Eu

The Guardian has a very significant story on its front page tomorrow. It has obtained notes of a meeting that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, had with senior MEPs this week. These notes show that Barnier told them that he wanted a ‘special’ deal that would guarantee access for the EU firms and countries to the City of London’s financial markets. Interestingly, Barnier also said—according to The Guardian’s account—that ‘There will need to be work outside of the negotiation box … in order to avoid financial instability.” This suggests that Barnier shares Mark Carney’s view that there are financial stability risks for Europe if the EU cuts itself off

As a former student of English at Cambridge, I am sent the faculty magazine, 9 West Road. Its latest issue leads with a long article by Peter de Bolla, chair of the faculty, headlined — with intentionally bitter irony — ‘Now we are in control’. On and on he goes — the shocked perplexity of ‘French locals’ in ‘our holiday village’ that we could be Brexiting, the putative loss of the EU exchange students who ‘amaze and challenge’ him, how you cannot study for the tripos’ famous Tragedy paper ‘from the perspective of a monocultural and inwardly facing society or polis’. Prof. de Bolla himself is so monocultural and inward-facing

Theresa May has clearly learnt one lesson from David Cameron’s failed negotiation with the EU. As I write in The Sun this morning. she has realised that if she just asks for what cautious officials think she can get, then she won’t get enough to satisfy the voters—hence Sir Ivan Roger’s resignation as the UK representative to the EU. But an even bigger problem for Cameron’s renegotiation was that the other side never believed he would walk away from the deal. Cameron compounded this problem when he made clear that he wanted the whole thing done quickly, further reducing his negotiating leverage. So, when May makes her big Brexit speech

Back in the summer of 2015, a year before the Brexit vote, I was summoned to the German Embassy in London for a special briefing by a senior member of Germany’s Social Democrats. The man from the SPD didn’t mince his words: David Cameron might secure a few small concessions in his forthcoming renegotiation with the EU, but it was inconceivable that he could obtain any significant changes in Britain’s relationship with Europe. For Germany, free movement of people within the European Union was sacrosanct – and even if Deutschland had been willing to change the rules for Britain’s sake, any major alteration would need to be ratified by all

Few years will live as long in the memory as 2016. Historians will ponder the meaning and consequences of the past 12 months for decades to come. In the future, 180-odd years from now, some Zhou Enlai will remark that ‘it is too soon to say’ when asked about the significance of Brexit. The referendum result shocked Westminster. Michael Gove was so sure it would be Remain that he had retreated to bed on the evening of 23 June and only found out Leave had won when one of his aides telephoned in the early hours of the morning. Theresa May admits in her interview with us that she was

Nothing better sums up the aloofness of the chattering class, their otherworldliness in fact, than their blathering about 2016 being the worst year ever. It’s the refrain running through every Brexitphobic column, every historically illiterate comparison of Trump to Hitler, every tear-sodden list of the big-name celebs who’ve died this year. 2016 is ‘the f–king worst’, says Brit comic in America John Oliver. These people don’t know what they’re talking about. The worst? 2016 has been one of the best years yet for humankind. This year it was announced that global life expectancy is increasing at a faster rate than at any time since the 1960s. The World Health Organisation

Europeans are usually alarmed or sniffy about American concern for democracy’s fate, but this time liberal opinion on both sides of the pond sings in unison: populism is a threat to democracy. A recent issue of the Journal of Democracy (a sober publication published by America’s National Endowment for Democracy) provided a handy compendium of all the parties, policies and histories that can be included in the vast cabin-trunk of populism. A lead article by Takis S. Pappas, a Greek political theorist living in Hungary, lists 22 different parties he cautiously calls ‘challengers to liberal democracy’. He breaks them down into three categories: anti-democrats, nativists and populists. (All are commonly