UK

UK-EU: Pantomime Crisis, Real Risk of a Crash

19 October 2020 The British pantomime is a traditional Christmas entertainment in which stock characters face imaginary dangers and audience participation is encouraged (“He’s behind you!”), but the play never frightens the children and it always has a happy ending. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson could be a pantomime character: he blusters and rages, he …

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A New Ireland?

Bertie Ahern, who was the taoiseach (prime minister) of the Irish Republic from 1997 to 2008, was a brilliant machine politician, not a nationalist or an ideologist. In fact, if you said the word ‘principle’ in his presence, he might have to look up the meaning. But here’s what he said after the Sinn Féin …

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The Brexit Cult

Oscar Wilde described fox-hunting as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.” Brexit may be similarly defined as the unhinged in pursuit of the infeasible. Unhinged how? The last two men standing in the contest to replace Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, are Boris …

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A Funeral in Ireland

Yesterday (Wednesday) the Taoiseach (prime minister) of the Republic of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, and Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom, both showed up in Belfast in Northern Ireland for the funeral of a young woman called Lyra McKee. So did the president of the Republic, Michael Higgins and UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn. …

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The Brexit Border Backstop

The other Europeans are not laughing at the English for the most part. They are looking at them with pity and scorn. But also with a great deal of impatience. On Tuesday the British parliament rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s ‘deal’ for Britain’s exit (‘Brexit’) from the European Union, painfully negotiated over more than two-and-a-half …

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