Scottish indyref2

Why is the UK sleepwalking into final Brexit chaos and towards breakup?

Brian Walker on July 17, 2020, 2:40 pm

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As the notional deadline of October for final Brexit negotiations draws ever closer, the clouds if anything are growing darker. The UK’s statements on their withdrawal position and the NI protocol have clarified very little. Johnson and co seem like General de Gaulle in 1940, holding out for an impossible position of victory against the odds. But at least de Gaulle had allies. A City University webinar I linked up with yesterday confirmed growing pessimism over Northern Ireland prospects.( video …

Johnson and Corbyn will compete for power by selling out the Union

Brian Walker on August 7, 2019, 7:00 am

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All the hooh- hah from Polly Toynbee and others about forming a government of national unity to stop No Deal – forget it. Boris Johnson won’t even have to bother committing the constitutional crime my constitutional expert friends have been deploring. It’ll never get to that. Their best hope now is a general election but one called pretty much on Johnson’s terms and timing. Robert Peston’s trenchant piece saves me the bother of explaining. It’s so good I quote it …

The DUP may have to chose between the Union and a hard Brexit

Brian Walker on June 27, 2019, 10:24 pm

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When Boris Johnson says we must leave the EU on 31 October “do or die,” he’s suspected of pandering to party voters. When Arlene Foster says “the Union of the United Kingdom is more important than any other political aspiration” I for one believe her. But the gap between them may be widening. At a Policy Exchange seminar yesterday Foster said “ “you have to keep no deal on the table to get a better deal…and we shouldn’t go for …

Westminster’s reply to the SNP’s case for remaining in the single market was taken seriously after all. So why did May allow Sturgeon to claim she’d been ignored?

Brian Walker on April 29, 2017, 12:14 am

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Here’s a strange thing. There we were, led to believe that Theresa May had dismissed almost with contempt Nicola Sturgeon’s carefully considered case for the UK, or at least Scotland, to remain within the single market. It turns out it wasn’t like that at all. We know that because the Scottish Government itself has just published a reply to the SNP’s paper Scotland’s Place in Europe, from the Brexit Secretary David Davis in a letter dated 29 March. It lists …