This blog is hosted on Ideas on Europe
Being a member of the EU costs on average only around 34p a day each. That’s a bargain, especially as the value of EU benefits far outweigh the cost. The Confederation of British Industry has calculated that EU membership is worth around £3,000 a year to every British family — a return of nearly £10 for each […]
Brexit takes a low priority in Labour’s general election manifesto, as does Remain. That will be a disappointment to Labour Remainers, who represent a significant majority of the party’s members and voters. Labour’s policy on Brexit is just three pages long and nestled deep in their manifesto on page 88. That probably tells us as much […]
Britain’s been negotiating to leave the EU, just so we can negotiate another arrangement to get back as much as possible of what we’ve already got as an EU member, but on considerably inferior terms. If we don’t get what we want (i.e. the EU benefits we desperately want back after we’ve left), the government […]
At 8pm last night, the government published the legislation for Boris Johnson’s proposed Brexit deal. The Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) is 115 pages long and has an extra 126 pages of explanatory notes. MPs have just 24 hours to digest this WAB before casting their first key votes on it later tonight. The legislation is […]
Tomorrow, Parliament votes – yet again – on whether to accept the latest Brexit withdrawal agreement, put together at the last minute after Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, agreed to key concessions (yes, he blinked first). Over three years after the EU referendum, the choice still facing the country is the deal (as revised), no deal, […]
Brexit campaigners often claim that the EU isn’t democratic. But in many ways, it’s more democratic than our system of democracy in the UK where: We have an unelected second chamber. We have an unelected head of state (who has no real power to intervene on important issues). We have an old-fashioned voting system of […]
Compare our past Prime Ministers to the current incumbent. Whatever you may have thought of them at the time, by contrast to Boris Johnson, they now seem positively honourable and principled. Of course, none of those past Prime Ministers was perfect, and all of them had vastly different policies, some of which you may have […]
Boris Johnson was at a Climate Change Conference in New York today as the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that his prorogation of Parliament was unlawful. For sure, the climate for Johnson has changed. But so far, he seems to think he can weather the storm. The beleaguered Prime Minister said that he “strongly disagreed” with the court’s […]
LibDem leader, Jo Swinson, has promised that if her party wins the general election, they will revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit. Some people are crying that would be undemocratic, as it would mean undoing the referendum result of 2016. Some are even claiming that it would represent an insult to the 17.4 million who […]
The three Tory Prime Ministers of this millennium – David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson – could have been the solvers of Brexit if only they had been wiser, magnanimous and acted in the national interest. ▪ WISER – by realising that an advisory referendum, with such a narrow win for Leave, did not mean having […]
UACES and Ideas on Europe do not take responsibility for opinions expressed in articles on blogs hosted on Ideas on Europe. All opinions are those of the contributing authors.