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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
Tag Archives: democracy
British ideas of Europe: PART 4. The UK’s view of a sustainable regime for Europe.
From the perspective of 2016, British voters in the referendum could be forgiven for thinking that the EU was not very sustainable. The Euro crisis was in its sixth year; Chancellor Merkel’s decision to welcome mass immigration into Germany undermined … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, United Kingdom
Tagged Brexit, comparative politics., democracy, Euro, European integration, France, Germany, interdependence, supranationalism, the EU, UK
4 Comments
British ideas of Europe. PART 2. The UK as a champion of the Europe of states
Popular UK views on Europe locate in the upper left quadrant, sketched in the introduction in Part 1 of this series on British ideas on Europe. The “Remainers”, and their predecessors never managed to win over the British electorate to … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Uncategorized, United Kingdom
Tagged democracy, Euro, European integration, France, Germany, supranationalism, UK
1 Comment
Tommy Robinson: enemy of the British state?
Introduction. On August 1, Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was released on bail after winning an appeal against a contempt of court finding. Robinson describes himself as “a working class man from Luton”, At the Court of … Continue reading
Posted in United Kingdom
Tagged democracy, media, radical Islam, rape gangs, rule of law, UK
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Is it Trump or the EU that is swapping big ideas for bad ideas?
Philip Stevens writes in the FT about“How the world swapped a big idea for a bad idea”. The big idea was “the revolutionary thought that the selfish interests of rich and rising states could be accommodated if everyone played by … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Europe, France and Germany, Greece, Italy, Russia, Spain, The United States, Ukraine, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, World politics, business and economics
Tagged Asia, Brexit, democracy, EU, France, Germany, globalisation, Post-modernism and the international order, Robert Cooper, United States, world politics
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America and the world: Part I.
The key words in this cluster of books, focusing on the US, are emerging , retreat, closing and anger. Pankaj Mishra, in Age of Anger: A History of the Present, says that the paranoid hatreds of the present world have … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, China, Europe, France and Germany, India, Italy, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, Russia, The United States, United Kingdom, World politics, business and economics
Tagged Asia, Brexit, China, democracy, EU, European integration, France, Germany, globalisation, India, interdependence, liberalism, marxist-leninism, nationalism, pos tmodernism, Russia, supranationalism, technology, UK, United States, world politics
5 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
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
A supranational Europe or a European alliance of constitutional states: a review of Robin Niblett’s, Britain, the EU and the Sovereignty Myth, Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Robin Niblett is an ardent promoter of Remain, evident in his latest pamphlet from Chatham House, as the Lib Dem think tank in London is called. I summarise his argument, and then make some critical points. Niblett on sovereignty. In … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, United Kingdom
Tagged democracy, EU, Euro, European integration, Jean Monnet, sovereignty, supranationalism, UK
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 