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Edwina Currie, famous for many things but formerly a Conservative MP until she lost her seat in 1997, sparked Twitter outrage today with a completely off-the-cuff remark about sovereignty. Many of us (with many valid reasons) feel Edwina Currie is as mad as a bag of spanners, but her voice …

If I was asked to pick one thing about the EU that I like it would be the fact that it allows me to live and work anywhere in the EU without too much difficulty. But like all rights it has to be reciprocal. British people cannot reasonably expect to …

Imagine a company that in 1973 had a 38% global market share in its industry, a market leader, but had since lost ground so that today it controls just 19%. Would you say that company had been successful? No, me neither. Now imagine that the company’s growth was so so …

Harmonisation Harmonisation is a lovely word which has its roots in music. A harmony is defined as “the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce a pleasing effect”. The process of harmonisation in the EU is “the process of creating common standards across the internal market”. Whether the effect …

This post is mainly addressed to elected MPs of the Conservative persuasion. Whatever the outcome of the EU Referendum, I really think that David Cameron is peddling pure fantasy if he thinks that things can go back to ‘normal’. The party line is that after the vote, Conservatives will come …

The Treasury Select Committee (TSC) has delivered its report on Brexit, or to give the full title, “The economic and financial costs and benefits of the UK’s EU membership”. The result is far reaching, leaving a few questions unanswered. At times, observers might feel that the committee has been uneven …

A careless turn of phrase reveals a poisonous, negative attitude towards Britain held by prominent Remainers and EU apologists What do passionate British europhiles and EU defenders really think about their own country? This question is an eternal puzzle to Brexiteers, who have watched Remainers from the prime minister on down …

More than 300 prominent historians have signed a letter warning against Brexit. Their intervention continues the long europhile tradition of framing the EU referendum debate as a false dichotomy. To further their argument they deal only in binaries in a thoroughly disingenuous fashion in order to portray all Brexiteers as …

George Osborne, as he promised, has released a second dossier on the effects of a no vote on 23rd June. This time, the target of doom and gloom was the first two years after a Brexit vote. Sadly, Osborne decided not to attend the House of Commons to defend the …

I’m naturally a pessimist. I sometimes try to write in an uplifting way as if to encourage the troops. The moral, after all, is to the physical as three to one. But it’s generally me who needs encouraging most of all. I fully expected the SNP to gain a majority …

Many people have asked me, increasingly more so recently, what I mean when I say I am a “Burkean conservative”. Some are aware of the statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke – the namesake of this term – some are not. I admit, it’s not a term you see used that …

I watched the BBC documentary “Last Whites of the East End” last night.  I’m not a fan of the BBC approach to documentary-making, finding their spin to be unbearable, but this one piqued me when I saw Twitter come alive. I’ve since watched the war of words on Twitter as …

A further report of doom and gloom after Brexit has been released, this time from the institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), claiming the Brexit would bring two more years of austerity. Is the body of evidence from independent analysts really increasing? The IFS is a charity, based in London specialising …

Fed-up with all of the contradictory forecasts and statements about the referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union?  You probably should look away. I would like to see another forecast – I know, that suggests either some kind of a weird fantasy obsession or that maybe I am …

“Trade policy”, says the EU Commission, “is an exclusive power of the EU – so only the EU, and not individual member states, can legislate on trade matters and conclude international trade agreements”. This obviously has serious, wide-ranging implications which are have not been adequately discussed or honestly spelled out …

Somewhere in Rousseau’s Social Contract is the idea that the whole electorate should vote on everything all the time. This would, of course, have been unworkable even in an eighteenth century city state. If the whole population were to spend every day governing the country, who would do any work? …

As you may have noticed, there’s been quite a lot of squabbling within the Conservative Party over the issue of the EU referendum recently. The party leader is all for remaining within the EU as he clings to the terms of his “renegotiation”, that is to say, his failure to …

I came of age in an era of unserious politics. In America, there was George W. Bush, a Republican who preached the platitudes of “compassionate conservatism” and global democracy and left the US poorer and the world more chaotic. In the UK, there was Tony Blair (along with Gordon Brown), …

We can never hope to properly understand the European project without understanding its origins. It’s “official” history is now widely accepted; it was an idea that emerged after WWII to prevent a third European war. Actually the core idea that is the genesis of the EU emerged from the Great …

Every nation on Earth has established traditions and customs. Great Britain has a great many also, although in the modern age, the traditions of this country are being increasingly challenged and removed from public life. Challenging and questioning traditions are not always a bad thing, but we must examine tradition …