Sometimes you are so far down the political well that all the cunning plans your advisers put to you simply make things worse. That’s where Sunak is at the moment. He is in a very deep hole and they won’t let him stop digging.
<p>
https://nitter.cz/StephenBarberUK/status/1757121663873761323#m
</p>
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1757126669733675097#m
[2024-02-12 19:36 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: I’m not sure whether Americans or Europeans should be more concerned by Trump’s comments. Europeans will be worried about the implications for their security. Americans will be worried about the implications for their democracy of such a vindictive child’s becoming President.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1757136586062311812#m
[2024-02-12 20:16 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: The Conservative Party lives currently in its own cocoon of alternative reality. The return of Johnson would please the membership and the right-wing media. So it would make good sense from the point of view of party management. In every other way it is of course crazy.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1757017293526114567#m
[2024-02-12 12:22 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: For Conservative leaders since Hague party management has been their most important task. This stemmed from the disastrous and destabilising decision to allow the Party’s dwindling membership to have the last word on its leadership. Good government had to fall by the wayside.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1757024662347722927#m
[2024-02-12 12:51 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: I wonder why Churchill wasted so much time describing WW2 as a struggle between democracy and Nazism. It would have been so much simpler to tell the British Army to go off and kill the King’s enemies, who happened this time round to be Germans.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1757032713062604868#m
[2024-02-12 13:23 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: The evocation of a “European” pillar of NATO suggests the continuing existence of an “American” pillar of NATO. Whether this “American”pillar will exist in anything like its present form five years from now is highly uncertain after Trump’s recent remarks.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756989360380252477#m
[2024-02-12 10:31 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: An EU of free, democratic nations trading with each & protecting each other’s security, has never been more vital than it is today. How awful that with Brexit, the UK of all states should have weakened it, serving only Putin’s interests. We must find a means to create a new one.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/AnthonyGlees/status/1756814778494754895#m
[2024-02-11 22:57 UTC]
Trump’s speech reminds us that European and American strategic interests will not always be the same. In the dangerous world ushered in by the Ukraine war European solidarity is vital. This European solidarity can only be guaranteed by European integration,including the UK.
<p>
https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756775321498443858#m
</p>
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756787093324415047#m
[2024-02-11 21:07 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: It must be a relief for Sunak to turn away from the internal problems of his Party to international affairs. He can do little to solve the problems of the Middle East. But at least nobody’s going to blame him. As leader of the Party, he is rightly criticised for its dysfunction.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756753197698355665#m
[2024-02-11 18:52 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: Could there be any more dramatic demonstration of why European integration is essential and why it is insane that the UK has decided (temporarily) to stand aside from this integration? We have a rotten political system when its leading figures can ignore this obvious reality.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756775321498443858#m
[2024-02-11 20:20 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: On the one hand it reflects badly on Sunak that many MPs are standing down. On the other hand he knows that most of them are no great loss. On the third hand he will fear that they may be replaced by even worse successors. It’s not easy being leader of the Tory Party these days.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756735537560305825#m
[2024-02-11 17:42 UTC]
The fact that Truss and Sunak were the two candidates in 2022 for the Conservative leadership and that the Conservative membership then chose Truss for the post makes clear beyond doubt that the Conservative Party is deeply dysfunctional and probably in terminal decline.
<p>
https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756414540151927005#m
</p>
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756471023212359910#m
[2024-02-11 00:11 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: Except that the jury in this case was the membership of the Conservative Party. Their choice between Sunak and Truss need not be decisive for the rest of us.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756414540151927005#m
[2024-02-10 20:27 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: When British commentators talk about the “mutual advantage” of closer UK/EU relations, they often forget that this mutuality is asymmetric. If the UK rejoined the Single Market for instance it would have access to a much larger market in the EU than would the EU in the UK.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756114013123924473#m
[2024-02-10 00:33 UTC]
The phrase “mutual benefit” must be handled with care when applied to EU/UK relations. What constitutes a benefit and how substantial the respective benefits in question are may well appear different on different sides of the Channel.
<p>
https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756114013123924473#m
</p>
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1756265146836746456#m
[2024-02-10 10:33 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: Unpicking the defences of Brexit. New post on my Brexit & Beyond Blog. A deep dive into the tangle of arguments Brexiters currently deploy, from denial, bathos, deflection, whataboutery, lies & half-truths to the last redoubts of sovereignty and democracy: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/unpicking-defences-of-brexit.html
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/chrisgreybrexit/status/1755859684823642256#m
[2024-02-09 07:42 UTC]
It is tempting but misleading to think that the UK can edge its way gradually back into the EU. Membership of the EU needs however to be based on a commitment to shared European identity, values and common interests. These are big questions that cannot and should not be evaded.
<p>
https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1755243209737789702#m
</p>
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1755280938588614886#m
[2024-02-07 17:22 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: If the point of sending your children into private education is to help them get jobs for which they might not otherwise be qualified, then Rishi Sunak’s parents certainly got their money’s worth.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1755302235842531742#m
[2024-02-07 18:47 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: In a way it would be reassuring to believe that Sunak has a plan, however repulsively misconceived. It’s more likely however that he simply blunders from gaffe to gaffe because he has no intellectual or political compass by which to steer for more than the next sixty seconds.
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1755320466510688338#m
[2024-02-07 19:59 UTC]
RT by @Brendandonn: Revealed: suspected Russian spy ‘worked for MI6’ and Foreign Office
Shock horror that this possible Russian agent may have posed as an asylum-seeker. If he had been an identified Russian agent seeking to promote Brexit, no shock horror at all.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/07158cdf-2f76-43e2-86fd-db99987abc7b?shareToken=662740d3b468d73def567c9e7dffecda
🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/Brendandonn/status/1755324951073030559#m
[2024-02-07 20:17 UTC]
Unofficial automated mirror. No copyright asserted. ∎ Former Member of European Parliament; currently Director of Federal Trust for Education and Research. All tweets personal opinions only.