Simon Hix
@simonjhix
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Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics, @eui_eu. FBA FRSA. Democracy, parties, elections, electoral systems etc. Live music. COYI
Joined February 2012
France decided to go for teacher assessed end-of-school grades, and created 10,000 extra uni places, so no-one of this generation will miss out. That’s a “proper country”. England, in contrast, is a “make-do-and-mend” country.
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Great graphic by @jburnmurdoch. In other words, Britain is a poor country, with 1 moderately wealthy region.
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@toadmeister Oh dear Toby. 50,000 is 1% of 5 million. So, that’s 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, according to your own calculations. That’s the whole point!.
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The case for Scottish independence has never looked stronger. The weakest aspect of the case was always economic, but that has suddenly switched. @NicolaSturgeon and @_KateForbes seem safe pairs of hands by comparison to @trussliz and @KwasiKwarteng.
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Latest @YouGov "Brexit: Right or Wrong" tracker data is out. Here's what the trend looks like. Wrong now 12 points ahead of Right.
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As others have pointed out: we will have had 2 general elections in 2 years, and 2 Tory leadership elections in 2 years, yet a narrow referendum result from over 2 years ago is untouchable. That’s British democracy for you folks!.
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Meanwhile, the gap between the amount of people who think Brexit was "wrong", in hindsight, and the amount who think it was "right" just keeps getting bigger and bigger
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Too many MPs & pundits don’t realise that No Deal is NOT the end. It’s just the start of the next stage. UK will still need to do deals w/ EU on goods, services, medicines, data, security, research/educ, qualific’s etc. UK will have to compromise, and from an even weaker position.
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Corbyn would remain “neutral” in a second referendum. In other words, he has no position on the most important issue of the day, no, in fact, the most important issue of several generations. I find that astounding for someone who wants to be PM
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Some news about me. Sad to be leaving LSE, which I have been part of in one way or another since 1987. But, I’m very honoured to be taking up the Stein Rokkan Chair, and really excited to be returning to the EUI.
Prof Simon Hix will be joining the EUI in September 2021 from @LSEnews. He will take up the position of Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics at our Department of Political and Social Sciences. Welcome (back) Simon!. 🔗@simonjhix
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Powerful and slick. These guys clearly know what they are doing. They make Change UK look like a bunch of kids who started a political party as a Year 9 school project.
"I served in the Royal Marines for over 10 years. I'm proud to be British, I'm proud of our tolerance, our diversity, of our liberal democracy. But the MP's at Westminster right now, they're letting down the British public." - @jaglancy, veteran and Brexit Party candidate.
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Interesting piece by @JamesMelville, explaining why many progressive Scots now support independence. I bet there are English progressives who feel the same: let Scotland go, so we can have at least one part of this island governed properly
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@leonardocarella Yep. And they are utterly rubbish at football; way below the usual standard required to host a World Cup (and so be in the tournament without qualifying).
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Even that's not true, as Australia has a range of agreements with the EU. No Deal is more like an "Afghanistan style deal".
PM Johnson: Britain should get ready for an ‘Australia style deal’.
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I'm 50 today :-(.Gift to myself: ignore Brexit, the state of British and European politics, and the state of political science for 24 hours :-).
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Election day in Hong Kong. Long queues at polling stations and some interesting graffiti, eg.
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Excellent letter in The Guardian about (so-called) “libertarian” hypocrisy
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This MEP ran a Twitter poll to determine how he should vote on the Commission President:."200,000 voted in my poll, and around 80% said I should vote against VdL".This sort of BS terrifies me! Please can someone explain selection bias and random probability sampling to this guy🤦♂️.
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Giving my last lecture at LSE today, after 24 years. Mixed feelings. Glad it’s GV101, which has been my favourite course to teach. But sad it’s online and not in person. 🥲.
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This is shockingly bad judgement. The analogy is disgusting: the EU is a voluntary union of democratic states that the UK was free to leave, while Russia is an aggressive authoritarian regime that is inflicting unthinkable suffering on the Ukrainian people.
