My gift from Open Rights Group for supporting their campaign against the Snoopers’ Charter now has even more ominous overtones. The eyes really follow you around the chatroom...

Mona Theresa mousemat

Theresa May: unpredictable, moralistic and heading to No 10.

May often demands the scientifically impossible.

David Cameron’s premiership is a tragedy for which we will all pay.

Composers have a field day with Cameron’s resignation song.

12 July 2016 · Politics

Brexit Case

Comments on Brexit from A. C. Grayling, Ian McEwan, Nick Clegg and many more.

From before the vote: England’s post-imperial stress disorder. Brexit will end in English self-rule.

How immigration came to haunt Labour. The rejection of migration from Eastern Europe is personal. Did the referendum spark a surge in hate crimes? The police say so.

The inside story of a doomed campaign. A coup by one set of public schoolboys against another.

The prospect of Brexit Britain turning into a post-global disaster zone is real.

Whatever you do, don’t become us, Swiss academics warned. Whoops.

12 July 2016 · Politics

My Eyes Like Nothing in the Sun

A poetic reflection on the man who’s done more than anyone to set back progress in my home and adopted countries, written post-EU-referendum. More than I would ever actually advocate, but it sure was cathartic to write.

Eight Days a Week

I walked from Liverpool to London. Brexit was no surprise. This man voted Leave to spread the pain. Brexit was a con. The great betrayal. Brexit is only the latest proof of the insularity and failure of Western establishment institutions. A disaster decades in the making.

Referendums are supposed to make people happy. Why are even Leave voters upset? Research suggests 2.3 million Leave voters regret their choice.

Brexit will not mean greater catches. Of course the Brexiters didn’t plan. Arsonists never carry water. Brexit is a revolution, and like all revolutions, it will eat its own.

Police log fivefold rise in race-hate complaints since the Brexit result. No rise in Scotland.

Scottish MEP’s pro-EU speech was made up on the spot. Nigel Farage made me facepalm. I couldn’t hide my despair.

1 July 2016 · Politics

Reliable Results

A threaded comment on Twitter highlights another nightmarish aspect of the prospect of being left out in the WTO cold for several years post-Brexit. Not only would WTO tariffs on UK exports kill our markets within the EU (which take almost half of UK exports), but:

In order to enter the EU, goods must conform with EU regulations. As you’d expect. At the moment, this isn’t a problem because the bodies which regulate conformity in this country are recognised by the EU. Upon ejection from the EU, this recognition would cease. Which means that UK goods entering the EU would be held up at every border point, while their conformity to regulations was tested. This would make selling to the EU virtually impossible unless our regulatory bodies could be certified by the EU. And they’ll be in no hurry to do that.

← June 2016