Opinion

In this week’s Brexit Deconstructed, JAMES BALL discusses how chaotic governments can open the door to evil doings. When staff start briefing against the world leader they work for, the results are rarely flattering. Take briefings of one particular head of state, whose personal aides commented he would appear ‘shortly before lunch’, spending the morning […]

Brexit is on its way to becoming a mystical entity and a sign that the UK has gone mad suggests BONNIE GREER. Brexitarianism – we are now at the One True Faith stage – could soon achieve full convergence with that other True Faith: Trumpism. Just as one of the writers of The Simpsons recently […]

Readers are calling on Jeremy Corbyn to hold Labour’s own EU referendum and to act on party members’ wishes. The letter from Momentum supporter Jim Hoyle (issue 81) about attacks on Jeremy Corbyn in TNE misses the point. Huge numbers of Labour members and supporters, new and old, are bemused and depressed by the leadership’s […]

Weaker, poorer, smaller. JAMES BALL looks at how Brexit will enfeeble Britain sector by sector. Jacob Rees-Mogg is on the warpath. The backbench faux-toff, who now leads a grouping of more than 50 hard Brexiteer Conservative MPs, is doubling down with his insistence that assessments produced by the civil service on the impact of Brexit […]

Theresa May’s response to the devastating BuzzFeed leak of impact assessments is to say that they are irrelevant because the Government will soon sign a wonderful bespoke trade deal with the EU which will lift all boats and dispel all gloom. This is impossible because of the red lines she has already set down. The […]

Leaked impact assessments have revealed that a hard Brexit would shrink the economy by 8% and leave the UK £196bn-a-year poorer. Usually, when the government keeps something secret, it’s because the information isn’t widely known and would do damage to the country if it were made public. That’s why we don’t publicly reveal the location […]

Is it time for another referendum on Brexit? Our readers have filled our mailbag with their own perspectives on what happens next. I agree that referendums are a tool of demagogues and dictators, unsuited to a representative democracy, but now that we’ve gone down that road, it will take one to cure one. Matt Kelly’s […]

We need to confront the Angry White Man (AWM) emergency before it is too late, says BONNIE GREER. The following is one of the variety of reasons that Toby Young used to explain the campaign directed against him over his appointment to a new government quango: ‘I’m a middle-aged white male so don’t tick any […]

James Ball explains why when it comes to Brexit we are all just passengers in the back seat. Imagine, if you will, the United Kingdom as a car on a road. Millions of us are strapped in the back with no real say in where things are going at the moment – except for a […]

Mitch Benn uses his most tortuous analogy yet to explain why he is not rejoicing over UKIP’s downfall. As I lurch ever further into sullen middle age (notched up another birthday this week; growing old sucks, but let’s face it, it beats the alternative) I find myself taking refuge in nostalgia. BBC Four is rather […]

Banning hidden credit and debit card charges was not a Conservative government measure but the result of an EU directive. Our readers set the record straight. It was intriguing to note so many Conservatives, including the Prime Minister, claiming credit for banning hidden charges for paying with credit or debit cards. This was in fact […]

How much more can Donald Trump say before the US labels him a racist? MITCH BENN investigates So, the American people, the western media and the human race in general have spent the last few days reeling from the shock revelation that the man who opened his Presidential run by announcing that ‘Mexicans are rapists’; […]

James Ball gives a quick dummies guide to trade within Brexit, as it appears that there are plenty of dummies who need it. In two months time, the UK and the EU will begin negotiating their future trading relationship, and the excitement seems to be initiating a whole new wave of Brexit falsehoods, from the […]

The New European’s columnist JAMES BALL argues that we need to start working out who to blame when Brexit doesn’t go to plan Remote and alien as the possibility may seem, but there is at least a theoretical chance that Brexit won’t go to plan and the UK won’t have a comprehensive, better-than-EU-membership, new deal […]

BONNIE GREER gives her diagnosis of Donald J. Trump The question of whether a mentally unfit leader is what is needed in stressful times has once again become the topic of debate. The publication of Fire and Fury, a look inside the campaign of Donald Trump, paints not just a picture of an amateur operation […]

Readers of The New European react through our letters pages to this week’s cabinet reshuffle. Theresa May’s baffling treatment of Justine Greening is good for our cause. As a Remainer with a small majority in a massively pro-Remain area, she is now free to make the case for Remain from the backbenches and, more importantly, […]

