I’d like to tell the story of how I became interested in Brexit, back in 2016, only marginally before the vote. In reality, it’s the story of why I didn’t care about Brexit at any point before a critical moment in early 2016. I was born in 1989. Don’t worry, the story doesn’t start there;… Continue reading Brexit and me
Introduction In this post, I want to summarise the key points of the book ‘Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives think’ by George Lakoff (1996). (Don’t worry, I’ll leave enough out to justify you buying the book.) In it, Lakoff explains how differences of perspective on the family can go a long way to explaining… Continue reading The Family, Brexit and the Right Wing: George Lakoff’s ‘Moral Politics’ applied to Brexit
Although The Brexit Party won the greatest number of seats in the UK for the EU election, it’s not accurate to see them as the ‘winners’. It is undoubtedly impressive: a party that has existed for only a few weeks has gotten 32% of the seats. However, the European Parliament isn’t something that is ‘won’,… Continue reading The State of Brexit: Thoughts following the EU elections
“Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that.” (UK Government, 2017) Foreword One of the questions I have in my own head is why I don’t deal with the ‘reality’ of Brexit. These would be questions of achievable Withdrawal Agreements, the party politics, and what I… Continue reading The UK: A sovereign EU member state
Introduction The purpose of this post is to explain how the 2016 EU Referendum didn’t just fail to be democracy at its best, but was democracy delivered so poorly that no democrat should be offering it lip service. Issues of the lies told in the campaigns and breaking of electoral law are both key points… Continue reading Why was the 2016 EU Referendum an affront to democracy
There is a phrase that pops up occasionally when talking about free trade, economics and ― increasingly ― Brexit. And it’s a phrase I don’t like: a level playing field. It refers to the idea that different economic entities should trade fairly with each other, where if one country pays its workers fairly, its produce… Continue reading It’s not just a level playing field; it’s an ethical one, too
On Thursday 23rd June, the UK undertook a project of direct democracy: a referendum on its membership to the European Union. The result was a 51.9% vote for leaving the EU, a fact we should not ignore. It was a vote, on a day, saying a narrow majority of the British people who voted wanted… Continue reading What should a democracy look like?
