Brendan is director of the Federal Trust for Education and Research and a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute. He is a former Member of the European Parliament (1994 to 1999). He was educated at Oxford, where he obtained a double first in classics, and later worked in the Foreign Office, the European Parliament and the European Commission. He has written, spoken and broadcast widely on European topics. He speaks French, German and Spanish.
This is a political dilemma striking much deeper than the details of fish, governance or a level playing field, and deeply rooted in the incoherent nature of the referendum mandate. Brexit was spawned by the internal politics of the Conservative Party. Its forthcoming temporary denouement will inevitably be dictated by these same internal politics as well.
It is very difficult to predict whether the British government will be able to adopt any coherent position within the final Brexit negotiations that will be acceptable to both the EU and the Conservative Party. There are distinct political attractions for Boris Johnson in allowing a ‘no deal’ Brexit to occur by default, simply because […]