Boris Johnson appeared to compare the British people’s vote for Brexit to the fight for freedom in Ukraine. The prime minister was speaking at the Conservative Party’s spring conference.
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To all those who compared Brexit and Trump in 2016, remember Trump was for one term, while Brexit is for life.
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Fantastic graphic from @washingtonpost on the difference social distancing made in the 1918-20 Spanish Flu epidemic. Highly relevant for #coronavirus
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The outflow of assets from the UK since the referendum has reached $29.7bn.
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Latest YouGov "Brexit: Right or Wrong?" tracker has the largest lead for "Wrong" since the survey began in July 2016: 12 points (50% Wrong vs. 38% Right). Here's a summary of the time series
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So that's:. 888 for Remain parties.-1471 for Leave parties.-81 for Labour (no idea what their position is). 662 for Independents .So, why is the main story from the local elections that Brexit needs to be delivered ASAP?
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My last day at @LSEnews @LSEGovernment. Thank you to all my colleagues and students over the last 24 years who have made it such a great place to teach and do research. I will miss you all! Off to @EUI_EU this evening. Looking forward to meeting my new colleagues and students.
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Interesting conversation with a Korean former student of mine, who is now a Prof in Seoul and an expert on the EU-Korea FTA
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My paper (with @ggbenedetto and @mastrorocconick) on "The Rise and Fall of Social Democracy, 1918-2017" has been accepted for publication in the American Political Science Review. Absolutely delighted!
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It’s all the Commission’s fault, of course! In reality, the reason we are in this mess is because senior politicians in the UK refuse to understand how the EU works or to accept the relative weakness of the UK. A devastating mix of ignorance and arrogance
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BBC doing it’s best to spin the Turing scheme, to make it sound as good or better than Erasmus (typical!). The key difference, barely mentioned here, is that the Turing scheme won’t pay fees. So, it’s essentially only open to kids with rich parents.
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If you look across the five largest European countries, the UK is now clearly on a different (worse) trajectory. Daily deaths aren’t coming down as fast as they need to be. What are France and Spain doing that the UK is not?
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I’m getting really annoyed at people describing May’s Deal as a “soft Brexit”. It was only “soft” in the transition period. It ended FoM. No CU. No EEA. And possibility of ending in Canada+. In what way is that “soft”? Much closer to what ERG wanted than EEA+CU types.
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Always thought Remainers would only have a chance of overturning the vote if they could articulate a programme to address the deep economic causes of Brexit, and how remaining in the EU would help deliver that. They have so far failed to do that, and so have won few Leavers over.
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And here's what I've got on turnout (ranked by biggest change since 2014). This may be the most important outcome of these elections, as it could mean a renewed legitimacy for the EP, and perhaps even for the EU project as a whole. Will be interesting to see the age breakdown.
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Excellent piece by @EdwardGLuce, explaining how the US federal government is being massively irresponsible, eg. US has conducted fewer tests than the Netherlands is conducting daily, is refusing to buy foreign test kits, etc. Terrifying!
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Okay, so here’s an essay question for all those people out there trying to argue that Labour should not choose a more centrist leader: . “Labour has had 11 party leaders since 1976; who is the only one to have won a general election, and why?”.
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US and UK want Russia kicked off SWIFT, but EU is opposed, mainly because of Germany. What’s the explanation for that?.
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I’m amazed so many people are getting angry that the EU will make Brits go through the non-EEA passport lines. I thought “Brexit means Brexit”!.
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In January 2019 I will be taking over from Prof. Julia Black as Pro-Director (Research) at LSE. Exciting times to play a role in shaping the research agenda for the social sciences
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This is misleading and disengenuous nonsense. After Brexit, France will no-longer have to take back migrants who leave France for the UK, as the EU’s Dublin Regulation won’t apply in the UK. That’s what “taking back control of our borders” means folks.
We also need the cooperation of the French to intercept boats and return migrants back to France. I know that when the British people say they want to take back control of our borders – this is exactly what they mean.
