European union

It’s been almost a full decade since Britain voted to leave the European Union. Inside Labour, whatever words are muttered about accepting the referendum’s result, the consensus remains that Brexit was a mistake. Ministers compete to see who can flirt most openly with re-entry, despite their party manifesto pledges not to rejoin the single market or customs union, or to reintroduce freedom of movement. Keir Starmer has attacked the ‘wild promises’ of Brexit supporters and said Britain must ‘get closer’ to the single market. David Lammy and Wes Streeting have both lamented the ‘damage done by Brexit’ and called for a customs union with Brussels – a proposal that Peter

The problem with Keir Starmer’s approach to Brexit is that it fundamentally misunderstands the country. It isn’t that the Leave-voting public have realised that they made the wrong choice, foolishly tricked by the slogan on the side of a bus a decade ago. Voters in Grimsby have not suddenly been won round to the virtues of the Common Fisheries Policy. Most Leavers do not suddenly think shorter queues at the airport in Sofia is worth the downward pressure on wages caused by thousands of young Bulgarians who (understandably) will think Britain’s £12.21 minimum wage is more attractive than Bulgaria’s roughly £3 per hour. The reason people feel dissatisfied with Brexit

To the great surprise of very few the European Court of Human Rights this week rejected an appeal by Calin Georgescu to overturn last month’s annulment of Romania’s presidential election. The Eurosceptic Georgescu had won the first round of November’s election, but days before the second round Romania’s Constitutional Court cancelled the result because of alleged Russian interference on social media. In its decision, the ECHR said that Georgescu’s appeal fell outside its jurisdiction. That was the bad news for Georgescu. The good news was the publication of a poll this week that puts him firmly in front to win the election when it is re-run in May. He is

Five years ago this week, Boris Johnson was celebrating the achievement of leaving the European Union and wondering how he might take advantage of Britain’s newfound freedoms. A virus had other ideas. Covid-19 didn’t just turn our lives upside down and cost many lives; it robbed the then government of the chance to seize the initiative and prove that Brexit was worth the pain and inevitable disruption. For frustrated anti-Brexit campaigners, the pandemic provided them with ammunition to claim that their worst predictions had been realised. Falling economic growth, rising inflation, empty supermarket shelves – all these came to be blamed on Brexit, ignoring the rather large spanner which had

The news that Hungary and China have signed a security pact, following a visit by to Budapest by Wang Xiaohong, Minister of Public Security, has been a long time in the making. In 2012, two years after beginning his second term as Prime Minister, Viktor Orban formally re-orientated Hungary’s economic and foreign policy under the slogan of the ‘Eastern Opening’. Orban understood the frustration that had returned him to power with a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Two decades of integration with western Europe had made plenty of Hungarians prosperous, but not the majority.  The introduction of the free market in Hungary was accompanied by the mass closure of businesses, and

The Ukraine crisis has transformed international affairs, forcing countries the world over to rethink their alliances and interests. New patterns are forming that will probably stay in place for many years – and one outcome is that global deals are being seen as more effective than regional ones. Sweden and Finland look set to join Nato, and Britain has agreed a defence deal with Japan. In theory, EU countries are required to come to the help of any member that is attacked, but Sweden and Finland feel that only Nato membership (which offers a place under America’s nuclear umbrella) can afford them true protection. As they wait for the applications

In the cold, damp forest lining the border between Poland and Belarus, thousands of refugees flown over from the Middle East have waiting to cross into the EU for days. Belarusian riot police are shoving them away from their gates and towards Poland, where only more forces await. The Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has recently been in conflict with the EU, which has imposed sanctions on his regime after last year’s contested elections which many believe to have been rigged. Lukashenko is pushing refugees towards Poland to be pawns in a fight, with the backing of Putin. The refugees find themselves between a rock and a hard place: in front

Lord Frost’s Lisbon speech represents the most cogent argument yet for replacing the Northern Ireland protocol. So naturally it has been buried under a slurry of snark, solemn head-shaking and breathless indignation. It is worth stepping back from the noise. Switch off the shouty man on LBC, mute the ‘this is not normal’ people on Twitter, and avoid at all costs the catastrophist-analysis of the academic-activists. You will miss nothing. In fact, read Frost’s speech for yourself. It was meant to send a message about the protocol and it does so directly. The Irish are our neighbours. It is in both our countries’ interests that we maintain and enhance the ties