Brexit
Will the DUP’s Edwin Poots win his war on the Northern Ireland protocol?
What to make of the triumph of Edwin Poots, the new leader of the Democratic Unionist party, who defeated the…
Welcome signs
While the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has no formal role in devising the bloc’s immigration policy, his…
Who would want to replace Arlene Foster?
Arlene Foster has announced that she will be standing down as DUP leader on the 28 May and First Minister…
Rage on the page
As a budding political apparatchik, my first job out of university was as a junior parliamentary assistant to Alan Duncan…
The collapse of the Brexit scare stories
The collapse in UK-EU trade after 1 January was widely reported. What has not been reported nearly as much is…
Wicked wit
The title alludes to Jonathan Meades’s first collection of criticism, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, and to the album by…
Low life
For EU nationals living in Britain and wanting to legally remain after Brexit, a letter or an email was enough…
The EU needs to stop playing politics with law
The Lugano convention – part of a tapestry of complicated international law agreements ensuring the courts of one country recognise…
The Northern Ireland Protocol is untenable
The process that delivered us the Northern Ireland Protocol already seems to have been rewritten in official memory. It suits…
The UK’s vaccine roll-out has ended the Brexit debate
The country would remain implacably divided for a generation, with Remain and Leave replacing class and geography as the new…
Can Spain’s Europhilism last?
‘Suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room where there is a person he longs to see…
Starmer’s Labour is following the French Socialists into oblivion
Why does Keir Starmer seem set on following the example of the French Socialist party, and leading Labour into electoral…
What should go in the Brexit museum
Have you ever wondered what happened to Boris Johnson’s Brexit bus? One might think such a large, controversial item would…
Boris has a trump card in denying Sturgeon an ‘illegal’ referendum
Amidst all the dry economic arguments, one of the more emotive fronts on which the 2016 referendum was fought was…
European nations are reasserting themselves
All but the most hardened Remainer will admit that the EU’s vaccine rollout has been poor. Up against the UK’s…
Nigel Farage is destroying his own legacy
How’s this for a terrible confession? There has always been a small part of me that admires Nigel Farage. As…
Can Priti Patel’s asylum shake-up help Britain take back control?
Every Home Secretary is forced to confront the cold political realities of the office. What they set out to deliver…
New poll gives Brexit a shot in the arm
On New Years’ Eve former Labour minister Andrew Adonis grandly declared on Twitter: ‘The campaign for Britain to rejoin Europe starts…
Diane Abbott has exposed Keir Starmer’s Red Wall dilemma
Were Keir Starmer more like Gordon Brown in temperament then by now he’d be throwing his mobile phone at a…
Is Biden turning on Brussels?
The Joe Biden administration, headed up by a proud son of Ireland, has spent St Patrick’s Day briefing reporters in Washington…
The danger of mocking Nigel Farage
He’s gone. Again. Even casual watchers of UK politics will be used to Nigel Farage quitting…and then returning.But this time,…
Brexit and gender are off limits for aspiring authors
When a small US publisher accepted my first book for young adults, ‘Crosstrack’, it wasn’t long before things went pear…
Barnier and France fear Brexit Britain’s next moves
Michel Barnier – still officially the EU’s Brexit taskforce leader – gives few interviews. As a Savoyard and keen mountaineer,…
Are loyalists plotting a return to violence?
What are we to make of Loyalist paramilitary groups withdrawing support for the Good Friday Agreement over the invidious trade…
Scotland could become the EU’s next great problem
It is generally acknowledged, even by diehard Remainers, that the European Union’s handling of Cameron’s attempted renegotiation of the UK’s…
