It’s cold outside the EU embrace

Let me count the ways in which European countries need each other. The relatively small and shrinking economies, compared to rising stars in other parts of the world, face a number of challenges unprecedented in depth, breadth and height. Yet, the EU, the most effective mechanism for them to cooperate on meeting most of these challenges, is straining at the seams, with Brexit having exacerbated previously existing contradictions. The UK, in the meantime, did not have to wait long after Brexit to experience the kind of international buffeting that the EU used to shield it from, having been caught between China and the US with the Huawei 5G controversy

Towards a post-corona world: Brexit and the Dutch

In the new normal corona trumps all else, except Brexit that is. This week the resumption of talks between the EU and the UK on the future relationship were announced as if the world is not in the midst of a gigantic health emergency-cum-economic meltdown

Trade deal or trade blame?

I don’t know about you but on the morning after the UK elections, just over a month ago now, I hit the snooze button on my phone and hibernated straight through until just a few days ago when duty and work called me back to this veritable winter wonderland

Brexit in the time of Covid-19

Brexit in the time of Covid-19 is a peculiar phenomenon. Everybody knows it’s, at least for now, no longer the most important game in town, yet it’s still there, lurking in the background, insinuating its malign presence into even the most desperate of situations and sapping the effectiveness and unity of a common response

Risky future relationship predictions

Six weeks in, post-Brexit Europe looks and feels remarkably like pre-Brexit Europe, with ongoing uncertainty about the future relationship between the EU and the UK and posturing over negotiations

Who will stand against Brexit’s darker forces?

Being mostly an outside observer of the UK political scene at the moment, the persistence of one particular affair has caught my attention, that of the antisemitism kerfuffle in the Labour party. What is has to do with Brexit? More than we might wish for

A European Union of law-abiding countries?

Some temptations are just too great to pass up, both for Boris Johnson and me. The British PM has found a novel way of setting the Brexit cats among the international order pigeons and for my part, even though I should know better, I can’t resist writing about it. Of course, I’m referring to the Internal Market bill and the UK government’s breach of international law, albeit “a very specific and limited” breach, and, of course, not “in a way” that the Justice secretary would “find unacceptable”

Handle Brexit well, for the sake of European democracy

The Dutch are known as practical people, pragmatic seafaring merchants, at least that’s how we like to present ourselves. Nothing reflects that practical, pragmatic bend better than the little-heralded doing away with the consultative referendum in July this year. What had started as an attempt by befuddled centrist politicians in 2014 to bolster the public’s trust in democracy, was barely allowed to survive beyond infancy after it became clear that it was in danger of becoming a tool for populists and might even lead to a Nexit vote. So, Brexit, in a way, killed the Dutch referendum

Legitimising Popular Anger Over Migration is a Bad Idea

Among the cornucopia of issues facing the well-off countries of Western Europe, migration remains a particularly emotive subject that can rear up at any moment and polarise society and politics more quickly and deeply than many other questions. This was seen recently in the Netherlands, where the government is in crisis over attempts to slow the arrival of asylum seekers after it let the situation in the main reception centre deteriorate and one resident’s new born baby died. Despite this, among a significant part of the population anger at immigrants, and at the authorities that seemingly allow migration to continue, is unabated, leading to renewed calls, also from the Left, to gain better understanding of where this anger comes from

The Dutch elections and Gaza protests

One good thing about the Dutch election results, I though initially, was that my next post for this blog didn’t have to be about Israel and Gaza. I could safely get back to the politics of fear, racism, populism etc. in a small European country rather than wade into the moral and political quagmire that is The Middle East. But how wrong I was: it turns out that there might be a link, however uncertain its actual impact, between the events in Gaza and the Netherlands