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Astonishing footage. Credible sources now estimating that this was the largest demonstration in recent British history.
#PeoplesVoteMarch organisers say more than a million people joined protests in central London.[tap to expand].#Brexit
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One lesson from the exam grades disaster is not that algorithms are bad, but we need social scientists closely involved in designing algorithms in public policy. Any good social scientist could have told Ofqual the likely problems within 5 mins of seeing the initial output.
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Amazing results confirming the positive effects of face masks:. “Among 139 clients exposed to two symptomatic hair stylists with confirmed COVID-19 while both the stylists and the clients wore face masks, no symptomatic secondary cases were reported”
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My new favourites for the EU’s top jobs:.Com Pres: Margrethe Vestager.Council Pres: Dalia Grybauskaitė.ECB Pres: Christine Lagarde.High Rep: Kristalina Georgieva.EP Pres: Mairead McGuiness. That would be a truly transformative line-up.
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Brilliant by @Freedland. The unity and power of the EU is now clear. In a scary geopolitical world, and with big tech picking off countries, the EU is a regulatory, trade, economic and geopolitical superpower. A “free UK” is a minnow in comparison
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I have spent 30 years researching/teaching EU politics. I studied at @EuropeanUni, was a researcher in @EuropeanParl, a visiting prof at @thehertieschool @sciencespo @univienna, co-founder of @EUP_TheJournal & @VoteWatchEurope etc. Today is a very sad day for me 😢 #BrexitDay.
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Latest @YouGov Brexit Tracker finds that 38% of people think the vote to Leave the EU was the "Right" decision, against 49% who think it was the "Wrong" decision. And, looking across the data series, it appears that the trend towards "Wrong" has accelerated in the last 2 months
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Disappointing. I'm normally a huge fan of Krugman. But, this reveals a really basic misunderstanding of British and EU politics amongst the American commentariat.
If they'd thrown May a few crumbs, today might have looked very different. The arrogance of the EC, completely untempered by the disasters of austerity, is very much part of the British story 2/.
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The elite who like to claim they speak for "the people against the elites", inevitably want the elite to over-rule "the people" when the people don't do what they're supposed to. Classic populist nonsense.
It seems 'The People' are woke and so unelected judges ('enemies of the people') may have to overrule them.
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Very sorry to see this. I had the privilege to chair @NicolaSturgeon when she spoke at LSE some years ago. I was massively impressed. She was one of the most charming, thoughtful, intelligent, and engaging politicians I ever saw speak at LSE.
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You’ll end up having a bigger impact on the world through your teaching than your research. Take teaching seriously, and be good to your students. It will pay you back in the end
If you could go back and tell your younger academic self one thing you’ve learned about academia, what would you say?.
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“We filed the wrong flight plan by mistake, and only discovered that when we arrived at the wrong destination”. A metaphor for modern Britain .
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Stunning graphic from that @TheEconomist article (see previous tweet), illustrating how the number of coronavirus deaths is hugely underestimated:
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This really is an extremely articulate explanation of the problems of Brexit, far clearer and more sophisticated than anything I have heard from any politician recently.
2-MINUTE VIDEO: In less than two minutes on #BBCQT last night, the woman in the maroon jumper explained how #Brexit is “going to be massively damaging long term for the UK.” She did better than any of the panellists. She should have been on the panel. Please share. #FinalSay
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel, Macron now forecast to win a majority in the French National Assembly.
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I have spent 30 years researching/teaching EU politics. I studied at @EuropeanUni, was a researcher in @Europarl_EN, a visiting prof at @thehertieschool @sciencespo @univienna, co-founder of @EUP_TheJournal & @VoteWatchEurope etc. Today is a very sad day for me 😢 #BrexitDay.
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When appointing the senior judiciary is nothing more than tribal political sport, US democracy looks closer to Hungary and Poland than to most mature democracies
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@pmdfoster @BorisJohnson @JoeBiden Great thread. I also love the irony of prominent Leavers claiming that they wanted to leave the EU because it is a "superstate", but now claiming that it is "merely an international organisation". If it is merely the latter, why did they want to leave it in the first place?.
