What happens after Brexit is up to us. Why not open our borders to non-EU workers?

The Leave campaigns point out that quitting the EU would give the UK control over its border and immigration policy. They are right, says Chris Bickerton. It would be an opportunity to open Britain’s borders to anyone who wished to work here – not just European citizens. Brexit would be an opportunity for the UK to decide whether it wants to be a society that is open or hostile to immigration, and draw up its own laws accordingly

What the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ can tell us about the Greek crisis

A number of authors have argued that a ‘new intergovernmentalism’ has come to characterise EU decision-making since the financial crisis, with decisions increasingly made through intergovernmental negotiations such as those in the European Council. Christopher Bickerton writes on what the theory can tell us about the Greek crisis, noting that it helps illustrate both the febrile nature of domestic politics in Greece and why the Syriza government was ultimately unsuccessful in its attempts to secure concessions from the country’s creditors

The real sins of Varoufakis: why Greece is being punished for refusing to play by the Eurogroup’s rules

Talks continued through the night in Brussels, with Eurozone leaders eventually reaching an agreement on Greece. Christopher Bickerton writes that while negotiations were always likely to be tough, the original discussions between Greece and its creditors did not break down because of an unbridgeable ideological gap, but instead reflected a reaction to the negotiating tactics pursued by the Greek government under finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. He argues that by breaching the etiquette of the Eurogroup’s decision-making process, Varoufakis generated entrenched opposition among Greece’s creditors for which the country is now being punished

Frans Timmermans’ views on the integration process highlight the relevance of Europe’s ‘new intergovernmentalism’

A number of authors have debated whether European integration is becoming characterised by a form of ‘new intergovernmentalism’, with increasing numbers of decisions made through intergovernmental forms of decision-making such as those in the European Council. In response to criticism of the approach, Christopher Bickerton writes that new intergovernmentalism can shed light on current issues at the European level, such as the UK’s attempts to negotiate EU reform. He argues that recent statements by Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President of the European Commission, illustrate the relevance of the approach, notably the principle that supranational institutions do not always want ‘more Europe’

The roots of Brexit lie in Britain's broken economic model: we now urgently need a new social settlement

The roots of Brexit lie in Britain's broken growth model. This was acknowledged in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 vote but British negotiators have since acted as if the only goal in their dealings with the EU is to preserve the status quo. Chris Bickerton (Cambridge) argues that Britain's consumption-driven growth model needs to change and whilst Brexit is is not a sufficient condition for this change, it is probably a necessary condition for it. This is most visible in the way that the EU’s rules of free movement have interacted with the UK’s open and flexible labour market. This blog is based on a longer essay written for the think tank Policy Exchange

Can London live without the EU? LSE BrexitVote Podcast

London is home to over a million citizens of another EU country. The City is Europe’s biggest financial centre. Polls suggest Londoners will vote to remain in the EU, though outgoing mayor Boris Johnson is campaigning to leave. Could London thrive outside the EU? How much has London gained from Europe – and Europe gained from London? On Friday 29 April LSE BrexitVote hosted a public discussion on the issue. The panel included Lib Dem Europe spokesperson Baroness Ludford, Ben Judah (author of This is London: Life and Death in the World City), Christopher Bickerton and expert in European politics Julie Smith in a discussion chaired by Prof Tony Travers

A Divergent Synthetic Approach to Diverse Molecular Scaffolds: Assessment of Lead-Likeness using LLAMA, an Open-Access Computational Tool

Complementary cyclisation reactions of hex-2-ene-1,6-diamine derivatives were exploited in the synthesis of alternative molecular scaffolds. The value of the synthetic approach was analysed using LLAMA, an open-access computational tool for assessing the lead-likeness and novelty of molecular scaffolds

Progress with the Prime Focus Spectrograph for the Subaru Telescope: a massively multiplexed optical and near-infrared fiber spectrograph

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is an optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph with 2394 science fibers, which are distributed in 1.3 degree diameter field of view at Subaru 8.2-meter telescope. The simultaneous wide wavelength coverage from 0.38 um to 1.26 um, with the resolving power of 3000, strengthens its ability to target three main survey programs: cosmology, Galactic archaeology, and galaxy/AGN evolution. A medium resolution mode with resolving power of 5000 for 0.71 um to 0.89 um also will be available by simply exchanging dispersers. PFS takes the role for the spectroscopic part of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts project, while Hyper Suprime-Cam works on the imaging part. To transform the telescope plus WFC focal ratio, a 3-mm thick broad-band coated glass-molded microlens is glued to each fiber tip. A higher transmission fiber is selected for the longest part of cable system, while one with a better FRD performance is selected for the fiber-positioner and fiber-slit components, given the more frequent fiber movements and tightly curved structure. Each Fiber positioner consists of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors. Its engineering model has been produced and tested. Fiber positioning will be performed iteratively by taking an image of artificially back-illuminated fibers with the Metrology camera located in the Cassegrain container. The camera is carefully designed so that fiber position measurements are unaffected by small amounts of high special-frequency inaccuracies in WFC lens surface shapes. Target light carried through the fiber system reaches one of four identical fast-Schmidt spectrograph modules, each with three arms. Prototype VPH gratings have been optically tested. CCD production is complete, with standard fully-depleted CCDs for red arms and more-challenging thinner fully-depleted CCDs with blue-optimized coating for blue arms.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, submitted to "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V, Suzanne K. Ramsay, Ian S. McLean, Hideki Takami, Editors, Proc. SPIE 9147 (2014)