Their greatest war leader, Winston Churchill, was a passionate proponent of the “union of Europe as a whole” as the way to create lasting peace on our continent. Although he didn’t at first envisage the UK joining this union – because we already had our Empire […]

Part of me is surprised that it took until now for me to get overtaken by events. Yesterday morning I was recording a podcast outside the monastery where the Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 2007, but by the time I could get to sufficiently useful wifi, Parliament had moved on enough for there to […]

It was 80 years ago – on 1 September 1939 – that the Second World War started, when the German Nazi army launched a ferocious and unprovoked invasion of Poland. In the face of this unjustified aggression by Germany’s ‘Third Reich’, the United Kingdom and France could only resolve to declare war on Germany three […]

The fitful progress of Brexit produces natural rhythms of activity. The summer lull, followed by the autumn rush/panic. Hard to believe that less than a year ago we were having the Salzburg summit and wondering whether any text of a Withdrawal Agreement could be produced at all. Simple times. And now we get to look […]

Read about the recent conference organised by the UACES Research Network 'Limits of Europe' at Lazarski University, Warsaw, bringing together scholars, students and non-academic experts.

According to the government’s own in-depth assessments, every version of Brexit will make us worse off. But their ‘leaked’ Yellowhammer report has revealed that a no-deal Brexit will wreak the greatest havoc. It will also put into jeopardy our own union of the United Kingdom. And still, no one can properly answer why on earth […]