British Politics

In this week’s column, Mitch Benn explores who should be held accountable for the Windrush scandal. One of my favourite things about this job is that it’s never really been specified to me precisely what this job is. I know that I attracted the attention of the good folk here at New European Towers soon […]

A Brexiteer writes to The New European with a request… I, who voted Leave, read TNE avidly every week, not as Alastair Campbell said to ‘know thine enemy’ but rather because your other cultural and political articles are generally excellent and reflective of the broad cultural bond we have with Europe, and long may these […]

If Brexit happens next March it won’t be the end – just the ‘end of the beginning’, explains Will Goble. The best analogy I’ve yet heard about the lunacy of Brexit is from an anonymous poster in the comments section of an online newspaper. It goes something like this: A man is driving at speed […]

Right-wing Tories will be furious, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox will resign, and we’ll stay close to Europe. It’s a no-brainer isn’t it? With David ‘Two Brains’ Willetts seeking to persuade the government to pursue a less isolationist post-Brexit policy, the time is surely ripe for the less cerebrally-endowed politician – Lord Lawson, Theresa May […]

Tory grandee Lord Heseltine is not afraid to think, and say, the unthinkable when it comes to Brexit – even if it rattles his party’s top brass. TIM WALKER speaks to one of British politics’ biggest beasts In the company boardrooms, on the streets of the deprived inner-cities and addressing the Tory faithful as their […]

As an EU national who has resided in UK for the past eight years, I will be using the ballot box in May to articulate my discontent with Brexit. Although local elections concern local matters, as an EU national I only have the local elections at my disposal to signal my disagreement with the Conservative […]

Alastair Campbell (TNE #90) reminds us of just how extraordinary it is that someone so clearly unsuited to holding public office as Boris Johnson has managed to gain such a strong foothold in politics. Gary Neville summed it up for me when, following yet another bit of foot-in-mouth idiocy as the foreign secretary suggested we […]

Both sides of Brexit think the BBC is biased towards the other side, as Chris Grey’s excellent piece points out. This may indicate that the Beeb is doing the right thing. So let’s just cut to the chase and stop hammering the BBC for showing or not showing any partiality during the referendum debate. What […]

For EU citizens who had been offered the right to remain in the UK the Government has failed to ‘take back control’, explains Paul Stein. In June 2017 TNE printed my letter responding to Theresa May’s ‘fair and generous offer’ to EU citizens living in the UK. Given that my wife entered the UK in […]

Many Remainers believe a second referendum will be the silver bullet that solves everything by sending the issue of Brexit back into the abyss. But unless we can convince a good percentage of the disenfranchised working class who voted Leave, a second vote could stoke up far greater problems than we have now. We would […]

The idea of a new centre party is tempting for Remain voters left feeling disenfranchised by the attitudes of the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition. I believe it could succeed despite our electoral system. I have been voting for nearly 40 years and can tell you that even in the late 1970s […]

As a long-standing centre-right Tory voter for more than 60 years, I am appalled by the extremist slide which has moved the party too far to the right for my taste. In fact, it has become so right wing that it is similar to the Republican Party in the US, something which is contrary to […]

Anette Schweizer argues that Remain needs to put a positive spin on freedom of movement to win the argument… I moved to the UK from Germany five years ago and live in a small market town in the East Midlands, in an average, middle-classy residential area. I love talking to all sorts of people from […]

Thomas Harris encourages The New European readers to ensure their friends and family are all registered to vote in the local elections… Theresa May asked the electorate last year to endorse her hard Brexit posturing. It delivered no such endorsement but she has carried with it on regardless. May’s ministers have continued to ‘negotiate’ with […]

So. Yeah. Easter. Bit of a weird one. For all that Easter is in many ways the direct counterpart festival to Christmas, the yin to Yuletide’s yang, as it were, it’s always been very much the junior partner. It’s just not as big a deal, for all that in theological terms the two festivals ‘bookend’ […]

The EU has more democratic checks than any other international structure we belong to. EU legislation requires approval both of those directly elected MEPs and of the Council, composed of national ministers accountable to national parliaments. The EU’s central administration, the Commission is headed by a team of Commissioners, each one nominated by the Prime […]

Tens of thousands of us march against Brexit in Leeds, Edinburgh, Brighton, Oxford and the rest making it onto the national news agenda. A handful of Brexiteers throw dead fish off a boat and the coverage is everywhere. This will shock some TNE readers but it isn’t an example of mainstream media bias against Brexit. […]

