Here is my Telegraph Blogs take on The Speech: The core Cameron calculation turns on his probably shrewd calculation that the centre of gravity of the British people’s position on “Europe” is that they want Some EU, but Not Too Much. He therefore has promised them a referendum on a […]
My piece for The Commentator on the PM’s UK/EU speech as a speech: … Those sentences, like the opening blather about the origins of the European Union, are intended to send a strong signal to other European capitals: You won’t get a better UK Conservative leader than me who has […]
Before the Internet how would we ever have been able to read a magnificent analysis by James Daily of the contract presented to Bilbo by the dwarves? The contract in the book is short and to the point. The film version (for padding) is far longer and a lot more […]
Here is an elegant bit of work by Jonathan Golub (golub means pigeon in Serbian, by the way) attempting to measure which EU member states are better at getting their way within the system. I could add all sorts of glosses, but read the whole thing and see for yourself […]
Imagine you’re a member of the public mulling over EU issues and the future of the UK/EU relationship. Your heart must sink at the prospect of assorted former Ambassadors hooting mournfully at each other on these questions. Over at Telegraph Blogs is my latest piece on this subject, pointing to […]
As I plus dawg plodded through the sodden fields this Christmas morning (after yesterday narrowly being missed by a falling waterlogged tree as it crashed on to the road), somehow I was reminded of this, from back in April: Head of water resources at the Environment Agency Trevor Bishop said: […]
My latest piece over at Telegraph Blogs looks at how far if at all we can fathom out whether any given EU Budget outcome represents a ‘cut’, and if so a cut of precisely what: The key thing to look for this time is (a) the baseline used for any […]
My post about looking at terrorism in terms of both legitimacy of outcomes and legitimacy of process has prompted a friendly reply from Eddy Canfor-Dumas (Head of Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues, of which John Alderdice is a Co-Chair): An interesting response to what I think […]
For no obvious reason the Browser is recycling a strange 2010 interview with Lord Alerdice, who played a significant part in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The subject is about terrorism, causes of: For me it isn’t a moral term. In other words, I am not using terrorism to […]
A tongue in cheek (so to speak) Tweet by me this afternoon led to a micro Twitter spat on Gender and Sexuality. Cor! This is what started it: Charles Crawford@CharlesCrawford If it’s ok for women not to have men frisk them at airport security, why is it not ok for me […]
