Simon Usherwood

As Rishi Sunak nears the end of his first month in the job as Prime Minister, we might once again consider how much he might engage with, and progress, the European issue. Like his predecessors before him, Sunak has both a vague sense that this is something that needs sorting, and no real plan about […]

Another month, another Prime Minister. The ructions in Westminster might well have launched a thousand memes about lettuce, but have also clearly put any policy work on hold. This holds true for British EU policy, where the only clear shift since Boris Johnson’s time in office has been a shift in discourse and framing: both […]

After a summer hiatus for the Conservative leadership campaign, there was much expectation of Liz Truss following through on her stated plans for the Northern Ireland Protocol. Recall that she had been the lead minister for the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and that she had done much during the campaign to court the support of […]

This post originally appeared on the UK in a Changing Europe website. As a strapline for Labour’s EU policy, ‘make Brexit work’ has a lot going for it. An echo of ‘get Brexit done’ – which served Boris Johnson and the Conservatives so well in 2019 – it both highlights how un-‘done’ Brexit is, and […]

This week’s second reading of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill moves the UK one step closer to a significant aggravation of the relationship with the EU. With no Tories voting against the Bill – partly because it was presented as a technical exercise – the government is pushing on with a faster committee stage. However, […]