Consent is not an inconvenience to be worked around, but the cornerstone of stability. If the AIA’s legacy tells us anything forty years on, it is that Northern Ireland endures only when both traditions feel heard, respected, and protected – not managed.
In his rush to cozy up to Brussels, Starmer must not ignore the concerns of voters at home. It is utterly incongruous to endorse high levels of immigration through the EU Youth Mobility scheme while his government has just pledged to reduce net migration.
Free movement, giving up fish, following future EU rules, a potentially uncapped pan-European youth mobility scheme, an asylum quota. Give it a fresh coat of paint, and suddenly it’s not Brexit betrayal apparently but merely “alignment.”
It is a salutary reminder that every piece of legislation, every clause, every amendment, has a consequence in the real world, and a price that is usually paid by businesses and people, even years later.
The UK needs to offer a bold tariff free trade agreement to the US and set out a growth strategy that lowers taxes, gets entrepreneurs and investors back to the UK, and rebuilds our main industries.
The amendment on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill must be opposed in Parliament as it will have a profound impact on Britain’s ability to control our product standards.
For the UK to have a decent chance at being a playmaker in digital innovation, we need less investigations and EU alignment, and more entrepreneurial and realistic thinking.
Leaving has not been as disastrous as Remainers feared, nor as beneficial as Leavers hoped. It is an unfinished revolution, overtaken by events. A hard rain still needs to fall.
Johnson may not be as amusing as Disraeli, but he is without doubt the funniest and most literate PM since Macmillan.
A Brussels club which admits democrats and blackballs Putin is the only proper and practical way forward.
The sovereignty of Parliament, as the representative of the people, has been eroded, and power handed to an increasingly assertive bureaucracy.
The continent’s economic woes are confined to the business pages, whilst the scandalous conduct of the European Parliament is simply unreported.
Any significant agreement with the EU would require continuous alignment between Westminster and Brussels in terms of regulation. Will we end up, to coin a phrase, shadowing the Customs Union?
Exiting the EU has enabled us to get the jump on Brussels in an industry already flourishing in the Americas. But interfering with genomes may not be an unalloyed good.
International law in military matters has always been more facade than framework: it lacks enforcement mechanisms, it derives its apparent authority from hegemonic sponsorship, and appealing to it not only fails to constrain great power behaviour but obscures the real debate