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?


‘A fish rots from its head’ is an old Chinese proverb that I like. When any system begins to fail, look to the top to figure out why. The international system is not headed by Boris Johnson, he is merely an opportunist looking to take advantage of new trends to protect his interests. No, if […]

Rule-breaking is the new normal in the era of US unilateralism



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 […]

The stakes are raised in Brexit poker


Imagine Jeff Bezos cloned 7.5 times. That would be the equivalent of the financial wealth of everyone in Scotland (including everything; pensions, properties, etc). Maybe even less, as the Scottish financial wealth calculation (£1.097 trillion) was in 2018 – after the pandemic crisis it has probably shrunk quite a bit.  Bezos doesn’t have that problem. […]

What are we going to do about the Jeff Bezos problem?