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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: UK
Brexit and the British Constitution: Part V. Modernisation or Vandalism?
This is the last in the series of articles on Brexit and the Constitution. It is based on four books which have dealt with the subject over the last twenty years: Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at King’s College, London, … Continue reading
Brexit and the British Constitution: Part III. Efficiency, Parliamentary Sovereignty, Bureaucracy.
The Three Simplifiers. “What is the origin of this seemingly inexorable tendency to get rid of the old checks and balances, asks Ferdinand Mount, to peel off the ancient gnarled bark and hack away the tangle of intertwining and overhanging … Continue reading
Posted in Constitutional law, India, United Kingdom
Tagged Brexit, Constitutional law, UK
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The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament: Part IV. New law or constitutional aberration?
The Supreme Court judgement: new law or constitutional aberration? I will not pretend to my own position: the root of the British uncoded Constitution is the Bill of Rights of 1689, and subsequent court judgments and statutes. This states that … Continue reading
Posted in Constitutional law, Europe, United Kingdom
Tagged Brexit, Constitutional law, EU, UK
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The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part III. Assessment.
Assessment of the Supreme Court judgement. The portrait is of Sir Edward Coke in June 1614, when he was elected High Steward of the University of Cambridge. Coke was a champion of a particular view of Parliamentary Sovereignty, a view, arguably, … Continue reading
Posted in Constitutional law, Europe, United Kingdom
Tagged Brexit, Constitutional law, EU, UK
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The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part II. The Arguments for and against.
The argument that Johnson’s decision to prorogue is not justiciable. There are two judgements-that of Lord Doherty sitting in the Outer House of the (Scottish) Court of Sessions on September 4, and the judgement in the High Court dismissing Mrs … Continue reading
Posted in Constitutional law, Europe, United Kingdom
Tagged Brexit, Constitutional law, EU, UK
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The Supreme Court judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part I: Definitions and timeline.
On 24 September 2019, in a unanimous decision by eleven justices, the UK’s Supreme Court found Prime Minister Johnson’s advice to the Queen to prorogue parliament from September 9 and 12 September 2019 until the State Opening of Parliament on … Continue reading
Posted in Constitutional law, Europe, United Kingdom
Tagged Constitution law, Europe, UK
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Brexit and the British Constitution: Part II. The Whig spirit of the Old Constitution.
The frontispiece is from the first “Whig” History of England-by a Frenchman. The spirit of the Old Constitution How history is recorded plays a central part in Britain’s uncodified constitution. Rules and conventions remain subject to interpretation, precedents are by … Continue reading
May’s trajectory: Part II. from Prime Minister to the EU’s Governor in the province of Britain.
Party first, country second. As a Tory tribalist, May’s priority was to prevent a party split, while locating herself on the party spectrum as a soft Remainer with her prime sympathies going to the majority Remainer MPs. This was evident … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, United Kingdom
Tagged European integration, France, Germany, supranationalism, the EU, UK
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May’s trajectory from Prime Minister to the EU’s Governor in the province of Britain Part I. The EU and the UK hand-in-glove
The EU27 is triumphant. That’s the narrative now being spun out of Brussels about how its super-smart negotiators have outfoxed the “Rolls-Royce” brains of the Foreign Office, reducing the UK to a province of the new empire, and its government … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, United Kingdom
Tagged Brexit, EU, France, Germany, UK
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The UK’s Golden Opportunity: The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square
The May-Barnier deal is in deep trouble. After two years of negotiations, and signed up by 27 member states, it has been vetoed twice by the largest and fourth largest defeat in parliamentary history. Prime Minister May has returned to … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, The United States, United Kingdom
Tagged European disintegration, France, Germany, supranationalism, the EU, UK
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Writing about history, politics & economics 