Will COVID-19 heightens the Brexit stakes?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson On the 31st of January 2020 some friends and I sat counting down the minutes until the UK officially left the EU. After more than three years…
Now more than ever, don’t call him Boris!
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson In order to properly scrutinise the Prime Minister’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, he must be held to a standard of professionalism and ignore his attempts at…
Pandemics and populists: democracy’s ancient enemies
Illustrations by Felix Pawlyn The 2010s saw various pillars of global liberal democracy being swept away by a wave of international populism. America and Britain both fell prey to populist…
Spinsters like Cummings are undermining democracy
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Sunday’s COVID-19 press briefing was a heinous moment for Boris Johnson. Since March, the country has been under lockdown in order to slow the spread of COVID-19….
For Stormont’s sake, end the Brexit dawdle and grant that extension
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Brexit is still happening – however low it is on the Whitehall agenda – and it deserves our utmost attention. The government, is now focused on responding…
Lockdown and Brexit present a challenge of conflicting ideals for Johnson
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The UK economy is currently facing several severe challenges. Pre- COVID-19, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced that public spending would have to increase in…
Automation is the answer to our struggling agricultural industry
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Despite the globalisation of goods and services, homegrown produce remains a vital component of the United Kingdom’s economy. The agricultural industry is worth over £120 billion, and…
Keir Starmer is shortchanging Scotland with federalism
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The night of 12th December 2019 was not a good night for Scottish Labour. In the country of Labour’s founding father and (subsequently elected, leader’s namesake) Keir…
Labour needs a Nandyite foreign policy
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Keir Starmer’s new shadow cabinet was designed to give credence to the word repeated ad infinitum in his campaign: unity. The removal of a handful of Corbyn…
The future of EU-UK relations- could fishing be the thorniest issue at stake?
Illustration by Hannah Robinson The UK officially left the European Union in January after three tortuous years. But the Brexit process is nowhere near over. Indeed, we are now entering what…
Fake news hysteria can only lead to fake solutions
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Fake news has become an omnipresent aspect of politics around the globe. It appears that no election, referendum, or debate can happen without this ubiquitous term being…
From Brexit to a new EU enlargement
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Less than a week after Brexit, the EU Commission released a paper on the new enlargement strategy for the Western Balkans. Since 2013 and the accession of…
Have we got Brexit done now? Not just yet.
Illustration by Hannah Robinson The 31st of January marked “Brexit day”. For years now, Leave supporting politicians and large factions of the media have said that academics, industry and trade experts,…
Scottish Independence is not an escape route from a “No Deal” Brexit.
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Election results in Scotland remain in stark contrast to that of England. The 2019 election turned England blue and Scotland yellow, with the Conservatives losing 7 of…
Brexit continues to leave students out in the cold
Illustration by Hannah Robinson It has been over three years since the results of the Brexit referendum were announced. The initial deadline was March 29th 2019, and although this date has…
Sturgeon’s secret tactics: how the SNP are manipulating Scots in pursuit of independence
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Last week on BBC News a Scottish Conservative gloated that every time Nicola Sturgeon discusses Indyref2 the Conservatives gain votes. Independence is however almost all Nicola…
A ‘Remain Alliance’ should learn from Spain
Illustration by Hannah Robinson There is a land, somewhere, that had a minority government. Its Parliament was plagued by indecision and a frustrating lack of consensus. The people, electorally fatigued…
Elections? Not another one
Illustration by Hannah Robinson It’s official. After weeks of commentator speculation, we are having a general election. Parliament has approved the Prime Minister’s demands for one, meaning we can expect…
UK students living in the EU: up the creek without a paddle
Illustration by Hannah Robinson UK students living in the Netherlands feel stranded due to Brexit. Words such as university, student, academic or science do not appear in the 585-page draft…
Has the Supreme Court declared itself all-powerful?
