To listen to some commentators a few weeks ago, you’d have thought it was only EU membership – not shared interests and values – that brings allies together.
Some specialist hospitals have made stellar consultant appointments from abroad. However, many doctors relocating here are economic migrants.
Behind the scenes many of Europe’s nations and regions are weighing the cost of a hard Brexit and pushing for a better deal.
I joined the Conservatives six months after this year’s general election, with a vision to help us progress in the area of social equality.
Those who still refuse to accept we’re really going to leave the EU are misreading the process, the politics, and the people.
EU leaders – encourage by a rump of British Europhiles – are pursuing the fantasy that if they bully us enough, we might change our minds.
Self-determination always involves conflict. In some cases that is justified, a conflict of necessity. In others it is not.
The tiniest quantum of goodwill would have solved – indeed, might yet solve – the problem. But neither side is willing to display it.
It’s unimaginable that Westminster would have acted towards Scotland as Madrid has acted towards Catalonia.
His toothless policy towards the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein has created an unsustainable democratic vacuum in Northern Ireland.
There is a case for the EU guaranteeting internal as well as external frontiers – which would make Scottish independence impossible were the UK to remain an EU member.
The Spanish Prime Minister’s tin-eared reaction to police violence served to heighten, not dampen down, tensions.
Two cheers for a measure that, though mostly about managing, dividing and taming popular opinion, remains a reforming landmark.
Plus: As I bask by a sun-illuminated swimming pool on holiday in Spain, I reflect on how the Spanish respond if you try to fiddle your water supply…
And, separately, I interview a Prime Minister who doesn’t seem at all brow-beaten or lacking in authority, but instead appears to have recovered her MoJo.