Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of law at Swansea Law School
If you fret about a democratic deficit in the EU or even Britain, turn your mind for a moment to one European country with a very peculiar form of democracy indeed. In this country, divided into two parts which hardly deign to speak to each other, your right to vote, to be returned, and in
Eurocrats don’t naturally do compromise, but Brussels may have to learn to compromise quite fast if it is to have any hope of avoiding a bruising showdown with eastern Europe. As often happens the backdrop is formed by events in Poland, where the ruling PiS party under Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki faces a crucial election
Imagine a policeman feels your collar and tells you you’re nicked because someone has reported you for telling off-colour stories in a corner of the rugby club bar, or for making sick jokes at a party to a group of friends which the authorities disapproved of? Something as positively Stasi-esque wouldn’t happen here, would it?
The story of the out-of-touch 1960s High Court judge asking counsel ‘Who are the Beatles? Are they giving evidence in this case?’ is almost certainly apocryphal, as is the suave response (‘I believe they are a popular beat combo, m’lud.’). But a majority decision from the Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn this week shows that senior
The National Trust, RSPCA, RSPB and the Woodland Trust have put the government on notice over its climate policies. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has effectively been told: water down your net zero commitments and you’ll have our 20 million members to answer to. The warning came in an open letter in which the PM was
It’s not difficult to pick holes in Education Secretary Gillian Keegan’s plan, publicised over the weekend, to deal with so-called ‘rip off’ university courses. True, there is a serious problem. Too many students are being inveigled into signing up for degrees with low entry requirements, little intellectual stimulation, a high drop-out rate and not a great
Rishi Sunak has touched down at the Nato summit, but there’s only one question journalists want to ask him about: the allegations that a BBC presenter paid a young person for explicit photos. The claims are ‘shocking and concerning’, the Prime Minister said, adding that he has been assured the BBC’s investigation will be ‘rigorous
Failing to tackle immigration isn’t only a problem for Rishi Sunak. The European Union is also struggling to deal with the issue. Now, Brussels has devised a plan for dividing up among its member states the would-be migrants at the EU’s doors. But Poland and Hungary are not happy. The EU used qualified majority voting, which
The government’s loss in its Rwanda appeal spells trouble for Rishi Sunak. But liberals are delighted: ‘Massive result,’ said the barrister Adam Wagner after the Court of Appeal ruled that would-be asylum seekers cannot be sent to the African country while their claims are processed. Sunak plans to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court –
Hungary, a magnet for numerous would-be migrants because of its 110-mile land border with Serbia, has taken its own steps to stem the flow. One is brutally physical: a twelve-foot razor wire fence. The other is legal. Three years ago, Budapest passed a law preventing anyone not already lawfully resident seeking asylum, except through nominated
Even with Nicola Sturgeon politically hors de combat, Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf has made it clear he intends to forge ahead with her plans to hold a second independence referendum. The Scottish government has produced its blueprint for the future constitution that could flow from such an independence vote. Any voter contemplating taking up Humza’s offer and voting
Parliamentary select committees can, on occasion, be wise, impartial and dispassionate. Unfortunately they are also vulnerable to being taken over by an unholy combination of those with an axe to grind, and members of the great and the good unwilling to rock the liberal boat. This is essentially what has happened to the Joint Committee
Life is not terribly good these days for most university teachers. Colleges, once centres of collegiate administration run on a principle of de facto equality and open expression of opinion, are now top-down managed by a cadre of bosses more interested in spreadsheets than seminars, and image more than erudition, where an injudicious word can
Rishi Sunak’s promise to close down the Confucius Institutes in UK universities when he pitched for the Tory leadership sounded like a good idea. Sadly it was also ill thought out. In a liberal democracy it’s difficult just to close down organisations you don’t like by governmental order. His backtracking on that promise this week was therefore
There’s no doubt that the government has the best of intentions when it comes to clearing up the Augean stables of UK higher education: witness its setting up of the Office for Students to protect students’ interests against ever-more monolithic university management, and more recently this year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act aimed at
Last month Michael Gove suggested changing the law in England to allow tourist hotspots to force homeowners to seek planning permission before they can rent out holiday lets. Planning laws aimed at preserving the character of a locality are entirely consistent with conservative principles It didn’t go down well. Some on his own side, including hard hitters like
Claims of financial skulduggery abound, Nicola Sturgeon is politically hors de combat and Humza Yousaf is quickly rebranding the SNP as a party not only of shatteringly incompetent government but also of lost causes, political irrelevance and sheer kookiness. Thinking Scots who don’t fancy the Tories might be forgiven for contemplating a switch of loyalties
Substantial constraints on the freedom of the press tend to accumulate from seemingly small restrictions. Events last week in a court in Antrim in Northern Ireland demonstrate this neatly. A paedophile was caught sending suggestive emails to undercover police posing as prepubescent girls, and went down for 16 months. Who was he? We will never know.
For most of its 66 years of existence, a vital part of the EU’s mission has been the inexorable expansion of its power to tell member states what to do. It now has to grasp though that in future it will need to backtrack. Unless Brussels morphs pretty quickly from a centralised technocracy dispatching orders
There is rather more than meets the eye to Emmanuel Macron’s inept visit to Beijing last week. The immediate fallout – Xi’s flat refusal to change tack on Ukraine, and Macron’s subsequent insistence that France was not beholden to the US or for that matter over-concerned with what China might do in Taiwan – looks
