Trump’s new world chaos offers possibilities for post-Brexit Britain
The Brexit Blog
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1w ago
Last week, if anyone can remember that far back, the fifth anniversary of the UK leaving the EU provoked a welter of comment and detailed analysis from which it is hard to escape the conclusion that what I’ve sometimes called ‘the battle for the post-Brexit narrative’ is over. The public view that it was wrong to leave and that leaving has not been a success is entrenched and growing. The bulk of sensible and serious commentary, both in the UK (£) and abroad, endorses that. Meanwhile, Brexit’s remaining defenders, such as Boris Johnson (£) and Nigel Farage, can only wail about the need to “be ..read more
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Five years on: stuck
The Brexit Blog
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3w ago
As we approach the fifth anniversary of officially leaving the EU, even those who still profess to support Brexit are hard-pressed to explain what the point of it was, and scarcely bother to try. That lack of purpose was underscored by Kemi Badenoch's recent admission that the Conservatives took Britain out of the EU “without a plan for growth”. This wasn’t, as some have taken it to be, an expression of ‘Bregret’, but it was the first time a senior Tory has accepted that the manner in which Brexit was enacted was flawed and, at least by implication, flawed in ways which have done economic dama ..read more
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Welcome to 2025
The Brexit Blog
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1M ago
In one way, it has been a quiet period for Brexit news since my previous, pre-Christmas, post. That is hardly surprising, given the season. But it is only true if Brexit is understood in its narrow and literal sense. Understood in the wider sense of the unfolding of populist politics, 2025 has started with a noisy tumult, of a volume and variety which make it hard to analyze. For personal reasons (my mother died this week), this is a much shorter post than usual, but there is already no doubt that this is going to be an eventful Brexit year. Brexit costs, again Starting with the narrower and ..read more
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Beware the Brexit reset backlash
The Brexit Blog
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2M ago
In a post at the beginning of September, when I compared ‘reset means reset’ with the days of ‘Brexit means Brexit’, I pointed out that there is at least one important difference. The Brexit negotiations took place within a process and timescale which was at least semi-defined by Article 50. Any reset process will be more nebulous, and shouldn’t really be thought of as a process, in the singular. At the same time, a virulent backlash against the reset is now beginning and, with it, a new phase in the battle for post-Brexit politics. The Brexit reset The reset can be understood in terms of tw ..read more
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Where is post-Brexit Britain?
The Brexit Blog
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2M ago
I always try, and am usually able, to create an overall theme to each post on this blog. There are times, though, and this is one of them, when there is no particular shape to the latest Brexit-related events. Instead, there has been a ragbag of news, but that in itself is revealing of a more general drift. Brexit still not done So where to start? Perhaps with that part of Brexit which is still not, in the most basic meaning of the term, ‘done’: Gibraltar. As long ago as April, under the previous government, it was being reported that a deal was finally ‘imminent’, but nothing came of it. La ..read more
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Post-Brexit Britain’s Trump problem goes much deeper than trade tariffs
The Brexit Blog
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3M ago
Brexit is back in the news again. That is partly the aftermath of the budget, discussed in my previous post, which was followed by speeches at the Mansion House by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey. The latter highlighted the economic damage of Brexit and called for a re-building of relations with the EU “while respecting the decision of the British people”. It's true that, as economics commentator Simon Nixon observed, this marked a notable break with official Brexit omerta. Still, it was not exactly dynamite stuff. The economics are well-known an ..read more
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The limits and limitations of post-Brexit choices
The Brexit Blog
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3M ago
The very tiniest consequence of Trump’s election victory is that its timing falls messily for me now that this is a fortnightly blog. This post’s main topic, which is last week’s budget, suddenly seems like old news. Equally, writing about that leaves little space to write about the US election. But that may be no bad thing. I often think that hot takes on big events are foolish, and the scale of this event, in particular, is going to take time to process. It is going to be different, bigger, and potentially far more dangerous than what flowed from his 2016 victory. The consequences go well b ..read more
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The Brexit quart won’t fit into Labour’s pint pot
The Brexit Blog
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4M ago
The landscape of the politics of Brexit remains a broad and highly contested terrain, ranging from those convinced it was a great and necessary triumph, to be defended at all costs, to those urging its immediate reversal, with many shades of opinion between. But, under the Labour government, what might be called the immediate practical politics of Brexit operates within a far more restricted space in which only ‘micro-issues’ are subject to political decisions. Those micro-issues and decisions matter, and are worthy of attention, but, ultimately, the question is whether this disjuncture of sca ..read more
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Britain's Brexitism test
The Brexit Blog
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4M ago
The most significant Brexit-related development of the last fortnight was Keir Starmer’s first visit to Brussels since becoming Prime Minister. Media attention focused on his meeting with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, but, notably, he also met with Charles Michel, Chair of the European Council, and Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament. Significant it may have been, but dramatic it certainly wasn’t, and no one should have expected otherwise. This was never likely to be the moment for some great announcement and, in fact, the joint statement of ..read more
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Uncharted waters
The Brexit Blog
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4M ago
The new government continued the process it began in its first week of defining, or redefining, relations with the EU. There’s not much to add to what I said about that in last week’s post. The de facto Europe Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, had a “constructive meeting” with Maros Sefcovic, and Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds spoke of “seeking a closer, more mature, more level-headed” relationship with the EU at a G7 meeting in Italy. There is now tentative talk of the first-ever UK-EU summit (£), which would be at least symbolically significant. Much more high profile was the U ..read more
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