An expected snap election in Northern Ireland would become a mini-poll on post-Brexit trade arrangements.
Despite its long membership, Britain has seriously failed to grasp the way the EU works, writes N Piers Ludlow (LSE). Many of the stickiest points in the Brexit negotiations, including the Northern Ireland backstop and the decision to trigger Article 50 so early, reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how the bloc operates.
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.
With a potential trade war looming, Conservatives are stuck in an ever-more destructive disagreement over what Britain should look like outside the EU.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warns about the ongoing border disputes, but he stresses that violence is unlikely.
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.
UK PM Boris Johnson had been wildly happy about his new EU exit deal; then he introduced a law undermining both it, and the last round of trade negotiations. Speaking with two former permanent secretaries of the UK’s EU exit department, Matt Ross asks whether Johnson is applying firm leverage – or deliberately sabotaging the trade talks.
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.
'A dagger at the heart of the Union': Brexit reality for Northern Ireland will fuel Nationalist hopes of Irish unity
01/01/2021
Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill says Brexit is a gamechanger, but the DUP's Arlene Foster doesn't consider Irish unity inevitable.
As Brexit looms, nationalists in Northern Ireland are increasingly looking to Dublin for representation. Now, as Ben Kelly explains, political parties are responding in new, innovative ways.
Brexit: No light ahead of the tunnel
13/06/2020
On 7 October last year, there was a defining phone call between Boris Johnson and Angel Merkel.
Brexit was to allow the United Kingdom to reclaim its former glory. Instead, the country's leaders have bumbled their way into catastrophe. Built on a false premise from the start, the UK's move away from the EU has been dominated by mistakes and miscalculations.
Brexit after Boris
31/07/2022
Boris Johnson became prime minister on the promise that Brexit would bring prosperity and pride. Did it?
Brexit Chickens Come Home to Roost
07/06/2022
While the picture’s hardly pretty and certainly not what advocates of Brexit envisioned, none of it surprises economists. As a former Bank of England official observed: “You run a trade war against yourself, bad things happen.”
Republican sentiment is rising over fears that Brexit will tank the economy, but Northern Ireland’s unionists won’t go quietly.
Brexit’s collateral damage - Chris Patten
30/06/2021
Five years after the Brexit vote, the costs of that decision are becoming clearer.
They have worked out that the Good Friday Agreement scuppers their plans for a hard Brexit.
The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill should be scrapped – a trade war with the EU would harm us all
02/07/2022
The UK government’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill has now begun its journey through Parliament. If passed, it will unilaterally set aside significant sections of the Protocol – breaching international law and risking a trade war in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
When Boris Johnson agreed the Brexit divorce package with the EU, he promised it would unleash innovation, turning Britain into an agile “science superpower”. But rather than boost UK science and technology, Brexit has – so far – damaged it,
Fiach Kelly: The main threat from a crashout is political and constitutional, not economic.
A much bigger driver of the unity chatter is, of course, Brexit and the out-workings of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol, in particular the Irish sea border that Secretary of State Brandon Lewis denies exists.
Borderlands - Keeping the Peace
15/01/2019
An old conflict and a new Border: How Britain's exit from the European Union could threaten 20 years of peace in Northern Ireland.
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.
Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister is the end of what little hope remained that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill would be scrapped.