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all past trade deal presuppose the two parties want to get closer. Among other things, that helps increase the likelihood of good faith dealing. The fact that the UK was an obstreperous member of the EU and is taking an even more high-handed posture means the EU isn’t going to be keen about going fudgy on anything important (Irish border matters being a potential exception because no one had a good idea about what to do)

Johnson maintains that if they two sides aren’t well along to an agreement by the June EU summit, the UK will go its own way and prepare to deal on a WTO basis. This is the functional equivalent of a crash out

A border in the Irish Sea is not a matter of conjecture. It is described in a treaty that Johnson signed and waved in triumph. But his enthusiasm was for the idea of a deal, not the real thing. He likes deals for their instant retail value in domestic politics, believing that problems in the small print can be blustered away. That is not how the trade negotiations work in Brussels, where the deal is the small print…

Johnson has long promised that a more vigorous negotiating position than that of his predecessor, Theresa May, would push the EU into offering last-minute concessions on the terms of Britain’s scheduled exit from the union. But according to a senior official source in the U.K. Foreign Office, under Johnson’s administration the U.K.’s Brexit negotiating team has in reality been “completely hollowed out” with “key people reassigned.” Despite Johnson’s promises of new proposals to solve the nearly intractable problem of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, in the run-up to a crunch EU summit on Oct. 17, the Johnson team has “nothing remotely new on the table,” the official told Foreign Policy.

While negotiations on May’s withdrawal agreement were going at full tilt in late 2018, the Foreign Office negotiating team numbered over 90 people. With the replacement of May’s top negotiator, Olly Robbins, with David Frost in June, that team has been largely disbanded, with most negotiators transferred to other departments. Frost still holds twice-weekly meetings in Brussels—but “our team is basically being sent [to Brussels] to pretend to negotiate, run down the clock,” says the Foreign Office official. “It’s pretty embarrassing. These are serious people being asked to [participate in] a charade.”

May’s withdrawal agreement—which was humiliatingly rejected by historic majorities in Parliament last winter—took nearly three years to thrash out. Johnson’s timetable would have required the details of a new deal to be drafted and for Parliament to pass it between the summit on Oct. 17 and the scheduled Brexit deadline of Oct. 31.

In recent years, the impressive economic performances of Ethiopia and Rwanda have meant that international donors have become increasingly willing to fund authoritarian regimes in Africa on the basis that they deliver on development. Beyond the obvious concern that donors become complicit in human rights violations, the main question facing authoritarian development in Africa has always been whether the economic gains achieved under repressive rule are sustainable.

if Ethiopia is no longer seen as a success story, then the case for authoritarian development in Africa falls apart. Already, the EU has suspended nearly €90 million ($110 million) in budgetary aid to the country because of concerns over the government’s handling of the conflict in Tigray. Growing evidence that authoritarian politics can have devastating developmental consequences will also give a shot in the arm to organizations like the Westminster Foundation for Democracy that argue that the international community should be doing development democratically.

it has become more common for international donors and aid practitioners to question the value of democracy for development—and to suggest that authoritarian governments that can force through necessary reforms might be more effective in some cases.

no other populism is likely to dismantle the very country it claims to be saving. The end of the United Kingdom is a probable outcome of the hardline Brexit towards which Boris Johnson is steering the country like a demented racing driver. Brexit would also very significantly weaken both the European Union and the transatlantic alliance.

for one of the world’s oldest, most stable parliamentary democracies, what has happened in Westminster is shocking. The Conservative party, a centre-right broad church for at least a century, has become the Revolutionary Conservative party

Many people around the world have been laughing at the House of Commons, with its antiquated procedures and theatrical Speaker. Actually, the Westminster parliament is doing us Britons proud. Over the last couple of years, those green leather benches have seen great speeches, deep emotion and courage, with members putting the national interest before personal and party advantage. Now parliament has stopped the populist bullies in their tracks, swiftly passing a law that obliges the government to ask for an article 50 extension if no deal has been agreed with the EU and approved by MPs by 19 October. Were Johnson to refuse to do so, as he is currently threatening, then he would have broken the law and could, ultimately, be sent to prison.

The pride and pomp of the British in the heyday of empire did not last long. Two world wars impoverished the country and destroyed its empire. (Our 'special relationship' with the USA consisted in getting desperately needed aid during the Second World War in return for a promise to dismantle the empire. Even if the UK could have maintained the empire, which it could not, as proved by Suez, it in effect traded the empire for survival in the 1940s.)

