Professor of EU Politics, University of Surrey The celebrated political philosopher JS Mill said 150 years ago that the UK Conservative party – the Tories – were ‘by the law of their existence the stupidest party’. How right he was. David Cameron’s performance at the European Council meeting last week was the nadir of UK […]
Read more
Today, I’ve been in Brussels, presenting a seminar on “The New Euroscepticism” as part of the UACES Arena series. The idea behind the seminars is to bring together academics and practitioners, so that both can gain something from the interaction: a hope that was more than borne out on this occasion. I had been somewhat […]
Read more
Professor Alex Warleigh-Lack At the European Council summit this evening and tomorrow, David Cameron must face up to a dilemma that has plagued all his predecessors since John Major: can Britain really be at the heart of the European Union while choosing to stay out of many key EU activities? It was Prime Minister Major […]
Read more
December 4th 2011 may yet become known as that particular moment in time when we witnessed a move into a new era in Russia’s post-Cold War politics. As I write, exit polls from the Russian parliamentary elections are indicating United Russia, the dominant political party in the Duma, and headed by Prime Minister Putin, will see a marked […]
Read more
That is the question implicitly posed by Charlie Brooker’s latest TV offering, ‘Black Mirror’, which aired on Sunday 4th December. Following the critically acclaimed Screenwipe and Brooker’s popular column in The Guardian, expectations for the three part ‘series’ have been high. And, if the first episode is anything to go by, Black Mirror will provide […]
Read more
One of the joys of consuming a lot of media is wading through the hubris: from Delors’ ‘confession’ that the Sun was right all along, to Aftenposten’s lead story on Gaddafi’s attempts to buy a Swedish football club. But one area where I am inclined to agree with the journalists is that this week is […]
Read more
Comment