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Western universities should coordinate fast to offer sanctuary to Ukrainian academics @EUI_EU @LSEnews @sciencespo @CIVICA_EU @UniofOxford @Columbia @thehertieschool @Harvard @ucl @Unibocconi @Stanford @UCBerkeley @Yale @HumboldtUni @Cambridge_Uni @nyuniversity @UMontreal.
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Put another way:.No Deal Leave (Brexit+UKIP) 29%.May's Deal (Con) 16%.Soft Brexit (Lab) 24%.Remain (Lib Dem+Green+Change UK+SNP/Plaid) 29%.
EU Parliament voting intention (10-11 April). Lab - 24%.Con - 16%.Brexit Party- 15%.UKIP - 14%.Lib Dem - 8%.Green - 8%.Change UK - 7%.SNP/Plaid - 6%.Other - 1%.
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Wait! I thought the UK didn't have any power in the EU, and the Germans ruled over us. Now I'm really confused.
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A salary that’s lower than the annual fees that international students will be paying to be taught by this person. The strange world of the HE economy in the UK.
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Me: I’m busy.Wife: no you’re not, you’re just kibitzing on Twitter. that told me!.#kibitzingontwitter.
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From a doctor in a major hospital: “In Milan they are having to choose between intubating a 40-yr-old with 2 kids . who is fit & healthy & a 60-yr-old with high blood pressure . In the hallway, there are another 15 who are hardly breathing & need oxygen”
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This is a terrible "puff piece" by @bbclaurak. It smacks of the need to write something about this, but then bending over backwards not to say anything that might actually be critical. Shockingly poor journalism!.
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The customs issue in a nutshell: imagine a container of chlorinated chickens from the US arriving in Liverpool, with a plan to smuggle the load to Germany, via Belfast, Dublin, and Le Havre. Where are the EU customs checks going to be?.1/2.
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One day people will say: I remember when the UK was a world leader in the creative industries .
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BREAKING: @thequentinletts backs the UK:.1) joining Schengen, so there are no passport checks between UK & EU,.2) joining EU single market, so there are no regulatory checks, and .3) reaching a customs agreement, so there are no customs checks. Or maybe he's clueless! You decide.
Just skied from the EU into independent Switzerland. Quite disgracefully, there was no hard border. Not even a line in the snow.
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Starting to dawn on me that perhaps the reason I like May’s Deal is that I trust Brussels to set the regulatory standards for my country more than I trust the unconstrained and arbitrary majority in the House of Commons, let alone the quality of the politicians in that majority.
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100 years of European politics in one figure: party family votes in all democratic elections in 31 countries since 1918, me & @ggbenedetto
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Our son, Ben, starts at @sciencespo in Reims today. Very exciting, although I will miss him terribly :-(. Really impressive induction and orientation programme, btw.
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This is nuts! If taken literally, it means Karl Marx, Thomas Paine, Rousseau, and many others are now banned from UK school curriculums. Is this really your intention @NickGibbUK? If so, that’s totalitarianism (nb. I guess Arendt is also banned!)
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The de facto expulsion of CEU from Hungary is a stark symbol of EU failure. An authoritarian regime in the EU’s midst undermines any claim the EU is liberal and democratic. The EPP, in particular, should be deeply ashamed of their complicity (@ManfredWeber @alexstubb).
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@toadmeister @spectator Jeez. You are so full of joy and happiness Toby! I'm sure if pupils were striking for a low-tax, low-regulation, libertarian state you'd be all in favour.
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My first day as the Pro-Director for Research at @LSEnews. Excited to get stuck in. My remit covers REF, UK and EU research funding, research centres, LSE Press, PhD training, postdocs, LSE library, research metrics, etc. Fun!.
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I senior UK cabinet minister admits that he lied to parliament, and he's going to get away with it because no-one in his party, including the Prime Minister, is willing to take him on. If the rest of the world wasn't laughing at us already, they certainly are now #DavisMustGo.
