The upsides of getting older are relatively few and far between, but one of the best is that you get to annoy younger people by dragging up things from the past that they have no memory of. And so it’s been this week: I’ve been musing on the late 1980s and the oddities of monetary […]
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As we roll around to a new round of Article 50 negotiations, it’s perhaps useful to revisit another key structural dimension of this process. Negotiation theory spends a lot of time trying to educate users into the language of positive-sum games. Those inexperienced in such things typically see negotiations as zero-sum: your loss is my […]
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Even if the Article 50 negotiations have yet to move to Phase II (transition arrangements), it is clear that such matters are increasingly on people’s minds. The European Council a fortnight ago did concede that the Commission should start to prepare a draft mandate for Phase II, so that as and when Phase I (tying […]
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It’s been a busy month in the world of Article 50. The European Council last week confirmed that ‘sufficient progress’ in Phase I had not been achieved, but did allow the Commission to begin work on a mandate for Phase II, so that should the December review be positive work can immediately shift over. This […]
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As part of the “Negotiating Brexit” event that Hussein Kassim (UEA) and I are running at the British Academy today, as part of our Brexit Priority grant project on the positions of the various member states in the Article 50 process, I have produced an infographic. This summarises both the key issues in each of […]
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The European Council today and tomorrow is an important staging post for the Article 50 process. It marks the point at which the EU27 had decided they would review the negotiations and take stock. More particularly, the original mandate for the Commission suggested that this was the point at which the European Council would take […]
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