Tag: Europe
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Out of Sleight
Hold my beer – Lord Frost has been elevated to the Cabinet to be the new minister for the EU, and it is not immediately clear whether this is a move for political continuity with our continental chums or a burst of peak trolling. He clearly knows the brief after leading negotiations, but it oozes…
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Commission Impossible
Scientists have worked out a way to teach spinach to send emails. They now need to get it logged on pronto to send some urgent missives to the cabbages in Brussels. Following on from the reverse-ferret spectaculaire of last week’s Article 16 miscue, the EU Commission has now withdrawn its border staff in Northern Ireland…
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Dropped Boule
For those who are writing off the current EU vaccines debacle as a one-off, think again. What happened with the short-lived invocation of Article 16 was simply a more blunderingly spectacular demonstration of the bullying, self-serving, tosh that spawned a solid, broad generation of Brexiters out of 2016’s floating-voter middle ground. Five years on, and…
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Inevitabubble
Queues, higher costs, dissatisfied populations, and aggravation. Looks like post-transition Brexit has followed its inexorable path to misery. Or has it? The specific logic arguably suggests otherwise. Millions of EU citizens losing their rights in the UK was not a certainty of Brexit. Additional customs checks at the border with Continental Europe were not set…
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Sovereign Notions
Frustrated by the circular arguments of the Brexit debate? Get a rum old sovereignty chaser down your neck for some unrestricted 2020 retrovision and a banging trade deal hangover cure. OK, cure is over-egging it, but it might help with the nausea. While it has been lazily punted about like a scuffed, old, patchy ball,…
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V is for Volte-Face
There’s been a predictable swing in the Tory ranks, and it’s not the errant appendage of a statistical modeller. Neither to the right nor centre in political terms, but away from health onto pounds, shillings, and pence. Yes, they had knee-jerked into welfare, but for Conservatives it’s always a safer bet to stick to the…
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Bug Chasing
Tom Hanks has become the highest-profile person to confirm a COVID-19 diagnosis, so it’ll be fascinating to see him as a man battling a stigmatising disease. Mind you, he’s already survived World War II, Vietnam, a plane crash, being cast away on an island, being stranded in space, jumping into a volcano, and a kidnapping…
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A Long Spoon
One person who may be counting his blessings about the coronavirus may be Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who had in the past month been unceremoniously defenestrated by the Irish electorate. With not even a coded telephone warning from Sinn Fein, old Leo has been bounced from inner-circle EU acolyte to has-been dead man walking. Although…
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Cyrus the Virus
Italy is in complete lockdown for 14 days, and Donald Trump is facing his toughest presidential fight yet. Not from the coronavirus but from boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome. After dining out for years on the battle against alleged media froth, he’s now being screwed by real fake news, if you get my drift. Well, that and the…
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