'Any economic gains are likely to be small compared to the cost of leaving the customs union and single market.'
Brexit Opportunities Abound – Part 2
17/02/2022
Continuing the letter to Jacob Rees-Mogg, reminding him – he seems to need reminding – of the many new opportunities created by Brexit.
How Britain Falls Apart
05/01/2022
A road trip through the ancient past and shaky future of the (dis)United Kingdom. / The grim reality for Britain as it faces up to 2022 is that no other major power on Earth stands quite as close to its own dissolution.
Watching Jeffrey Donaldson turn the DUP back towards accepting the protocol is an absurd and impressive spectacle.
Poll: Will Brexit bring Northern Ireland and the Republic closer together or further apart?
30/11/2021
SINCE THE 2016 Brexit vote, talks of Irish reunification among the people and pundits are being discussed more than ever.
No matter that they negotiated and signed up to the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) less than a year ago, it is increasingly clear that they did so with little or no intention to honour what they agreed with the EU.
Brexit Is Still a Hot Mess - Time
23/10/2021
One thing that hasn’t? Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union, is still a hot mess. / The latest chapter in the saga has the British government threatening to go “nuclear” and invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol—not good for already tense U.K.-E.U. relations.
The former prime minister’s hollow catchphrase captured a fundamental truth—just not the one she thought it did.
Northern Ireland, food prices, the ease of a deal - it turns out that many of the claims made by those advocating Brexit were not quite true...
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warns about the ongoing border disputes, but he stresses that violence is unlikely.
The London bureau chief for Germany’s public broadcaster reflects on Britain’s government.
No hint of contrition or constructiveness in article by Lord Frost and Brandon Lewis... just menace.
Brexit’s collateral damage - Chris Patten
30/06/2021
Five years after the Brexit vote, the costs of that decision are becoming clearer.
That vote -- five years ago Wednesday -- was supposed to settle the United Kingdom's perennial neurosis over its relationship with Europe once and for all. It did nothing of the sort.
An expected snap election in Northern Ireland would become a mini-poll on post-Brexit trade arrangements.
Boris Johnson & the Rise of Make-Believe
17/06/2021
It is no good offering people a ‘story to believe in’ if it ends in harm – but the Prime Minister does not know any other way, observes Jonathan Lis.
Even the keenest Brexiteer must feel that the process has been tortuously long. / That has been, in large part, because successive British governments have refused to accept the trade-off between untrammelled sovereignty and friction-free access to the EU’s single market, a refusal that shapes today’s increasingly testy relationship.
Brexit May Spoil Johnson’s G-7 Party
09/06/2021
The Brexit bills are starting to fall due for Boris Johnson just as the U.K. prime minister seeks to cast himself as a global statesman leading the Group of Seven’s fight to defeat Covid-19.
The PM is reportedly considering bypassing the Northern Ireland protocol so British sausages can continue to be sold there.
SDLP’s Brexit spokesman says Frost’s attempts to unpick NI protocol risking investment.
Brexit: is it sustainable?
08/07/2021
In January 2020, as Britain was about to exit the EU, a post appeared on the London School of Economics (LSE) blog musing about the mechanism and conditions that might apply if Britain ever wanted to re-join.
Brexit’s Ghosts Still Haunt Northern Ireland
28/04/2021
BELFAST, Northern Ireland—For more than a week earlier this month, Northern Ireland was rocked by riots in pro-British unionist communities, with frequent outbursts of violence in areas bordering on pro-Irish nationalist neighborhoods.
Northern Ireland: Petrol bombs won't demolish a border in the Irish Sea or turn back the tide of Brexit
24/04/2021
The Protocol has reaffirmed Unionism's worst fears that Northern Ireland is the unwanted child of the British government.
Great Brexit Con Job
13/04/2021
Get Brexit Done’ has unravelled in a spectacular fashion; a significant knock to the economy, removal of rights and freedoms, more red tape for business and – the most heart-breaking of all – trouble has returned to Northern Ireland. The obvious answer to this foreseeable problem is for the UK to be part of the single market and customs union.
The myriad of ways Brexit has permanently shifted the course of Northern Ireland's future
17/03/2021
BEFORE THE BREXIT vote, Northern Ireland was on a more stable trajectory.