Tag Archives: EU

‘On Brexit, Labour is about to take a big gulp from a poisoned chalice’, New Statesman, 27 November 2017

What we always seem to talk about when we talk about Brexit is the Tories. Given that they’re in government, and given the mess they seem to be making of the whole thing, that’s wholly understandable.  But it’s also dangerous, … Continue reading

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‘My secret plan to turn students against Brexit’, Politico, 26 October 2017.

My name is Tim Bale and I’m an academic. I’ve been abusing Brexit for nearly a year and a half now, and I just can’t seem to stop. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, even if … Continue reading

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‘The Tory temperament means a U-turn on Europe is always possible’, Financial Times, 27 September 2017.

The prime minister’s speech in Florence may well help, in the short term, to clear some of the obstacles that currently stand in the way of the UK’s departure from the EU in 2019. But here is a heretical thought: … Continue reading

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‘Pro-EU Tories flirting with rebellion need to put their votes where their mouths are’, Times Red Box, 6 September 2017.

How much more of this can we be expected to take? With each and every passing day, we seem to read more and more about the looming threat posed to the government’s supposedly precarious commons majority on Brexit by rebellious … Continue reading

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‘EU referendum: one year on – political parties’, UK in a Changing Europe, 26 June 2017.

As far as the UK’s political parties were concerned, last summer’s EU referendum was a bit like one of those tag-team wrestling matches you see on TV. Although the bout began with everyone thinking they knew who was on which … Continue reading

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‘Forward Together: What the Tory manifesto says about Europe’, UK in a Changing Europe, 21 May 2017

Ah, Hear’Say! Not ‘hearsay’, as in stuff that you can’t really substantiate, but Hear’Say – the reality-TV band who went up like a rocket and down like a stick at the beginning of the noughties. Even if you can’t remember … Continue reading

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‘Truth to tell: populism and the immigration debate’, LSE Politics and Policy, 1 March 2017.

We are living in a world where it’s no longer ‘the economy, stupid’. That’s not to say real wages, the cost of living, and tax-and-spend don’t matter to people anymore. Clearly, they still do. But they no longer trump nearly … Continue reading

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‘David Cameron is not the man to shoot the Conservative Eurosceptic dog’, Telegraph, 10 May 2016

You know the Tory Civil War is back on when the body-snatching starts again in earnest.  A few weeks ago, Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, the MP for Mid-Sussex, made it plain that he took a dim view of … Continue reading

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‘Speaking for Britain? MPs broadly reflect the views of their supporters on Europe – but one side should worry a little more than the other’ (with Philip Cowley, Anand Menon and Sofia Vasilopoulou LSE Brexit Blog, 12 February, 2016.

To hear some people talk about ‘the political class’, you’d think that those who do the electing and those that get elected have little in common, creating a damaging disconnect which is supposedly fuelling populist politics on both left and … Continue reading

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‘Cameron and Tebbit are both wrong: Tory activists are not as set on leaving the EU as many imagine’ (with Monica Poletti and Paul Webb), 5 February 2016.

David Cameron has run into trouble for warning Tory backbenchers not to make up their minds on whether to campaign for Leave or Remain “because of what your constituency association might say”. The reaction to his remarks was swift and … Continue reading

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