Somewhere else
David Cameron’s speech on reforming government on Tuesday morning includes the usual sideswipes at the European Union. He says: “The EU and the judges – neither of them accountable to […]
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Is the European Parliament powerful or not?
A combination of the expenses scandal in Westminster and the European parliamentary elections is producing a strange outcome in the newspapers. On the one hand, we are told that the
Is the European Parliament powerful or not? Read More »
Small economies can ride out the economic storm
The Financial Times reported on an interesting study by the Lausanne Institute for Management Development yesterday, looking at the resilience of national economies, large and small. Read the report here.
Small economies can ride out the economic storm Read More »
An end to parliamentary sovereignty
A regular argument put forward by anti-Europeans as grounds for opposing the EU is that parliament should be sovereign. Nothing should override the powers of the elected MPs sitting at
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Centralised states bad for economy
It has long been an argument of Federal Union that a federal United Kingdom would be economically more successful than the centralised version we have at the moment. During the
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Following the rules
The recent revelations about MPs’ expense claims had led to a series of newspaper articles now questioning the whole function of having rules as such. Conservative columnists such as Iain
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No need for a tunnel
A truly insane news report caught my eye in the Financial Times today, proposing a tunnel from Bolivia to an artificial island in the Pacific. (Read the story here.) Bolivia
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The two meanings of federal
How many times do we hear in British politics that federalism in Europe means centralisation? That a federal Europe would continue to accrete power after power away from the member
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Asleep on the job
This blog has commented in the past on the impact of sleep and tiredness on political decision-making, and it is interesting to see the same phenomenon arise elsewhere. The practice
Process or outcome?
Having finished reviewing the notes of a talk on the Lisbon treaty I gave at a Civitas conference last month, I turned to the Financial Times and an article by
Process or outcome? Read More »