Roy Jenkins had a fascinating life. Born in 1920 in Abersychan, a mining community in Wales, he came from a strongly “Labour” family—his father, Arthur Jenkins, was a leading official in the Union of Mineworkers, eventually becoming a member of Parliament. Jenkins himself was elected to Parliament at the age of 28, working his way…
Tag: Brexit
Special Brexit edition: Pay Now AND Pay Later
If you’re not a frequent reader of this blog, and, if you’re at all normal, you most assuredly are not, you’re probably not aware that I make sort of a point of ignoring a lot of the big stories of the day, figuring that a lot of, you know, important people will be commenting on…
Remember Brexit? It still sucks
Remember Brexit? Remember all that “Smash the Bastardly Brussels Bureaucracy” bullshit that was floating around just a few months ago, hyped by everyone from George Will to Jill Stein? Well, now the chickens are coming home to roost, reports Politico’s Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli. It seems that trying to bail out of the global economy isn’t…
Globalism lays an egg. Why?
As unprecedentedly awful as America’s politics are right now, in one way, we’re perfectly normal, because we’re just like everyone else. The monumental disarray of our Republican and Democratic parties is perfectly mirrored in the UK by the Conservatives and Laborites. Donald Trump and Boris Johnson could be twins. The specter haunting Europe these days…
Brexit, Part 2: What is to be done?
The impact of Brexit continues to roil and rumble. Paul Krugman say’s it’s not that big a deal—well, not unless you live in the UK itself, where “it looks all too likely that the vote will both empower the worst elements in British political life and lead to the breakup of the UK itself.” So,…
Alan Vanneman’s absolutely unique take on Brexit
That’s right: Other sites sell you candy pills, but here’s the real dope.1 Plenty of people2 are having a high old time praising the Brexit vote as an uprising of the “people” against the pointy-heads, ignoring the fact that the vote also polarized the old against the young, and the “Celtic Fringe”—Scotland and Northern Ireland—against…
Paul and the Europeans
Paul Krugman has explained, several times that he is a very reluctant, though thoroughly convinced anti-Brexit kind of guy. Why so reluctant? Because of the “sad reality” that the EU has become: “The so-called European project began more than 60 years ago, and for many years it was a tremendous force for good. It didn’t…