Illustration by Hannah Robinson We are living through perhaps the most significant time for the development of our unwritten constitution since the 1688-9 “glorious revolution” which laid the foundations for…
Stopping Brexit is essential to solving the climate crisis
This week I joined thousands of marchers, striking pupils and students in Edinburgh as part of the global youth climate crisis strikes. The comparison between the millions of protestors worldwide…
Boris Johnson is right to prorogue Parliament: no-deal must be kept on the table
Not since King Charles I has a person invoked such collective disdain from Parliament. While the outcome of this odd arc, taking place over the course of the final season…
Unpredictable politics: Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie on Brexit, Trump and turmoil
You might not think that the concerns of a former Prime Minister and a literary giant would have any notable similarities. But Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie addressed themes with…
God help the Queen… and the rest of us too
In two weeks’ time parliament is to be suspended on the will of an unelected Prime Minister, confirmed by an unelected monarch. All of this in order to remove us…
With Free Speech comes great responsibility
The rhetoric currently swirling around British politics is poisonous. Roll-back to 4 November 2016 and readers woke up to the branding of three Supreme Court judges as ‘Enemies of the…
The Conservatives are hypocrites for complaining about losing votes to Farage
After last Thursday’s disappointing result, the Conservative Party has seen its government’s majority reduced to just one, as the Liberal Democrats gained the Brecon and Radnorshire seat in a tightly…
Beware Storm Boris: How Johnson’s volatility, opportunism and naivety threaten to tear Britain apart
“I’m rather pro-European, actually. I certainly want a European community where one can go and scoff croissants, drink delicious coffee, learn foreign languages and generally make love to foreign women.”…
Without a Brexit destination, how can we work out directions?
Having a British accent at a continental university means one thing these days: you’re going to get asked about Brexit fairly frequently. For this exact reason, I don’t tend to…
Who taught our government geography?
Perhaps like me you are wondering what our nation’s geography teachers were doing when they had our members of government in their classrooms? Many former and current cabinet members have…
The Brexit parachute comes to Raab’s aid
Just imagine it. You’ve handed in the dissertation that you’ve been working on for months and your supervisor informs you that it’s shit. You then realise that it’s shit. What’s…
The border and how it’s dooming Brexit
The morning of the 9th of June 2017 was one of strange mixed emotions for me. The day after the general election I woke up to see that despite the…
Political polarisation holds us all back
In the weeks leading up to Brexit I didn’t see a single article on my newsfeed that suggested that the Leave campaign might win. Most of my friends are left…
Boris Johnson’s resignation means progress for Brexit
Following the emergence of a soft-Brexit Chequers deal earlier this week, May’s cabinet has taken several blows. Most notably, the Conservative administration has suffered at the hands of the resignation…
May’s made a decision that might be her last
One cannot help but be grateful to Boris Johnson. Just when the flow of the global political tsunami seemed to have reached a normalising ebb, the Foreign Secretary of the…
Deal or no deal, what does Brexit mean for the NHS?
March 2019 is not getting any further away, and the UK Government is still struggling to make any progress in ongoing Brexit negotiations. With the aim of guiding the nations…
When it comes to immigration, low skilled labour is high value
At an event focusing on Brexit and immigration this week, I was sat across from a woman from the Scottish Government’s immigration office. Arms crossed and smirking, she flicked her…
Scotland deserves a voice in Brexit negotiations
As 29 March 2019 grows ever-closer, and the UK’s exit from the EU looms like a dark cloud over British politics, it seems politicians have gone pretty silent on the…
Amber Rudd: the women in Westminster
‘Where would you like to sit?’ Her office was hardly short of options. ‘Shall we go soft?’ and pointed to the corner sofas before we became confused. As a staunch…
We could all do with a Politics class (or twenty)
Politics is a subject that causes social divide, mass-speculation and outright uncertainty. As we navigate through a muddy political path in the UK – queue Brexit – it seems necessary…
Vince Cable’s speech has revealed his anti-democratic bigotry
The Liberal Democrats are currently polling at 7%. They have been languishing around this level for some time and, despite rebranding themselves as some sort of Remain resistance, have yet…
Borders underpin international order
Last week my fellow columnist Lucy Hodgeon wrote a piece on whether borders have been made redundant by globalisation. It was original, thought-provoking and brilliantly written. I categorically disagree with it….
Borders suffocate international progress
Trump and Mexico. Britain and Brexit. Whilst states across the world seem to be reaffirming their borders, there exists a counter movement asking: do we even need borders? The World…
Project FUN Not FEAR
On 23rd June 2016, 26% of the UK population or 37% of the UK electorate voted to leave the European Union. Around 3 million people, including; EU nationals living in…