Professor of European Politics, Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration. Commentary on Brexit, Balkans, EU, Ukraine, Russia-EU, UK politics,and Gambling.
1/ Brexit was UK’s choice
2/ U.K. is now a third country
3/ third countries do not get same benefits as members
4/ why is all this so difficult to understand?
Hello from Ireland.
I hate to remind everybody of that pesky thing called the Belfast Agreement which *requires* the jurisdiction of the ECtHR to function.
Sunak cannot ‘ignore’ ECtHR without abrogating the Agreement.
Can every 🇬🇧 journalist try to absorb that simple fact?
I think Rishi Sunak has just said that if parliament votes that "Rwanda is a safe country" via his planned emergency legislation - and that can't be taken for granted - he will just ignore the European Court of Human Rights if it intervenes to stop asylum seekers being expelled
An extraordinary figure from the
@FT
: the poorest 20 per cent cohort of Irish people have a standard of living which is 63 per cent higher than their counterparts in the U.K.
How much wider will the gap be when this ultra-Thatcherite U.K. government of Liz Truss is finished?
Apparently, our long-suffering British friends are now being asked to embrace ‘more death’ from Covid, in the same way they were told to accept less trade and prosperity from Brexit. The rest of the world looks on, mouths agape, at these blustering anti-science blowhards.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says "there could be 50,000 cases detected per day by July 19" and that "we must reconcile ourselves to more deaths from COVID".
Latest on
#COVID19
:
Thanks Chris. We lived in a forced marriage with you from 1169 to 1921. You didn’t treat us very well. We escaped and grew up. We forgave you. We like you. But we don’t want to be you (who would right now?)When you get over the protracted nervous breakdown, we will be friends.
I can’t think of another media landscape in Europe like that in UK. Offshore proprietors who pay no tax in the country ruin lives & pollute political discourse while everyone in power cowers before them. No meaningful press regulation of any kind.
It is completely cancerous.
The Sun drove this story. Now they will not answer for the storm & controversy they have created. They never do. This is a paper with a record of polluting public life & telling lies from the Belgrano to Hillsborough. Why don't we hold
@TheSun
accountable?
This is so demonstratively NOT what the letter said. Both BBC+ITN keep repeating the false interpretation. No democracy can survive the relentless pummelling of truth we see happening in 🇬🇧 on a daily basis. It is reprehensible for the most imp media outlets to collude with this.
.
@BorisJohnson
is visibly angry at the letter sent by French pm
@JeanCASTEX
to
@vonderleyen
about the fishing row which said the UK should be punished for leaving the EU. This will run
Since joining EU, Ireland has gone from one of the poorest countries in Europe, to one of the richest. It has a GDP per capita far in excess of the UK's. It ranks first in Europe for life expectancy. And sorry to report Irish self-respect and confidence highest it has ever been.
I think they are referring to the trouble we are having leaving Hotel California that’s is the EU. Still almost done. Ireland spent centuries trying to leave English rule only to become a regional sub office of Brussels. No self respect left !
Priti Patel’s entirely fake migrant ‘crisis’:
-UK has only half the asylum applicants it had in early 2000s
-UK gets only a fraction of applications FR/GER receive
-UK only hosts a fraction of displaced people poorer countries host
-Fall of 4% this year
The Telegraph has gone full Goebbels in asserting that public opinion in UK swinging behind No Deal. This is a whopping lie. This is what happens when ideologically crazed (and greedy) owners corrupt once decent newspapers.
#tomorrowspaperstoday
This is just laughable.
The U.K. is leaving Erasmus, the biggest student exchange system in the world, to set up....erm....a new global student exchange system.
This is the most glorious three minutes of TV I’ve watched in years. Watch
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
get his faux aristocratic bottom handed to him on a farmer’s plate.
Penny Mordaunt has been appointed UK Secretary of State for Defence.
A reminder that this is the person who, during the Brexit referendum in 2016,repeatedly lied that Turkey was about to join the European Union. That’s the calibre of person now appointed to high office in the UK.
The value of first class journalism:
@mcculld
refuses to settle for the recurring lies of the Russian ambassador to Ireland.
This is how to confront apologists for murder.
I’ve rarely seen anybody demolish an opponent in debate like
@OwenJones84
does here to
@Alanshatter
Why?
Because the evidence of Israeli war crimes is so overwhelming.
Must read- ‘Ireland booms while Brexit Britain whimpers next door’ writes
@nichferris
@NewStatesman
The divergence in economic performance between Ireland and the UK is increasingly clear and demonstrates the catastrophe Brexiteers brought on 🇬🇧 economy.
