Category: Background

Ambition, Distraction, Unification and Division

April 21, 2019

Ambition , Distraction, Unification, and Division (the EU Turtle’s arithmetic) Every so often we try to find good arguments from Remainers to test our Leaver arguments against. Invariably we are disappointed; our opponent’s arguments are weak and too easy to refute, often muddled and sometimes self-contradictory. This week’s Charlemagne column in The Economist (TE) exhibits all three characteristics … More Ambition, Distraction, Unification and Division

Themes-1: Politics

April 18, 2019

This is the first in a series of posts, each of which gathers previous posts into a single theme. We provide a brief summary of each selected post. A.   Parliament has not been wholly sovereign since 1973 (when Ted Heath signed us up to join the EU), becoming less so ever since. Nick Boles promised … More Themes-1: Politics

It’s the Ideology

April 10, 2019

Is Democracy a Nuisance? In EU member countries, their constitutions oblige governments to put themselves up periodically for re-election, or dismissal. The ‘constitution’ of the EU (i.e. the treaties) does not require this inconvenience. This is a designed feature not an accident. To achieve its goal of a federal state in Europe the EU must … More It’s the Ideology

Remains of the Fray

April 10, 2019

In August 2016, two months after the Referendum and seven months before Parliament agreed by a huge majority to begin the process of withdrawing from the EU, we posted a review of how Brexit was shaping up. It is astonishing how little has changed and how much remains relevant nearly three years on. For this … More Remains of the Fray

Enough is Enough

March 31, 2019

Future Perfect? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (AE-P. Daily Telegraph 21/03/2019) has helpfully gathered together critical views on the Brexit negotiations and the proposed Withdrawal Agreement from some German commentators. To show that this blog is not alone in arguing that the future of the EU is, to say the least, uncertain, we copy some of these views … More Enough is Enough

News From Nowhere

March 28, 2019

In 1890 the socialist artist William Morris imagined a future utopian England, of 2003, where the Houses of Parliament were no longer a place of politics but were used for storing manure [1]. Whilst Morris’s dream didn’t come about by that year we were certainly reminded of it by what happened there on Monday, 25th … More News From Nowhere

Freedom from Information

March 28, 2019

Transparency The EU declares loudly in its treaties and in its marketing puff that it is an enthusiastic proponent of freedom of information and transparency (see https://ec.europa.eu/info/about-european-commission/service-standards-and-principles/transparency/freedom-information_en). However: The EU Parliament’s Secretary-General for the last ten years has been Klaus Welle. One of his responsibilities is to administer ‘the Bureau’, an internal Parliamentary body that … More Freedom from Information