Eu

Industry will shrivel. Exports will dry up. The few remaining steel works will be closed down. And rugby will be banned. Okay, I made that last one up. But in a report today, the leaders of Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru have laid out the case for keeping the principality in the single market – and warned that the economy will be virtually destroyed if they come out. ‘Severing ties with the single market to control our borders would be an act of catastrophic self-harm,’ according to the Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones. Like a kind of mini-me Nicola Sturgeon, it is possible to see what Jones, or certainly the Plaid

Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech sought to answer the question: does the Government have a plan for Brexit? Open Europe’s judgement is that she succeeded. And she also started to set out a wider vision for the UK’s relationship with the EU, linking it both to Britain’s place in the world, and to her own domestic vision – for the sort of country ‘we want to be’. At first sight the Prime Minister’s 12-point plan for a global Britain seems to be a masterclass in common sense. We welcome her clarity on various points, including that – inevitably – both Houses of Parliament will vote on the UK’s final deal

One of the many admirable aspects of Japanese culture is that they have developed strong taboos against triumphalism in politics. When one person scores a clear political victory over another there is pressure for him to play down that win and to present the result as a compromise. It’s the natural response of an island nation to early modern political turbulence and division, which harbours a desire to never repeat the experience. Likewise with the British, who after the wars of the three kingdoms became adept at creating a political system that rewarded compromise and discouraged extremism. Like many of the good things we’ve come to grow up with, the downside

Boris Johnson returned from the US this week boasting that the UK was now ‘first in line’ for a trade deal with the US. He said that the Trump team and the new Congress ‘want to do it fast’. But as I write in The Sun this morning, the situation is even more advanced than this. I understand that the Trump team is already working on the outlines of a US / UK trade deal. Interestingly, they want the deal to be pencilled in before the UK leaves the EU, though the UK could not formally sign it until it has left the bloc. The US’s keenness for a trade

The Guardian has a very significant story on its front page tomorrow. It has obtained notes of a meeting that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, had with senior MEPs this week. These notes show that Barnier told them that he wanted a ‘special’ deal that would guarantee access for the EU firms and countries to the City of London’s financial markets. Interestingly, Barnier also said—according to The Guardian’s account—that ‘There will need to be work outside of the negotiation box … in order to avoid financial instability.” This suggests that Barnier shares Mark Carney’s view that there are financial stability risks for Europe if the EU cuts itself off