I really - really - don’t know how Scottish MPs can remain so dignified in the face of the contempt shown them by the Tory party in recent years. Yet another example today.
In case anyone has any doubt how much Scotland matters to England, just watch this disgusting scenes in Westminster as Ian Blackford rises to speak on the Queens speech
@IanBlackfordMP
This is completely inappropriate from the German embassy in Ireland.
There is no anti-semitism in Ireland’s approach to this. None.
Opposition to Israeli atrocities against Palestinians does NOT equate to anti-semitism.
Most of Ireland’s far right candidates are polling below 1% in their individual constituencies. This despite Ireland having one of the highest rates of inward migration in Europe.
Attempts to establish right-wing nativist politics as a force in Ireland look to have flopped again, as only 1% of 5,300 voters polled say immigration was an important factor in deciding how to vote.
Contrasts in leadership: While Boris Johnson spent yesterday fending off allegations of lying about Covid parties in his home and sponging off Tory donors to put up that ghastly wallpaper, In Ireland the Taoiseach quietly queued with other citizens to get his booster shot.
On this day,1 Jan 1973,Ireland took a giant step to achieving meaningful sovereignty by joining the EEC. We understood that sovereignty could be shared with our neighbours. In pooling sovereignty we finally took our place among the nations of the earth.
We’ve never looked back.
So, Dublin’s two most famous freedom fighters escaped to Tipperary today. They pitched up at my friend’s restaurant. When my friend asked them to fill out a contact tracing form before eating they refused to do so.
So she politely asked them to leave.
Just one week, and British tabloids have:
1. Contacted Garett Thomas parents to tell them their son was HIV positive.
2. Published story detailing how cricketer Ben Stokes’ siblings were killed, upsetting him greatly.
And then this.
They represent the very worst in our society.
Just received notification from the Mail on Sunday that, in a week in which I have received death threats, they are tomorrow going to publish my private address.
Sorry, Mr Frost. The EU will not bend its rules to suit a former member state, whose leaders are trying to manufacture a permanent war with the EU, to shore up a domestic position that gets more exposed by the day, in flagrant violation of WA/TCA.
Johnson blames migrants from Central+Eastern Europe for negatively impacting wages in 🇬🇧 after 2004. Ireland accepted proportionately significantly higher No of CEE migrants + not only did wages go UP (despite 2008 calamity), so did productivity (a lot)
Serbs are marching for democracy again tonight.
They march without the support of the European Union and the United States, which cling to their abnormal attachment to the Vucic regime as a ‘stabiliser’ in the Balkans.
If I had been wrong about - literally - every prediction I had made over the last decade, I think I might be reluctant to keep drawing public attention to my dunder-headedness.
But not Dan Hannan. Bless.
Brexit in one tweet:
A completely incoherent Leave supporter 7 years on from the referendum, describing non-existent EU rules, insisting ‘we played by the rules and Johnny Foreigner didn’t’.
Wow. Every second if this is worth watching - An extraordinary speech at the UN from President Osmani of Kosovo, facing down an ultra nationalist Serbian president for the multitude of crimes committed by past Serb regimes.
It is barely believable that this can happen to an opposition leader in an EU candidate state.
Senior EU (and US) actors have said *virtually nothing* about this and uttered completely inadequate criticism of the huge election irregularities in the recent Serbian election.
Shocking footage of Serbia’s opposition politician
@Sandulovic_N
being released from hospital.
As per his wife’s account, Sandulovic was kidnapped & beaten in the premises of Serbia’s intel agency BIA by Radoičić & other perpetrators of the Banjska attack.
Kosovo is not Serbian. Djokovic supports the enormously destructive Serb imperialism that led to mass killing of Kosovan Albanians in 1998-99.
He should be thrown out of the French Open, and out of tennis.
British shoppers now paying “a THIRD more” for EU-sourced goods in a development which The Times calls “unexpected”.
There is a price for everything and *this* is literally the price for not listening to experts.
Wow. Good to see at least one member of the European Commission *gets it*.
Thierry Breton puts Elon Musk on notice that the EU will not allow him to flood the information landscape with the kind of toxic disinformation it has been flooded with over the last few days. 👏👏
This is as extreme a communication I’ve ever seen from a 🇬🇧 Prime Minister.
Put aside the performative bluster and it is A grade Enoch Powell: creating a *Really* hostile environment for the poor misfortunates who turn up on British shores needing protection.
Shame on him.
This is what we’re up against.
The Labour Party, a subset of lawyers, criminal gangs - they're all on the same side, propping up a system of exploitation that profits from getting people to the UK illegally.