‘Exposure of Cambridge Analytica’s links with Vote Leave has obviously touched a raw nerve’ claims Anthony West. By crying foul at the Observer and Channel 4 and also haranguing journalist Carole Cadwalladr in the process, all Isabel Oakeshott did on the Marr show was to betray her anxiety that something was obviously amiss as far […]

Jeremy Corbyn’s dismissal of Owen Smith is yet more evidence that Labour is just as bad as the Conservatives when it comes to Brexit. Both are pursuing a disastrous Brexit with catastrophic outcomes as the end scenario. This is further illustrative of the long-standing fact that the 48% do not have a place in either […]

Michael Romberg doesn’t believe Jeremy Corbyn will ever change his mind on Brexit – here he explains why. Those who hope that Jeremy Corbyn will change his line (Zoe Williams, The New European, issue 87) should imagine what his conversion-to-Remain speech would have to say. The first line is easy: ‘The deal that Theresa May […]

It is time to face the fact that Washington’s ‘special relationship’ is now with Moscow, writes MITCH BENN. There’s an inherent risk in writing on the topic of the many and varied scandals and intrigues which currently beset the Trump administration; that is, by the time you publish something, it is a pretty safe bet […]

Stephen Bayley wants to set the record straight on our original membership of the European Community – it was never just about trade, he argues. Reading the Wilson government’s leaflet about the 1975 referendum, sent to every household in the country, is a very interesting exercise. For one thing, it dispels one of the big […]

TIM WALKER talks to Labour MP David Lammy about what he expects to happen later this year, when the full force of Brexit hits the UK. The final descent towards Brexit has begun: safety belts are tightened and prudent passengers are in brace position. At some point in the autumn, as David Lammy warns, the […]

MITCH BENN examines tweets from an organisation that claims to be returning conservatism to the grassroots A tweet appeared a few days ago from the group Activate UK; this organisation describes its objective in its Twitter ‘bio’ as ‘Creating a united platform for young conservatives and returning power to the grassroots’. Leaving aside the slightly […]

Alan Quinn argues that the Conservatives are putting party before country on Brexit, jobs and manufacturing. The recent article in The New European about the threat to our automotive industry is a stark reminder to us all about the insanity of Brexit. As my union Unite points out, one million well-paid jobs depend on this […]

Rick Llewellyn wrote to his MP one final time before leaving Britain and emigrating to France. Here he quotes the parting words he received from his MP. On February 24 I wrote to my (now ex) Labour MP John Cryer asking to be removed from his mailing list. I explained: ‘As a consequence of Brexit […]

One reader has started defining the Brexiteers that the BBC and mainstream media continues to roll out as the ‘Dismissers’. I wrote to the BBC, almost daily, during the Referendum of June 2016 complaining of their bias. Then, as now, the Remainer argument is put forward first, to be followed by some standby Brexiteer who […]

David Woodhead wants to remind Eurosceptics what former Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher had to say about Europe. Andrew Adonis refers to Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech of 1988. Although this is regarded as having injected the anti-EEC/EU poison into the Conservative party from which we have suffered ever since, it is worth recalling those aspects of […]

Readers cautiously welcome Labour’s shift in position on Brexit – here they explain why. Jeremy Corbyn’s speech does not go far enough for me and I cringed at the ‘Brexit that puts the working people first’ soundbite. However this is a welcome first step. We have moved on significantly from sixth-form dismissals of the EU […]

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Kate Hoey, David Davis, Boris Johnson and that big red bus. Just some of the subjects covered by correspondents in this week’s mailbag. David Davis’ Vienna speech (it meant nothing to me) seemed to indicate that there would be no bonfire of regulations and standards after Brexit. Yet this is exactly where people […]

MITCH BENN has taken the words of David Davis to heart and is now ready for dystopia. Like, I imagine, a lot of you, I’ve been spending this week stocking up on crossbow bolts, carefully removing one sleeve from my old black leather bike jacket, and fitting my Toyota Aygo’s engine with an illegal nitrous […]

Steve Anglesey names the worst Brexiteers of the week MALCOLM PARKER Tweeting under the handle @mbiranek, this lesser-known Brexiteer declared: ‘We want our sovereignty back from the unelected EU baccarats.’ Readers of a certain age will be unable to stop themselves singing ‘Yes sir, I can Brexit, but I need a certain song…’ THERESA MAY […]