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Things I have posted recently
- The Year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars. Part 2.5. The Utilitarians I: Elie Halévy and the Philosophical Radicals 1750-1867. 12/02/2023
- The Year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars. Part 2.4. The EU’s legacy: 1789-1914: Science, Nature, Necessity. 29/03/2022
- The year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars. Part 2.3: The EU’s legacy, 1492-1789: Europe enters into the Devil’s Anus. 03/02/2022
- The Year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars: Part 2.2: The EU’s Legacy from the Middle Ages. 30/06/2021
- The Year of Covid 19: Political religion and the culture wars. Part 2. 1. Europe’s legacy: the first fifteen hundred years to AD 410. 26/02/2021
- The year of Covid-19: political religion and the culture wars.Part 1. 16/12/2020
- The UK Internal Market Bill: Supranational v. International law 14/09/2020
- China in the World: Chapter 3 Sino-US relations – a stable instability. 11/07/2020
- China in the World: Chapter 2 China becomes the prime global manufacturing and trading platform. 27/06/2020
- China in the World: Chapter 1. From backwater to world power. 16/05/2020
- China, coronavirus and the politics of paranoia 25/04/2020
- Brexit and the British Constitution: Part V. Modernisation or Vandalism? 09/04/2020
- Brexit and the British Constitution: Part IV. The pre-1945 Roots of British Supranationalism. 10/01/2020
- Brexit and the British Constitution: Part III. Efficiency, Parliamentary Sovereignty, Bureaucracy. 02/12/2019
- The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament: Part IV. New law or constitutional aberration? 06/11/2019
- The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part III. Assessment. 06/11/2019
- The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part II. The Arguments for and against. 06/11/2019
- The Supreme Court judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part I: Definitions and timeline. 06/11/2019
- Apocalypse and Guilt: Why Savonarola and Greta differ. 01/10/2019
- Brexit and the British Constitution: Part II. The Whig spirit of the Old Constitution. 21/08/2019
Category Archives: Italy
Realpolitik and the European Union. Chapter 4. The Atlantic alliance, the UK and the EU.
The Euro is a neo liberal engine. One of the happy assumptions made by the advocates of the Euro holds that, if all member states hang on in there long enough, all will converge on a European norm, due to … Continue reading
Realpolitik and the European Union: Chapter 3. The Rise of the DM
The rise of the DM. As Germany acquired formal, then effective sovereignty in Europe, France moved away from de Gaulle’s attempt to impose French primacy in the EEC, to accommodating Germany as a special partner in the 1970s, then to … Continue reading
Realpolitik and the European Union. Chapter 2. Early years: France, the EEC, and the UK
Early years: France, the EEC, and the UK. A simple starting point is to observe that Europe and the EU are not the same thing. The EU has expanded from the founding six, to nine, then twelve, to fifteen and … Continue reading
Ken Clarke’s Memoirs and the June 23 Brexit referendum
Sooner or later, we are going to get very bored by Brexit, but not for a while, given the number of publications pouring from the presses. Here are two books on the subject. Ken Clarke’s Kind of Blue: A Political … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Italy, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, United Kingdom
Tagged Euro, European integration, France, Germany, internal market, the EU, UK
3 Comments
Europe’s slippery slopes: a book review.
There are never enough books to satisfy the reading public’s appetite for ideas about how to overcome Europe’s travails. Our three authors provide us with plenty: all focus in different ways on the two key questions of nationality, and Europe’s … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Europe, France and Germany, India, Italy, United Kingdom, World politics, business and economics
Tagged Asia, comparative politics., democracy, EU, Euro, European integration, France, Germany, globalisation, Greece, interdependence, monetary union, supranationalism, UK, world politics
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John R. Gillingham, The EU: an Obituary, London, Verso, 2016. Review and commentary.Part III: Lost in the Future.
Part Three of Gillingham’s book, The EU: An Obituary does not make for comforting reading. For readers prepared to soldier on, the author is not saying that the EU is dead, only that if it carries on blandly in the … Continue reading
John R. Gillingham, The EU: an Obituary, London, Verso, 2016. Review and commentary.Part II. France, Germany and world markets.
The second phase of the European project may be dated from the breakdown of the post-war fixed exchange rate regime, whereby currencies were benchmarked to a stable dollar, itself convertible at $34 an ounce gold. The key decision was taken … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Italy, United Kingdom
Tagged EU, Euro, European integration, France, Germany, globalisation, Jacques Delors, UK, world politics
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A letter to our German friends
There is a thesis that Brexit is a move back to the past, with the UK dreaming that it is still the great power it was. According to this theme, we joined the EEC back in 1972, to break the … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Italy, United Kingdom
Tagged Brexit, democracy, Euro, France, Germany, the EU, UK
5 Comments
Immigration, neo-liberalism, and Brexit
Here are two very interesting articles on the results of New Labour’s successful effort to transform the UK into a multicultural society. The result has been that the pro-EU Labour party, despite Corbyn’s reluctant and conditional support of Remain, have lost … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Italy, United Kingdom
Tagged Euro, European integration, France, Germany, supranationalism, the EU, UK, xenophobia
1 Comment
Robin Niblett, Britain, the EU and the Sovereignty Myth. Chatham House, 2016.
This 24 page report can be downloaded from the internet in pdf. The headline arguments are written in bold. I will respond to each one of these points in the order of the summary provided by the pamphlet. The question … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, World politics, business and economics
Tagged democracy, EU, Euro, European integration, France, Germany, interdependence, sovereignty, UK
6 Comments
Writing about history, politics & economics 