As the pressures and contradictions of no-deal Brexit threaten the unity of the United Kingdom, further fissures are to be seen through the prisms of judical reasoning, in which English and Scottish judges view and interpet the world in utterly divergent ways.The English High Court (which included the Lord Chief Justice and...
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The Berlaymont building, Brussels HQ of the European Commission, refracted. Image copyright Jeremy Smith This article is cross-posted from Open Democracy, first published 17th January 2019. It follows up his earlier article from December, “Labour's Brexit trilemma: in search of the least bad...
Read More »The main body of the draft Withdrawal Agreement is certainly long and detailed – a tribute to the efficiency of the EU’s legal services – but it mainly contains the sort of provisions one would expect for the terms of the separation, and for issues that straddle the departure timeline. There is a transition phase to 31 December 2020, which can be extended, when EU law continues to apply, and the European Court of Justice still has jurisdiction. Citizen’s rights (relating to...
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The calls for a “People’s Vote” on the government’s proposed Brexit ‘deal’ (if indeed there is one) grow louder, but are especially contentious for the Labour Party, whose membership is more minded to “remain” than the public at large, which still seems fairly evenly split. But the call for a People’s Vote is not so straightforward, partly now in...
Read More »On 30th June 2016, just one week after the EU Referendum, I wrote this:It has swiftly become clear, if it were not already so, that neither the government nor the leaders of the Brexit campaigns had anything resembling a plan for what to do if the people voted in favour of leaving the EU. As Mark Carney rather mordantly put it in his speech...
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Heterodox