I have a plan to stop it.
Here’s how 🧵
The grade inflation in Irish universities is hugely embarrassing.
These are the figures for First Class Honours.
They are - literally - unbelievable.
We need to return immediately to a CREDIBLE award structure.
UK waters are “too polluted to swim in” and this is in stark contrast to most EU countries where water quality has improved substantially over the last two decades.
Fact check:
- the EU budget is extremely small, at 1% of EU GDP.
- only 6% of that figure is spent on administration.
- The EU employs fewer people than a mid-sized British city
- Most MEPs don’t steal from the EU, as Brexit party MEPs have been accused of doing.
Me in today’s Daily Mail: EU has been spunking away your cash on champagne, theme park visits and boozy parties.
Why would we sign up to a new EU Treaty so they can have another £30bn+. Forget it.
#NoDeal
Ireland's export figures for May, 2019:
USA: €3.7bln
Germany: €1.5bln
Belgium: €1.4bln
GB: €1.2bln
Sorry, Fraser. Nice try.
Over the course of joint EU membership since 1973 the share of Irish exports going to UK has fallen from 55% to 10%
See
The country is full of interesting people and yet this stale old show keeps bringing back the same water treading bores to wearyingly retread the same old ground. Does anybody in the production team at
#LateLate
have the slightest sense of imagination?
So, basically the EU has helped vaccinate one third of the entire population of the UK since December (more than 20m doses without any in other direction) while being stuffed by Astra Zeneca.
A simple thank you would be sufficient
@BorisJohnson
Boris Johnson’s letter to his MPs contains this jewel:
We “created a new and friendly relationship with the European Union”. This, as he literally is about to introduce legislation to torch the Northern Ireland Protocol (and TCA).
Let me get this right. The party that refused to punish Dominic Cummings for breaking the Covid lockdown rules now proposes to fine ordinary folk £10,000 if they do the same as he did?
This is not the act of a friend? Brexit does potentially catastrophic damage to the island of Ireland. And you didn’t give your ‘friend’ a moment’s thought as you pressed the Brexit button. Ireland is defending its national interest and will continue to do so.
I find it hard to forgive Leo Vardkar. He has made life for the UK as difficult as he could. This is not the act of a friend & we should treat his country accordingly
I’m not sure British people understand the amount of ‘soft power’ that can accrue from programmes like Erasmus+. People carry those positive experiences into business, diplomacy etc. It will be a tragedy if the UK is outside these structures of cross border exchange post-Brexit.
MPs have voted against New Clause 10 being read a second time, by 344 votes to 254.
This new clause would have required the Government to seek to negotiate continuing full membership of the EU’s Erasmus+ education and youth programme.
When Ireland joined the EEC income per Head was 55% of then EU average. Today Irish income per head (GNI) is 37% higher than the United Kingdom’s.
Brexit actually emphatically confirms Ireland’s voluntary choice to be part of the European Union. But thanks for thinking of us. X
Nothing to see here - just the
@MailOnline
complaining about the lack of immigrants to pick fruit, having spent years campaigning to kick out of Britain immigrants who pick fruit.
Britain is NOT Ireland’s biggest trading partner. Just 13% of Irish exports went to UK last year. More than 40% go to EU, 18% to US.
So can you stop telling LIES about Ireland?
I have not read a better piece on Trump’s America
(possible exception
@fotoole
cited here)
I have rarely read as good a sociological essay.
Take the time to read and absorb.
It lays everything out with extraordinary acuity.
These disgraceful old codgers still belting out sectarian lines is one thing. The enthusiasm of the young crowd singing ‘Up the ‘Ra’ is incredibly depressing.
The Wolfe Tones ended up drawing one of
@epfestival
’s largest ever crowds today! 👀🇮🇪
Crowds of up to 50-people deep gathered outside the Electric Arena tent at EP, with many festival go’ers bemoaning the decision not to book them to the main stage.
#electricpicnic
#wolfetones
The Disinformation Minister appeared before the
@CommonsDCMS
Committee today. Shockingly, he refused to distance himself from Boris Johnson's
#JimmySavile
lie aimed at Keir Starmer. Have a listen.
Shame on all those who protested in Ballinrobe.
I hope you never find yourselves in the position of having to rely on others when you are in desperate need of help.
A remarkable ten minutes of
@mrjamesob
radio, where
@ProfMarkElliott
demolishes the Johnson/Truss move to disregard the Northern Ireland Protocol. Really worth listening to.
Approaching 50 years of membership of the EEC/EU, 95% of Irish people believe that 🇮🇪 has benefited from being a member of the Union, the highest figure among member state populations.