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"Mr Barnier said the UK keeps repeating that they are negotiating as 'sovereign equals', but the 'reality' was that an agreement was being sought between a massive bloc and a smaller nation". Ouch!.
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And so it begins; the EU is tilting inexorably to the right. First migration. Next environment. The EU policy framework could be vastly different a few years from now. If @bjornhoyland and I are right, we can expect progressive voters and parties to begin to be anti-European.
Von der Leyen in the meeting with Meloni, Orban, Schoof, Frederiksen, Nehammer, Mitsotakis, Abela and Christodoulidīs to coordinate the position on migration. I miss Juncker.
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Sophisticated and clear answer to the economy question by @NicolaSturgeon. Why need a leader like Nicola down here #ITVDebate.
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.@thetimes deputy editor peddling fake news. EU suspended state aid rules last week. Shame on you @Steven_Swinford.
Exclusive:. EU has blown big hole in Rishi Sunak's bailout package under state aid rules. Grants & 'tax advantages' capped at €800,000 *per company*. Big retailers & hotel chains will see little benefit from Sunak’s pledged £20bn business rates holiday.
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@toadmeister That’s really low Toby. Guy did not use the Holocaust to support the EU, whereas you DID invoke the Holocaust to make a petty little point about sovereign nation states. Think about that for a moment.
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Shocking from the PM! Describing a No Deal outcome as the "Australia option" is deliberately misleading and disingenuous. Australia has a Framework Agreement with the EU, has been trying to negotiate an FTA since 2018, and it's trade with the EU is tiny compared to ours!.
Now is the time for the public and businesses to get ready for the Australian option on January 1st.
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“EU blinked”. Really? The depth of the misunderstanding of the EU amongst some of our so-called “experts” on this stuff still astounds me.
EU blinked on hard-line position Macron was briefing out earlier.
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Expelled by May for refusing to oppose EP condemnation of Orban. Just shows you who she thinks her allies are. British media should be making a much bigger deal out of this, eg. @bbcnickrobinson @bbclaurak.
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This is great! I now have an outstanding example for my students of “policy based evidence” (as oppose to “evidence based policy”) - ie. we’ve decided what the policy is, and now we’re going to make up evidence to support it.
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I've now read the #BrexitWhitePaper and am none the wiser! How humiliating for my friends in the civil service to have to write this rubbish.
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I’m so hoping May wins the no-confidence vote by 52% to 48%, and then to hear the ERG folks claiming that 52% is not a mandate to do anything!.
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How did we get here? I can almost imagine a military conflict of some kind between the UK and the EU. It wouldn’t take much to spark it, eg. Gibraltar, fish, refugees, who knows. The jingoism in parts of the British press, egged on by some extremist politicians, is terrifying.
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The last day of UK MEPs in the EP in Strasbourg. I was an intern in the EP during my PhD in 1994, and got to know many great UK MEPs from across the political spectrum. They worked hard to represent their constituents, for little thanks or acknowledge back home. Sad day for me.
Last espresso in Strasbourg before train home. This week we defended EU27 & UK citizens rights, debated path to Mid East peace, passed a key biodiversity resolution & detailed climate change policy (European Green Deal). UK voice on all this will now be lost @LibDemMEPs
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It amazes me how so many British commentators/journalists cannot bring themselves to praise Germany. Why are you guys still fighting the second world war FFS?.
Sorry but Germany finally being humiliated into doing the absolute bare minimum asked of it by contributing to its own defence is not an excuse to get the bunting out.
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“No to NATO”, but no mention of Putin. Tells you everything you need to know. I really wouldn’t be surprised if Stop the War is indirectly funded by Russia.
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Fine! But because the UK thinks it voted to cherry-pick only the parts of the EU it likes, it doesn’t mean that the EU has to give it to us. The EU27 are perfectly within their rights to say “no way”. The PM needs to be honest with the British people.
The EU should be clear: I will not overturn the result of the referendum. Nor will I break up my country.
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