26 February 2024
Should he win the next general election, one of the key decisions that will face Sir Keir Starmer will be whether and how far to seek a softening of the terms of the Brexit deal negotiated by Boris Johnson. Although Labour have ruled out any attempt to rejoin the EU, the party has left the […]
31 August 2023
The defining slogan of the Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum was, of course, ‘Take back control’. The slogan not only referenced how Brexit would facilitate control of immigration, but also of goods and services entering the UK. For some advocates of Leave at least, that latter prospect was a crucial part of their […]
10 March 2023
The conclusion of a new agreement between the UK and the EU on how the movement of goods between Great Britain (outside the single market) and Northern Ireland (inside) has fuelled speculation that it might pave the way for some softening of the UK’s relationship with the EU. Public attitudes towards some of the steps […]
23 January 2023
In two blogs earlier this month (see here and here), we argued that (i) over the last year there has been a marked swing in favour of rejoining the EU, and (ii) that the principal reason for this was a decline in the proportion of Leave voters who would now vote to stay out of […]
20 December 2022
A month ago, The Sunday Times ran a front-page story in which it claimed that ‘senior government figures are planning to put Britain on the path towards a Swiss-style relationship with the European Union’. Although outside the EU, a series of bilateral deals mean Switzerland has access to the single market and implements freedom of […]
3 May 2022
Brexit is widely regarded as done and dusted – though the latest Redfield & Wilton/UK in a Changing Europe poll today suggests voters in Great Britain are still more or less evenly divided between those who would (49%) and those who would not (51%) reverse Brexit. However, one issue that is certainly still to be […]
28 December 2020
Following the successful conclusion of the negotiations on the UK’s future relationship with the EU on Christmas Eve, the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the institution are now known and, subject to ratification of the deal by Parliament on Wednesday, will be put in place on New Year’s Day. Those on the Leave side […]
30 November 2020
After missing deadline after deadline, the EU and the UK have now reached a point where they are going to have to decide in the next week or so what will happen when the Brexit transition period terminates at the end of the year. Is a deal to be struck whereby the UK’s membership of […]
10 November 2020
Last year the headlines were dominated by Brexit. This year the issue has only sporadically made it onto the news agenda. This is despite the fact that an agreement has still not been reached between the UK and the EU about their future relationship – and the cliff edge that will come with the end […]
31 January 2020
Today the UK leaves the EU, three and a half years after the original vote to do so in the 2016 EU referendum. The political difficulties in the way of implementing Brexit were finally cleared by the outcome of the general election in December, which gave the Conservatives – who were committed to the UK […]