Brexit, tactical voting, the unity of the United Kingdom… The 12 December election is like no other in many ways. Our colleagues from across UCL offer their thoughts on how to approach the first winter poll since 1923.
Read below our round-up of comments to prepare yourself for the upcoming vote.
As agreement is reached with the EU, Theresa May’s Brexit deal will come before parliament. In this contribution, Benjamin Martill, Dahrendorf Forum Post-Doctoral Fellow at LSE, breaks down the parliamentary arithmetic and assesses her options.
My Kingdom for a Deal
Theresa May has, at long last, reached agreement with the EU on the terms of Britain’s impending withdrawal from the Union on 29 March 2019. The deal is politically controversial and seems to have pleased no one, especially the hardline Brexiters. This is because it could see the UK remain within a single customs territory with the EU, precluding the need for a hard border on the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland would also remain in key elements of the single market for goods, for the same reason. This ‘backstop’ has proven to be the most contentious element of the Withdrawal Agreement, dragging out negotiations which were almost 80 percent complete at the beginning of 2018.
With ‘exit day’ less than six months away, public debate about a second Brexit vote continues. In this new post on this topic, Jess Sargeant, Alan Renwick and Meg Russell outline the key decision points and processes by which MPs or the government might choose to trigger a second referendum.
In our previous blogpost we considered how long it would take to hold a second referendum on Brexit, concluding that an extension to Article 50 would almost certainly be required. The length of the necessary extension would depend on when the referendum was triggered. Calling a referendum requires a majority in parliament, and whether such a majority exists will depend on political and circumstantial factors. But by examining the process of Brexit we can identify a number of key junctures at which a decision to hold a referendum could be made.
According to Marc Brightman, the problems of migration and economic stagnation, often referenced as the causes of the votes for Brexit or populist parties in Italy, should be treated together as part of a single problem of sustainability. An opportunity exists to exploit the rather consensual ground of environmental economics and ecological economics in European negotiations to agree on reforms for Italy and the other member states.
The formation of a populist government in Italy is causing disarray among policymakers and policy advisors working in a framework that has not assimilated advances in interdisciplinary sustainability science.
A recently published report from The UK in a Changing Europe examines various aspects of Brexit and public opinion. Here, Anand Menon, Director, and Alan Wager, researcher at The UK in a Changing Europe reflect on some of the report’s key findings. They argue that Brexit has had the effect of deeply embedding tribal politics, based on social identity, into British political life, and that it is difficult to envision this changing any time soon. This article was originally featured on The UK in a Changing Europe site and is reposted with permission.
It’s common to hear that Brexit has changed everything. And as with all such clichés, there is both an element of exaggeration and an element of truth to the claim. The decision of British voters to leave the European Union has had a fundamental effect in both revealing and deepening existing cleavages in British public opinion, and opening up new ones.
