It is high time Brexiteers admitted they must either choose Brexit, or the preservation of the UK, but they cannot have both, says John Stevens. There is a spectre haunting Brexit: the spectre of the break-up of the United Kingdom. All the powers of the Brexiteers have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this...Read More

“England’s danger is Ireland’s opportunity” is an old Irish nationalist nostrum. Some see it revived in the pressure which Dublin has exerted upon London over the border in the Brexit negotiations. A few even fear that the unification of Ireland is being pressed, in time for the centenary of partition. Yet the same parties readily...Read More

Brexit represents an existential crisis for the British state and people. As Brexit Britain slips its moorings and moves away from the mainstream of European civilisation huge questions remain unanswered. What is Britain’s role in a dangerous world? And what plans are there to stabilise the British islands as separatism grows stronger and stronger in...Read More

Brexit may be coming, but the terms are far from clear. In the range between the Norwegian model (membership in the customs union and single market without political participation) and a hard Brexit severing all ties with the EU, and even the long run dissolution of the United Kingdom, anything is possible. History rarely repeats...Read More

The part leaking to the press of the Government’s EU Exit Analysis – Cross Whitehall Briefing’[i] highlighted the dire consequences for many parts of the UK of leaving the EU in the June 2016 referendum. The leak and its handling also exposed the extreme reluctance of the Government to provide the information necessary for informed public debate....Read More

Executive Summary The two quotations cited above make the following points. Firstly that the likely economic storm that could yet engulf the UK post Brexit is going to take all the fortitude possible to manage it. And secondly, as with the Hotel California, however many times the UK tries to check out from the hotel...Read More

Current mainstream economic thinking says that industrial policy is ineffective, and that market forces should determine the fortunes of companies and industries. In the credit crisis, however, the UK government and most other governments felt compelled to intervene. They established a de facto industrial policy strongly favouring the financial sector, at the expense of the rest of...Read More

In the wake of the recent Irish debt crisis, the UK Coalition government decided not to take part in a new rescue fund for troubled eurozone members, suggested by France and Germany. This decision comes in spite of the UK’s pledge to support the EU-IMF rescue efforts for Ireland through a bilateral loan of more...Read More

For some time past a ghost has been standing behind Alistair Darling sardonically monitoring his every action and thought with the expertise that comes from having lived through the United Kingdom’s last encounter with the dilemmas that are posed by the onset of a World Depression. And it is not John Maynard Keynes, who during...Read More