Tag Archives: DiEM25 UK

As British Prime Minister Theresa May is finding out, disentangling a member state from the EU is an arduous and complex undertaking. But how much harder would Brexit have been had the United Kingdom adopted the euro back in 2000? ATHENS – “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” Prior to the 2016 Brexit referendum, I borrowed this line from the Eagles’ 1976 hit “Hotel California” as an...

Those who try to understand the Brexit vote in terms of bean counting (or cost-benefit analysis) are missing the point. Yes, there was a strong underlying economic reason for the manner in which the majority adopted Brexit. But it had nothing to do with a calculation of what the result of the referendum would do to people’s hip pocket. Voters did not behave like homo economicus. (This is where the official...

Besides the gross disrespect to those who voted in favour of Brexit (instructing them to go back to the polling stations to deliver what we think is the ‘right’ verdict), the call for a second referendum is fraught with logical incoherence. Any referendum, courtesy of being a binary Yes or No choice, must be clear on what the default is (which will obtain or hold in case the people vote No). Suppose now that,...

The main argument against my Norway Plus proposal is that such an agreement would jeopardise the capacity of the UK government to strike out into the world to bring home a variety of tailor-made trade deals with the US, China etc. At the same time, hard Brexiteers continue with their disingenuous promises of daily millions that will flow to the NHS, money saved from the UK’s contribution to the EU budget. Now,...

Britain used to have wage councils that set the minimum wage per sector. Mrs Thatcher saw to it that they were abolished, together (effectively) with trades unions and council houses – thus yielding the present Precariat-Proletariat whose palpable anger and frustration is evident across the land. There is no doubt that we need to bring back a modernised for of wage councils. Not just in the UK but across Europe!...

Courtesy of opendemocracy.net, here is the transcript of my speech of 29th January at the House of Commons. The theme? How should Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party secure a progressive Brexit consistent with a socialist agenda for the UK but also with DiEM25’s campaign to democratise Europe. The main reason I am here, I believe – I’m going to add back into Chuka’s account a few wrinkles that he omitted out of...

[embedded content] Delivered in front of an audience of Labour MP and staffers, at the kind invitation of Chuka Ummuna MP.

[embedded content] [embedded content] David Dimbleby presents topical debate from Scarborough, with a panel including Conservative MP and prisons minister Sam Gyimah, Labour’s Chuka Umunna, Ukip’s new leader Henry Bolton, deputy editor of The Sunday Times, Sarah Baxter and the economist and Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder & former finance minister of Greece. For the whole program...

[embedded content] Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25, former Minister of Finance for Greece and high profile economist, academic and writer, addressed The Oxford Guild  on Tuesday 28th November in the Said Business School Amphitheatre. He discussed the state of the European Union, of the United Kingdom, the political landscape globally and the political/economic/social agenda of DiEM25...

[embedded content] [embedded content] David Dimbleby presents topical debate from Scarborough, with a panel including Conservative MP and prisons minister Sam Gyimah, Labour’s Chuka Umunna, Ukip’s new leader Henry Bolton, deputy editor of The Sunday Times, Sarah Baxter and the economist and Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder & former finance minister of Greece....