Brexit

Imagine for a minute what British politics would be like without a Covid vaccine. The cabinet would be deeply, and possibly irrevocably, split between those who favoured another year of lockdown on public health grounds and those who thought that the country had no alternative in the circumstances but to ease restrictions and learn to live with the virus. The 100,000 death toll would have been reached with no hope in sight and a public sense that, almost inevitably, things were going to get worse. The vaccine has changed so much. It has given people hope. There is a belief in the general public that this will be the last

The next Northern Ireland assembly election must take place by 5 May next year. The MLAs voted in then will decide whether or not to continue the Northern Ireland protocol, which requires the UK authorities to apply EU rules on various goods entering Northern Ireland. If a majority voted against (that is all that would be needed as the petition of concern, which requires a higher threshold, would not apply), then the protocol would fall. At the moment, it looks very unlikely that the election will result in an anti-protocol majority. But it would clearly be bad for stability in Northern Ireland if the campaign turned into an attempt by Unionists to rally

Valdis Dombrovskis could probably do without his moment in the limelight. His spell as prime minister of Latvia, a country with a population of 1.9 million, was largely successful, at least until the collapse of a supermarket roof in 2014 brought his coalition to an early end.  Shunted off to Brussels, he worked quietly as commission vice-president for the euro and social dialogue– nope, I don’t know what the heck that means either – before being promoted to the slightly more important trade portfolio last year. Now it turns out he is responsible for what is rapidly turning into the biggest policy catastrophe in Europe since the Second World War,

Of all the charges made against Brexiteers, the notion that we ‘don’t understand the modern world’ is the one that some Remainers have most often returned to; their equivalent of the boxer’s stinging jab that relentlessly wears down an opponent. In a global system increasingly dominated by a handful of big players with huge populations and land mass – the US, China, India, Russia – being a medium-sized nation in Europe without the umbrella of the EU was supposed to be a mug’s game. In the European Parliament, that arch-federalist Guy Verhofstadt would often refer to the countries of Europe as ‘dwarfs’ who needed to band together to compete in

A year ago today Britain awoke to a rather muted celebration – which seemed to consist largely of a bubble car driving around Parliament Square with a Union Jack in tow – ready to face up to a brave new future outside the EU. Who would have imagined then that the Observer would mark the first anniversary by running a leading article condemning the EU as ‘shambolic’ and instead praising Boris Johnson’s government for something Britain did all by itself? Of course, the Observer’s judgement is only in respect to one thing: the EU’s joint vaccination procurement programme. Nevertheless, it is something rather important, on which a great number of

At first, it sounded like empty rage. The European Union had spent all week making wild statements about controlling vaccine exports — even challenging the notion of contract law. On Friday, it has started to act on its words and announced it will introduce controls on vaccines made in the EU — potentially giving itself the power to stop Pfizer sending Britain the vaccines it has paid for. Worse, when it made the announcement, it included Northern Ireland. The EU was set to use the ‘last resort’ mechanism in the recently-agreed Northern Ireland Protocol, Article 16, that can unilaterally impose a land border: something both the UK and EU spent years trying to

This is a crucial year for the UK’s two most important relationships, I say in the magazine this week. If the Johnson/Biden diplomatic relationship has got off to a better start than expected, the same cannot be said of the post-Brexit UK/EU one. The alignment between Johnson and Biden on climate change, Russia and China is helping the alliance. This relationship should become closer still given the two side’s agreement on China, the most important geo-political issue of the decade. The EU will attempt, often in not particularly edifying ways, to assert itself as the bigger partner. Earlier this month, Kurt Campbell — who will hold the pen on Asia

The EU is now insisting that AstraZeneca use vaccine produced at its UK site to make up for a shortfall in its supplies to the EU. This is likely to kick off a major row as the UK went to great trouble to ensure that it had first refusal on all the Oxford vaccine produced in the UK. Indeed, AstraZeneca’s willingness to accept that condition is a major reason why Oxford ended up partnering with them. It is not hard to see how this situation could escalate. The EU is already saying that companies should notify them before exporting vaccine out of the bloc, and the German government is going further, calling for

‘All non-essential travel should be strongly discouraged both within the country and of course across borders,’ Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, has said. As a result of the Covid crisis, the dream of open borders across the continent of Europe has never seemed so imperilled. Meanwhile, a post-Brexit Britain has the ability to flex its borders as much as it chooses. To some Brexiteers, this alone makes Brexit worth it. The Schengen agreement was signed in 1985 and became pan-EU in 1999, meaning that, from then on, any country without an opt-out needed to allow free movement of people from any other signatory country (almost all