Eu

Today marks five years since the United Kingdom voted to Leave the European Union. London, as we all know by now, voted the opposite way to the rest of England — by a margin of 60 to 40 per cent. Ever since then, the capital has been portrayed as remote and out of touch, culturally disconnected from the rest of the nation. Brexit is often explained as the victory of the long-ignored Rest of England where the ‘real people’ live. In 2019, Dominic Cummings told reporters to ‘get out of London, go and talk to people who are not rich Remainers’. But is London really so different to the rest

The EU may boast a common currency like any other state (even if nearly a third of its 27 members do not use it). It may also have, through its regulatory jurisdiction over banks and financial services, a vast say in the running of the financial system throughout the bloc: powers at least comparable to those of a federal government such as that in Canada or Australia. But there is one thing the EU has not yet managed to get: a unified tax system.  Any attempt seriously to impinge on national tax laws still requires unanimity among member states. This irks Euro-federalists.  One reason is that it draws the centre

At last week’s G7 summit, Boris Johnson pushed his fellow leaders to back his climate finance plan to support large-scale renewable energy projects across Africa and parts of Asia. The PM received a decidedly lukewarm response to his new Marshall plan, only netting pledges from Canada and Germany – and for good reason. As Rishi Sunak highlighted this week, when he declined to put a ‘specific figure’ on the cost of Net Zero in an interview on GB News, the cost of these climate plans are anything but clear. Fundamentally, Boris’s plan to boost renewables around the world misses the fact that renewables are actually struggling to catch up with

Has the EU Commission lost any sense of moral value? This week, Hungary, an EU member state, voted to impose bigoted and oppressive laws on its LGBT citizens. This amounted to a clear breach of many of our domestic laws – and it is a breach of the shared Human Rights laws. Yet the EU’s response has been dismal. Is it time for Britain to show solidarity with LGBT Hungarians – and walk away from its treaty with the EU? The EU Commission said it is aware of what is unfolding in Hungary and that:  ‘When protecting children from harmful content it is important for member states to find the right balance

The jibes thrown at Boris Johnson over his unhappiness with the Northern Ireland protocol — based on the obvious observation that he was the one who signed it — have been based on the assumption that he is either a liar or a fool. A liar because he knew full well what he was signing up to, or a fool for not knowing what he was agreeing to. Does anyone think that officials told him that the protocol would prevent Northern Ireland having access to some cancer drugs? Or guide dogs being unable to move between GB and NI? Keir Starmer has repeated the jibe about Johnson. A further version is

It’s not only in Northern Ireland that the EU has taken to acting like some imperial power. Last week, with international correspondents’ eyes conveniently fixed on the G7, it quietly began a legal push to take over large areas of its remaining member states’ domestic affairs. On Tuesday, the Commission announced that it was suing no fewer than seven of them in the Court of Justice for breaking EU law. Czechia and Poland are accused of not allowing EU citizens generally to join national political parties, and Hungary of not accepting migrants according to Brussels’s plans. The Netherlands, Greece and Lithuania are charged with failing to have severe enough laws

Even a pessimist could be forgiven for being surprised by Joe ‘I’m Irish’ Biden’s ham-fisted intervention in the ongoing row over the Northern Ireland protocol. If Boris Johnson’s remark that the phrase ‘special relationship’ didn’t ring true before, they certainly must after the President opened his visit by quoting Y.B. Yeats on the Easter Rising… while visiting a Royal Air Force base. It will also be a wearisomely familiar routine for Ulster unionists, who have been scorning American pressure to abandon Britain since at least the days of Woodrow Wilson. How will the government respond? There remain many on the right bewitched by yesterday’s Atlanticism. It ought to be absurd

Cracks are appearing in the EU’s climate strategy. An international dispute over the court-ordered closure of a coal mine on the Poland-Czech Republic border has thrown divisions over how to phase out fossil fuels into sharp relief, leading to the first ever environment-related lawsuit between two EU member states. The Czech Republic has taken Poland to the European Court of Justice to oppose the extension of a licence for the Turów coal mine on Poland’s south-western border with the Czech Republic and Germany. The Czech government said that continued operations at the mine constitute a risk to the health of Czechs living nearby due to air pollution and reduced groundwater supplies. The ECJ