Theresa May has at last managed to negotiate a Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and the EU. That Agreement has clearly shown two things: The best deal the UK can get is a transition period during which everything remains the… Read More ›
Politics
My Brexit Predictions Updated
On 21 March 2017 I published a post entitled ‘My Predictions for the Outcome of the Brexit Negotiations’. You can read the original post below but my key points were: (i) there will be an agreement involving a three to… Read More ›
Reflections on the EU Referendum Campaign: the Immigration Issue
Looking back over previous posts on this site today, I was struck by my 31 August 2015 post ‘Will Immigration Concerns Lead to Brexit?’. As I predicted in that post, immigration has indeed become the number one issue of the… Read More ›
Will Immigration Concerns Lead to Brexit?
Pre-EU Referendum polls show a continuing (and even increasing) lead for the ‘Yes’ campaign for Britain to stay in the EU. However, I am concerned that the constant focus on immigration issues in the UK could overturn this lead by… Read More ›
The Migrant Crisis: The UK Is Trying To Have Its Cake And Eat It Too
The migrant crisis in Calais has assumed tragic proportions, with several of the people trying to enter the UK having lost their lives in the process. Attempts by politicians in the UK and France to solve the crisis have so… Read More ›
Eurosceptic Contradictions
Eurosceptics are now limbering up for the ‘No’ campaign in the UK’s forthcoming EU referendum. It is becoming clear that their key arguments for a ‘No’ vote in the referendum include the following: If the UK does not leave the… Read More ›
The Eurozone and IMF will bend more than Greece to Avoid Grexit
We appear to be nearing the end of the fractious negotiations between Greece and the Eurozone and IMF, over the Syriza government’s demand for a significant relaxation of the debt repayment terms imposed on Greece in December 2012. We know… Read More ›
EU Referendum Issues
Though I have always opposed holding an in-out EU referendum (for reasons well expressed by Tony Blair during the recent election campaign), UK voters have now decreed that we will have one. More than 50% of voters supported the Tories… Read More ›
The LibDems: A Need for Fresh Thinking
The 2015 UK election was truly a debacle for the Liberal Democrat party, of which I am a member. The LibDems now have only eight MPs in the House of Commons (down from 57), and their share of the vote… Read More ›
Planning Restrictions Are Driving Us To Extremes
Almost everyone in the UK agrees that we need to build more houses, indeed many more houses, if we are to provide adequate, and affordable, housing for those who need it. Last year we built 140,000 new houses, but it… Read More ›
The UK Election Campaign Comes to Life
The campaign for the UK election, which will be held on 7th May, is at last showing signs of life. The campaign proper only started on 30th March, after a lengthy ‘phony campaign’ which had been going on since Christmas…. Read More ›
The Leadership Vacuum in Europe
I have always been a keen supporter of the European Union and of the UK’s membership of it. The EU has without doubt helped to keep the peace in Europe since it was established (a major achievement in itself after… Read More ›
Up the revolution…but do not tamper with the Green Belt!
Club and gallery owner Alex Proud published an article in the Telegraph yesterday in which he suggested “10 ways we can fix the UK”. It was an iconoclastic list, verging on the revolutionary, including such ideas as: make it illegal not… Read More ›
Why we should NOT have an EU referendum
As we approach the date of the next UK election on 7th May, there will be increasing debate about the in-out EU referendum that the Tories have promised for 2017. I am writing this post to explain why I strongly… Read More ›
Politicians need to level with the public
Peter Mandelson says politicians need to be more ‘honest’ Peter Mandelson said on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 last Sunday that Labour politicians should be more “honest” with the public about how they would cut spending if they form… Read More ›
Michael Ingle - Interesting Times 