EU – Page 47 – Slugger O'Toole

Labour and Europe: a brief history

Turgon on June 11, 2016, 10:01 am

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The recent narrowing of the polls in the EU referendum has prompted much soul searching by the Remain camp. This may all be unnecessary as exactly the same was seen in the Scottish referendum before Remain’s victory. However, for the meantime Remain is rattled. Much of their angst seems to be coming from the revelation that substantial numbers of traditional Labour supporters are going to back Brexit. This realisation has come with much complaining that Labour is being too metropolitan …

The EU does not guarantee workers rights

Kilsally on June 10, 2016, 11:05 pm

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I must take umbrage with various politicians on the Remain side arguing that leaving the EU threatens workers rights. We currently see trade union strikes in France & Belgium over EU deregulation where train drivers are due to lose rest periods and undermine working conditions. Last night on BBC The View we saw Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson cite a loss of workers rights if we left the EU as a reason to vote Remain, yet her colleague Mary Lou …

#SluggerReport: A good night on the media for Leave…

Mick Fealty on June 10, 2016, 2:58 pm

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This morning’s #SluggerReport. It’s a longish one, but with the highest live viewer total yet. Key references include this report of last night’s ITV debate from The Times Red Box team giving thumbs down to Boris but thumbs up to Camp Leave. Even among Conservatives, Johnson was the choice of 12 per cent, behind Leadsom (33 per cent) and Stuart (35 per cent).When we repeated the poll at the end, there was a smaller sample size of 253, but Leave voters …

However #EURef goes, parties will have to do a much better job at listening…

Mick Fealty on June 8, 2016, 7:01 am

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Okay, so now we have an election out of the way, we have a referendum (at this point, please do read Paul Evans’ widely read critique of Referendums for context here). And, sadly, if inevitably, we are already drowning in Bullshit. It is by no means a one-way street. Both sides are at it. The mere calling of a Referendum means that any subtlety and/or the normal trade-offs are out of the window. It’s a populist bonfire instrument which forces campaigns to search …

EU referendum: The Reverse Sturgeon Option?

Paul Hagan on June 6, 2016, 11:02 pm

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The activities of dissident Irish republican groups is clearly something on the minds of many in Northern Ireland and Westminster. Following-on from the Home Secretary’s warning last month that a fresh attack was “a strong possibility” a number of arrests have been made at the gatherings of various dissident groups in different parts of Northern Ireland. One such recent event gathered less attention, on Saturday the hard-line republican group Éirígí launched their campaign for a “Leave” vote in the EU campaign. …

#Brexit and the potential losses to the UK’s (and Ireland’s) ‘Comparative Advantage’

Mick Fealty on June 6, 2016, 9:26 am

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Dr. Sylvia de Mars, Newcastle Law School and Dr. Aoife O’Donoghue, Durham Law School argue that Brexit would change the basis on which the UK trades regionally and globally and that it would also impact negatively on how Ireland would position itself. One of the primary reasons cited in support of a Brexit is that it would enable the UK to conclude its own trade agreements, and consequently, to trade ‘more freely’ than it can currently do. At present, its …

Sinn Fein believe the EU is undemocratic, lowers wages and damages Irish fishing and farming

Kilsally on June 6, 2016, 7:15 am

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Sinn Fein have launched their Vote Remain campaign because they think the EU is undemocratic, is behind austerity, has decimated Irish fishing, lowers wages, undrmines working conditions and damages family farms: 9 March, 2016 Sinn Féin MEP Liadh Ní Riada asked “Is austerity ruling the EU BUDG committee as it has been ruling some of our Member States?” February, 2016 Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams “We are critical of the European Union because of the democratic deficit …” 18th February 2016 Sinn Féin …

Hannan: Leaving the EU would be a leap into the light.

David McCann on June 4, 2016, 1:01 pm

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We are just under three weeks away from the referendum on whether the UK should continue to be a member of the European Union. For years, one of the strongest critics of the EU has been the Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan. This weekend he is in Northern Ireland to make the case for us to leave the EU, I caught up with him in Belfast earlier this morning. I began by asking him how the campaign overall was going and …

Competing visions – the leave and remain campaigns present their pitch

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on June 2, 2016, 1:07 pm

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Listen back to the short pitches by representatives of the Remain and Leave campaigns at this morning’s final event by EU Debate NI: Owen Paterson, Claire Hanna, Glyn Roberts & Lee Reynolds

Bertie Ahern’s Reflections on Peace in a Changed Ireland – Paisley, Blair, Craig and Brexit

Gladys Ganiel on June 1, 2016, 10:52 am

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Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern praised the contributions of the Rev Ian Paisley and Tony Blair to the Northern Ireland peace process, drew inspiration from the life of the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Craig, and argued energetically that Britain should remain in the European Union in a lecture on ‘Reflections on Peace in a Changed Ireland’, yesterday at Queen’s University Belfast. Ahern’s lecture was the closing event of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social …

Soapbox: Brexit isn’t about cutting ourselves off from the world….

