Coming soon: kenneth.scot

Are Rejoiners ready to sell today’s EU?

The European Movement UK has the stated aim of fighting to rejoin the EU “as soon as it is politically possible”, an aim which I support. However, the EU that the UK would be rejoining is different to that which it left - both because the UK would almost certainly no longer enjoy its previous array of opt-outs, and because the EU has already moved on since Brexit happened. (The only opt-out one can envisage the UK potentially re-obtaining is that from the Schengen area, and then only because of Ireland’s opt-out and the need to keep the Irish border open - though Ireland could instead choose to insist on UK Schengen membership as a condition for the UK’s accession.) In the economic arena in particular, the European project (a term many UK pro-Europeans shy away from using) continues to move forward, with developments in the following three areas fundamentally changing the character of the EU membership which the UK left behind. The euro The euro is of course not ...

Sweden has found a comfortable home in the EU – for now

I went to Sweden for the first time in 2003. I happened to be there during the country’s euro referendum campaign, a tightly fought race perhaps most remembered for the tragic murder of the country’s foreign minister and leading euro membership advocate Anna Lindh less than a week before polling day. Sweden for a long time stood apart from the mainstream process of European integration embodied in the European Communities and subsequent European Union. But following the end of the Cold War, and with the centripetal force of an integrating single market on its doorstep, the country made the decision in 1992 to join first the European Economic Area and then in 1994, by referendum, to join the EU – which it did along with Austria and Finland on 1 January 1995. While Austria and Finland went on to become two of the eleven founding members of the euro in 1999, Sweden again stood aside – though it did not wait long to (re-)broach the question, holding the aforementioned referendum on eur...

The good governance argument for UK federalism or Scotland's leaving the UK

It is common for people from outside the United Kingdom to refer to the UK as “England”, either in English, or using the equivalent word in other languages. English people often do the same, and for many making a consistent, precise distinction between England and the UK can be a challenge - if indeed it is not viewed simply as unnecessary pedantry or “semantics”. However, if England ≡ the UK, and Englishness ≡ Britishness (≡ means “is equivalent to”), the implication is that a Scot who identifies as British can also just as well be identifying as English. That is manifestly absurd - not because there is anything wrong with being English, but because Scottishness and Englishness are clearly two different things. For Britishness to make sense for the parts of the UK that aren’t England then, Englishness must be distinct from - and not equivalent to - Britishness. (The alternative is that we accept Englishness and Britishness are effectively synonyms, and therefore that England has e...

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