Some Source Direct subscribers may have a vague memory of a huge chicken following David Cameron around the UK during the 2010 General Election. The chicken had a Daily Mirror badge on, and was meant to indicate that Cameron was too chicken to answer tough questions. Fast forward a decade, and the Mirror Chicken has […]
Brexit
Bob Gillespie, Global Justice Now activist in Glasgow, finds that the UK is looking increasingly isolated in the world, which makes a bad trade deal with the United States even more likely. The increasing likelihood of a “No Deal” Brexit will mean that the UK has only a deal with Japan to show off in […]
Bob Gillespie: There’s many reasons to worry about a UK-US trade deal
What should the UK Government’s strategy be to stop Scottish independence? One would think this is the sort of thing Tory politicians and their staffers think about themselves. But no, in these days of neoliberal governance, Ministers seem happier to outsource all of their thinking to ridiculously expensive private consultancies. Bloomberg has now reported on a leaked 21-page memo […]
Preparing for a “velvet No”
“Major omissions mean that Scotland’s environmental safeguards will be left weaker following our departure from the EU, despite the Scottish Government’s explicitly stated intentions to ‘maintain or exceed’ environmental standards and to replace the system of environmental governance provided by EU institutions.”
Miriam Ross: New watchdog needs teeth to defend Scotland’s people and environment after Brexit
Where are we on the UK-EU trade deal, the latest saga in a long line of Brexit sagas stretching back to 24 June 2016, the day after the Leave vote (which feels like ancient history by now)? EU leaders met in Brussels yesterday for a two-day summit, and apparently got the Brexit business out the […]
Deal or No Deal?
“When 75 percent of the nation would vote for independence with ‘the right economic case’, when is the Scottish Government finally going to publish one?”
Ellen Höfer: The blank White Paper
As the UK’s Internal Market Bill officially passed the House of Commons last night, some hours later we got a glimpse of those vying to be United States President, in the first TV debate between US President Donald Trump and Democrat challenger Joe Biden. What connects these two events specifically is a post Brexit UK-US […]
“The special relationship” after the US election
There is a constitutional curiosity in the UK Government’s Internal Market Bill which professor Michael Keatings, Centre for Constitutional Change director, has identified, and is worth reflecting on. Until now the UK Government operated a system of powers which was fundamentally different from that of the EU. Some powers are reserved and some are devolved, but […]
Britain’s new unitary state
“At the centre of this web of crank economics, jumbled alliance-mongering, and meaningless exhortations to the ‘international community’, there is nothing. There is no working ‘independence in Europe’ prospectus.”
David Jamieson: Outcry over Tory brinkmanship covers malaise of ‘independence in Europe’
Brexit’s back. Of course, it never went away. But for three years it dominated UK political debate, before the decisive December 2019 General Election finally set Britain on a definitive course for leaving. The pandemic then knocked it out of the headlines. We are three-quarters of the way through a transition year until the UK […]