Entry to the EEC/EU saved the country's economy and saw it flourish, and offered a new and significant role as one of the big three states in one of the big three blocs in the emerging new post-Cold War world, alongside the USA and China

British self-congratulation in the first decade of the 21st century had given a group of people in our political order - a fifth column from the past - the feeling that now was the time to reassert what they mythologised as the spirit of Britain in Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee

All it really says with certainty is four things. The first is that we do not know what will happen if we hard-Brexit. The second is that we can be sure that some consequences will be very uncomfortable, at least for a while. The third is that there is no known solution to the Irish border issue, whatever Conservative politicians wish to claim. And the last, and perhaps the most significant, is that whatever happens the uncertainty of Brexit will continue for a considerable time to come: any deal only leads to more negotiation. No deal just makes that next step harder, and potentially more drawn out.

both major parties offer more delay, prevarication, and long term uncertainty as their core election offering

Yellowhammer can be used to predict all that. All it says is we’re in a mess. What some parties will be able to offer is a certain way out of that mess. The only way to achieve that is to stay in the EU, and reform it, which I believe possible, because there is no human made institution incapable of being reformed: to claim otherwise is, very politely, to be absurd.

the British Political Tradition has been increasingly challenged by contemporary developments. Previously, we focused on 3 challenges: the Scottish question; the European question, culminating in Brexit; and the rise of anti-politics, perhaps better seen as a decline of trust in the political elite. We also emphasized that the British political elites’ response to those challenges was, almost inevitably, to defend the British Political Tradition; although this response was, at best, problematic.

Executive view has persisted, as, at every stage, it has tried to limit the role of Parliament in the Brexit process

The claim of the Executive, and many others, is that the referendum showed the ‘will of the people’, thus giving democratic legitimacy to the decision to leave the EU. In contrast, the claim of a large number, probably a small majority, of MPs is that, in a representative democracy, Parliament should have the final say, although for many of these MPs any decision should respect the referendum vote

Of Poland’s more than 36,000 reported COVID-19 cases, about 6,500 are miners — making them nearly a fifth of all confirmed infections in the country, even though they make up only 80,000 of the country’s population of 38 million.

one more blow that the pandemic has dealt to the global coal sector, already in steep decline in much of the world as renewable and other energy sources get cheaper and societies increasingly reject its damaging environmental impact.

the economics of coal just no longer make sense in many parts of the world

Britain is in trouble because its elite is so engrossed with the US as to confuse it for their own nation. The UK does not issue the world’s reserve currency. It does not have near-limitless demand for its sovereign debt. It can’t, as US Republicans sometimes do, cut taxes on the hunch that lawmakers of the future will trim public spending.

So much of what Britain has done and thought in recent years makes sense if you assume it is a country of 330mn people with $20tn annual output. The idea that it could ever look the EU in the eye as an adversarial negotiator, for instance. Or the decision to grow picky about Chinese inward investment at the same time as forfeiting the European market.

Because the UK’s governing class can follow US politics as easily as their own, they get lost in it. They elide the two countries. What doesn’t help is the freakish fact that Britain’s capital, where its elites live, is as big as any US city, despite the national population being a fifth of America’s.

What makes democracy resilient is its acceptance that we the people, and by extension our governments, are imperfect. The separation of powers between executive, legislature, and judiciary are there to keep the debate continuous, rights protected, and imperfect governments honest as they pursue their current mandate. In totalitarian systems, by contrast, the governing regime justifies itself by a supposedly ‘scientific’ blueprint. The law is reduced to an instrument for the fulfilment of that blueprint.

Since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, successive governments of New Right and New Left have attempted to implement an asserted science of government based on the radical, free-market neoclassical economics of the Virginia and Chicago Schools: neoliberalism

Its dominant idea: that markets are always more efficient; the private is morally and functionally superior to the public

the huge set of interests that oppose all EU regulation and that especially want to protect British tax havens for the international investor class. Johnson and Cummings are the shock troops of their shock doctrine

constitutions are not dry and arcane matters for lawyers and academics. Constitutions have complex parts just like the engine of your car or train, that need specialist mechanics. But constitutions are also about what kind of country we are, to whom our system of government belongs and the nature of its democracy

The Prime Minister claimed the lack of written rules means he can close down parliament when he likes and, in effect, that he and his advisors are beyond the law when it comes to exercising prerogative power. The Supreme Court disagreed. They held their nerve and dismissed such claims outright. But by doing so the judiciary has been forced by the Prime Minister’s own reckless actions to cast aside the de facto separation of judges and courts from the high politics of our country.

My family and I live in Lagos, Nigeria, a tightly packed city with a land mass of only 1,171 sq kilometre and a population anywhere between 15 and 22 million, depending on who you ask. If New York never sleeps because the lights are always on and there’s always somewhere to be, Lagos never sleeps because there’s no power, it’s much too hot indoors and you might as well have a good time while you’re out trying to catch a breeze. Going by the dictionary definition of the word "slum" - "a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people" - my home city is the largest one in the world. And across my continent, more than 200 million people live in one.

Sourcing water is arduous and expensive, so people are unlikely to prioritise frequent hand-washing. Public transportation consists mostly of privately owned vehicles in which intense proximity is inevitable.