Soapbox on May 27, 2016, 2:00 pm

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Sammy Morrison is a TUV Press Officer and an assistant to Jim Allister. Here he challenges Ferdinand Mount’s cautionary tale about the motivations of Brexiteers, and argues that Brexit could liberate the UK to fulfil its potential in the world in Europe – and beyond. Ferdinand Mount cannot hide his contempt for those campaigning for Brexit telling us that it is “tempting to regard ‘Brexosis’ as a mental disorder”. He repeats David Cameron’s warning that Brexit could lead to World …

How little thought have ‘the Brexotics’ given to any form of risk from a putative #Brexit?

Mick Fealty on May 23, 2016, 8:27 pm

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This morning’s #SluggerReport featured this great essay from Ferdinand Mount in the London Review of Books (h/t Ciaran!). Here’s some of the highlights in the argument… Splendid isolation’. ‘Very well, alone’. ‘Fog in Channel – Continent Cut Off’. That is the name of the game, the only game that appeases the dreams and resentments of the Brexiters. It isn’t about economics. Decca Aitkenhead traipsed all the way to Nigel Lawson’s gentilhommière in Gascony to seek enlightenment on the economics. But …

EU referendum & Euro 2016

Paul Hagan on May 19, 2016, 1:36 pm

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So far it’s fair to say that EU referendum debate hasn’t inspired many. Both sides have often been accused of ‘scaremongering’ over the potential impacts on everything from immigration to border controls and increased terror threats to the price of a nice bottle of wine. Meanwhile many of us across the UK and Ireland have our minds fixed on another great European project, the European Football Championship. The unbridled optimism of plucky fans and the motto “Dare to dream” seem …

@davidmcw games one #Brexit outcome…

John Ó Néill on May 18, 2016, 11:49 am

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“Let’s go.” “We can’t.” “Why not?” “We’re waiting for Godot.” Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Interesting piece from David McWilliams on an unintended consequence of the Brexit vote. The title – ‘A nation once again? Don’t write it off’ – neatly encapsulates his argument and commits the obvious sin of deviating from a pro-unionist consensus. The line of reasoning he follows is: The English lead the British out of Europe. The Scottish then go to the polls again, wanting to stay …

Brexit Essays #1: Time for Ireland to grow up and get beyond its devotion to the EU?

Soapbox on May 16, 2016, 2:47 pm

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James Darby writing in response to the Irish Ambassador to London Dan Mulhall’s opinion piece on the UK’s EU referendum and the implications for Irish-UK relations found here . Official Ireland is fully against the UK leaving the EU. Once again groupthink has dominated discourse in Ireland about this issue. As in 1999 when all of the political establishment supported Ireland adopting the EURO, no alternative view has been put forward. Ambassador Mulhall’s argument on how Breixt would affect Irish-UK relations …

Farm subsidies post Brexit

Andy Boal on May 13, 2016, 6:53 pm

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What would happen in the event of Brexit depends on who is on the media at that particular time, and I confess to being almost as fed up listening to the remain side telling us how awful things would be in the event of Brexit as I am listening to the relentless optimism of the Brexiteers telling us how wonderful everything will be without the EU shackling us. Me, I like dealing in facts. I even like dealing in statistics, …

Can UKIP show its mettle in devolution?

Paul Hagan on May 12, 2016, 11:45 pm

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Despite their significant media exposure I think it’s fair to say that so far UKIP’s main successes have come at the ballot box and not at the dispatch box. That the party serves as a repository for protest votes rather than enacting detailed policy is evidenced through the record of long-standing elected members. In his 17 years European Parliament Nigel Farage has authored not a single report legislative or otherwise, or much else really. Even the Daily Mail called the …

EU kettle ban gives Brexit campaigners a PR coup…

Brian O'Neill on May 12, 2016, 10:08 am

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You can waffle on all you like about trade tariffs, migration controls, budget rebates, etc but to the general public this tedious stuff goes in one ear and out the other. But tell them you are going to monkey around with their tea and toast and you get their attention. From today’s Daily Express: The UK accounts for a third of all European kettle sales, with Britons drinking six times more tea per head than their continental cousins. The ban might also include …

Brussels, one month later

Paul Hagan on April 25, 2016, 9:10 pm

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This morning I got off the metro at Maalbeek station, it’s not the closest one to my office in Brussels, but today was the first day it was open since last month’s attacks and I felt as I owed to it the city to say I wasn’t afraid. Its cleaned platform and white panels seemed the same as before, nothing had changed, save an Asian film-crew fixing their camera next to the escalator and a small, make-shift shrine of flowers …

The Remain camp needs some new faces, and quickly

Soapbox on April 20, 2016, 1:20 pm

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Craig Harrison writes for us about the upcoming EU referendum on 23rd June If the latest polls on the EU referendum are anything to go by, then what seemed like a sure thing just a few months ago is now much less certain. Figures from an online survey by Opinium, published by The Guardian at the beginning of April, put the Leave side on 43% – four points ahead of Remain. While we are, rightly, much more sceptical about polls …