Reopen the schools? Err…

In Johnson’s May 10th address to the UK, he said “at the earliest by June 1 – after half term – we believe we may be in a position to begin the phased reopening of shops and to get primary pupils back into schools, in stages, beginning with reception, Year 1 and Year 6.” [1]…

The Family, Brexit and the Right Wing: George Lakoff’s ‘Moral Politics’ applied to Brexit

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…

The UK: A sovereign EU member state

“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…

Why was the 2016 EU Referendum an affront to democracy

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…

The People’s Vote: a betrayal of who, exactly?

Introduction - breaking faith and riots Theresa May has stood up in Parliament to insist that politicians would “break faith” (BBC News, 2018) with the public if they called for a People’s Vote. It’s a sort of dog whistle for the predictions that a People’s Vote followed by a Remain victory (should we be so…

It’s not just a level playing field; it’s an ethical one, too

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…

If a campaign breaks the law?

There is significant evidence that pro-Leave campaigns in the run up to the British EU Referendum broke the law. Leave.EU has already been fined £70,000 for failing to declare its spending, and Scotland Yard has dossiers of evidence that there were breaches of spending law by Vote Leave and Leave.EU (Grayson et al. n.d.; BBC…

The Brexit vote teaches us that we should be practicing how to do referendums

A Guardian columnist named George Monbiot is arguing for more referendums in the UK. His reasoning is pretty good: the problem with the EU Referendum was that it was a large, complex question boiled down to two answers given to a populace inexperienced in referendums. Referendums, especially significant ones, shouldn’t be a ‘learning-on-the-job’ experience; the…

Brexit and a response to Katie Hopkins

Like many countries, the UK has a few people the media loves to put a microphone and camera in front of and listen to their opinion, no matter how uninformed or lacking in nuance it is. One such person in the UK is Katie Hopkins. She was interviewed outside the Conservative Party Conference about her…

Brexit: where we’re at

As a Remainer who has stated that the Brexit Referendum was not constitutional, as a liberal parliamentary democracy, my summary of the where the UK stands won’t be appreciated by many. This is unlikely to be considered an impartial summary of how Brexit has gone so far. But I do think it’s worth looking at…