Category: Europe

Catalonia: 2017 is not 1936

Yesterday someone I'd never heard of, but apparently gets TV show appearances in the US, posted a tweet containing a ridiculously irrelevant observation about the current situation in Catalonia, the province of Spain whose...

If in doubt, blame Putin

Last Sunday there was a Nick Cohen article in the Observer about Russian influence and how, for example, Russian "dark money" is suspected of funding the Leave campaign now that it appears Arron Banks...

May’s speech rewrote history

So, last Friday Theresa May, the British prime minister, gave a speech in Florence (full text here) in which she told us what sort of Brexit she hoped she could achieve, notably rejecting both...

The Lexit delusion

It's no secret that the bulk of the support for the campaign to pull the UK out of the European Union last year came from the Right — UKIP and large sections of the...

UKIP, the ‘burqa’ and FGM

Over the weekend the so-called UK Independence Party published as part of its 2017 election manifesto an "integration agenda" which includes a ban on face coverings, which it describes as a "deliberate barrier to...

This is a Brexit election

So, Theresa May has called a general election for 8th June, and Parliament has backed her up. After denying that she would have an election or a re-run of the Brexit referendum ever since...

Nation 1.0? It never was

There was an article last Tuesday in the Irish Times by Janan Ganesh: Britons don't pine for Empire; they just want to be left alone, which claims that the people of 'Deep England' who...

Brexit: Back to the 16th Century?

Last Tuesday, there was a programme on BBC Radio 4 in which Jonathan Freedland, a Guardian columnist who was a strong Remain supporter, compared the present Brexit situation with the Elizabethan era, in which...

Blair not the man to lead Brexit fightback

The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, today gave a speech in the City of London in which he declared that Brexit could be defeated if the people who opposed it "rise up" (the...

Time for Europhiles to divide and rule

So, in the last few weeks Jeremy Corbyn has shown his true Euro-Sceptic colours, issuing a three-line whip to order his MPs to vote in favour of the government's bill to trigger Article 50...

So, where’s your inspiring leader?

This week, as the Tory leadership election gets underway and a bunch of five ghastly right-wing, anti-immigrant, mostly Islamophobic extremists compete to be the next prime minister, people who are in or more inclined...

Brexit: A misguided vote

So, on Friday morning we woke up to the news that Britain had voted narrowly (51.9%) in favour of leaving the European Union, with Scotland overwhelmingly against and Northern Ireland also mostly against, but...

Appeal to Muslims on Brexit

Recently I've seen a couple of articles online appealing to Muslims to vote for Britain to leave the EU in this Thursday's referendum. The claims are that the EU is anti-Muslim, that it could...