Brexit is a career-killer for freelancers, argues reader Jayne Hamilton. I read your article on freelance musician Anneke Scott with sadness as I know exactly how she feels. If current negotiations are anything to go by, I will lose two-thirds of my livelihood at the very least because of Brexit. While companies export products, we […]

BONNIE GREER says we are not on board for the anti-immigration; nativist; and economic protectionism of the culture wars known as MAGA and Brexit. There can be no doubt that the presidency of Donald Trump will be a different one, 12 months or so from now. Trump himself will guarantee it through, among other things, […]

As the new year gets underway, JAMES BALL argues that pinning your hopes on BINO* (*Brexit In Name Only) is pointless. If you believe the new upbeat tone of lots of Brexit coverage, we enter 2018 with the chances of a cliff-edge Brexit much reduced: the EU and UK have agreed a deal for ‘phase […]

Anthea McDowell writes that she is feeling more hopeful about the next 12 months in politics compared to this time last year. As 2018 approaches I find myself considerably more hopeful than at this time last year, when the twin blows of Brexit and Trump made it hard for many of us to get out […]

Readers had plenty to say this week about Nigel Farage’s claim he’s ’53, separated and skint’. Nigel Farage says he is ’53, separated and skint’. It is probably the first time one of his sentences has been two-thirds accurate, but the last bit really bugs me. Because Farage is plainly not skint. He earns £90,000 […]

Reader Paul Hollands spent a week on a pro-Brexit Facebook group to break out of the Remain social media ‘bubble’. I have spent the last week in a pro-Brexit group on Facebook. I did this to try and break out of my ‘bubble’, but also I went in search of the reason why people voted […]

MITCH BENN asks whether the likes of David Davis and Donald Trump have decided that shame is a sign of weakness. First of all, some sort of apology is order; I have been laid low with bloke-flu since last we spoke. It seems to be one of those annoying colds which wipes you out completely […]

JAMES BALL asks whether we should expect more of a cabinet minister than an 11-year-old at primary school. Should we expect more of a cabinet minister, or an 11-year-old at primary school? This is maybe not a question we expect to ask ourselves, but when faced with the reality of David Davis’s tenure at the […]

The Prime Minister is doomed even if she survives yet another self-created crisis, writes reader Daniel Hunt. She is weak, lacking vision, and unable to unite her own party, let alone her coalition partners. The reluctance of the Tory plotters to knife her while Brexit remains in the balance is understandable. Less so is why […]

Parliament flexed its muscles tonight – and isn’t it glorious? Don’t listen to the ministers who will want to spin this differently, this is hugely significant. Theresa May now has to go to Brussels on the back of the first defeat she has suffered on her own business in the House of Commons. And what […]

MITCH BENN discusses how speaking in haste can often signal the truth I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying ‘there’s many a true word spoken in jest’. This is indeed the case (the whole satire industry depends upon it) but there are, if anything, even more true words spoken in haste. That is to say, […]

Berlin was once the hometown-that-never-was, but what do Germany and its capital represent now? Our driver was called Mehmet H. He performed what he described as a ‘Turkish tactic’ and got us through the Berlin traffic faster than we would have done otherwise. On the way to the Checkpoint Charlie area, he pointed out the […]

In his debut column JAMES BALL explores the dangers of a soft Brexit and the implications for Remainers Eighteen months on from the Brexit vote, you could be forgiven for believing the UK might be limping towards a finishing line over leaving the EU. Getting to this point has required a series of humiliating concessions […]

The New European editor on why today’s “breakthrough” will trigger a very public cabinet implosion The Brexit can has been kicked down the road. But not far. ‘In the absence of agreed solutions, the UK will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union,’ reads Article 49 of the […]

‘Irish Border unthinkable’ says Boris Johnson. ‘Isn’t this the same person that said the EU could go a whistle for more money and that £350m a week would go to the NHS…?’ asks reader Tony Howarth. ‘Irish Border unthinkable’ says Boris Johnson. Isn’t this the same person that said the EU could go a whistle […]

Has the constant reel of Brexit news got you pulling your hair out? Comedian and musician MITCH BENN looks at one piece of news this week that has taken minds off of Brexit. Hey folks. Do you sometimes find yourself longing for the days when I – and everyone else – had other things to […]