Street trading and open-air markets are such a fundamental part of the fabric of Lagos that we joke that you could leave home in just your underwear and arrive at your destination fully dressed

Brexit is causing far-right views on immigration and identity to be drawn into the mainstream, a report has warned. Research by Hope Not Hate found that Britain’s departure from the EU has fuelled discussions of loyalty, elitism and patriotism, “drawing people who might have otherwise have been attracted to the far right back into the mainstream right”.

anti-Muslim prejudice, demeaning rhetoric on migrants and refugees and notions of a ‘cultural war’ against social liberalism

partly as a consequence of politicians co-opting far-right narratives to gain support and partly because of the newer far right engaging in wider issues

On April 23, the U.K. officially proscribed the U.S. accelerationist neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and its alias, National Socialist Order, as a terrorist organization. This designation follows Canada’s similar move in February and comes after the group’s members have been linked to five murders, explosions and hate crimes in the U.S. With group proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000 carrying sentences of up to 14 years for members or those who invite support to the group, designation seems to be a step forward in the fight against white nationalism and right-wing terrorism. But because the group seems to lack a physical presence in the U.K., the move appears to be more for international solidarity and to provide tools to combat online propaganda than one of current and direct operational necessity.

Nearly one-third of terror plots foiled by British police since 2017 relate to right-wing ideology, and the youngest Brit ever sentenced for a terror-related offense was the U.K. head of the affiliated white supremacist group Feuerkrieg Division. As of Dec. 31, 2020, 42 (20 percent) of the people in custody for terrorism-connected offenses in Great Britain were categorized as holding right-wing ideologies

Once proscribed, a designated organization is subject to asset freezing and seizure, in addition to disruptive activity including the use of immigration powers like exclusion, prosecution for other offenses, encouragement of the removal of online material and EU asset freezes. In addition, the penalties for the proscription offenses of membership or support (Terrorism Act 2000, Sections 11 and 12) are a maximum of 14 years in prison and/or a fine; the penalties for the offense of wearing a uniform or publishing an image (Terrorism Act 2000, Section 13) are a maximum of six months in prison and/or a fine of £5,000 at most.

“I can’t believe in the richest country in the world. …” This is the expression of incredulity and dismay that precedes some story about the fundamental impoverishment of American life, the fact that the lived, built geography of existence here is so frequently wanting, that the most basic social amenities are at once grossly overpriced and terribly underwhelming, that normal people (most especially the poor and working class) must navigate labyrinths of bureaucracy for the simplest public services, about our extraordinary social and political paralysis in the face of problems whose solutions seem to any reasonable person self-evident and relatively straightforward.

The American commonwealth is shockingly impoverished.

American liberals and leftists tend to over-valorize the Western European model, but there is no doubt that the wealthy countries at the core of the EU have far more successfully mitigated the most extreme social inequalities and built systems for health and transportation that far outstrip anything in the U.S. Even in their poor urban suburbs or, say, the disinvested industrial north of France, you will find nothing like the squalor that we still permit—that we accept as ordinary—in the USA. Meanwhile, in our ever-declining adversary-of-convenience, the Moscow subway runs on time.

Brothers of Italy’s rise shows it could potentially reach a broader electorate compared to the parties that in postwar Italy took the inheritance of the post-fascist tradition. Despite having enshrined strong anti-fascist principles in its postwar constitution, Italy still has a somehow ambivalent relationship with its fascist past, and several political parties and groups have been tied, more or less openly, to that tradition

Brothers of Italy still sports the flame symbol used by the Italian Social Movement in its logo.

Forza Italia is a shadow of its former self, and the League’s ambitions are severely reduced by Salvini’s disastrous record as deputy prime minister in 2018-2019. The political juncture makes Brothers of Italy appealing to conservative voters who are politically homeless.

The new coalition appears to have largely seized the agenda and changed the narrative: in recent weeks Italy has softened its stance towards NGO ships asking to disembark the migrants rescued in the Mediterranean, and has cut a temporary deal with other EU members for the relocation of the asylum seekers picked up at sea – an agreement that the government has touted as “historic”, stressing that the adoption of a less adversarial attitude towards Europe than Salvini's is already bearing fruit

The game is not over, and his mid-summer move may still pay off. The new, fragile ruling coalition, whose two main members have despised and insulted each other for years, has been put under further strain by another sudden, tectonic shift in Italy's political landscape.As it turned out, Salvini was not the only one in a mood for political gambling. Mid-September, barely two weeks after the new cabinet had been sworn in, prominent PD member Matteo Renzi announced he was leaving the party to found his own, Italia Viva (Italy Alive). Although Renzi said he (and the roughly 40 MPs and Senators who joined him) would keep supporting the government, the split marks a watershed moment in the history of the Italian centre-left.

Renzi, a charismatic and influential politician whose stint as Prime Minister came to an abrupt end after he lost a constitutional referendum in December 2016, has long been accused by the left of being too centrist, pro-business and socially conservative, and of steering the party away from its social-democratic roots. His reluctance to clearly label himself as left-wing has become somewhat legendary, just like his flair for hot-air rhetoric.