Andy Burnham has gone from the “King of the North” to Downing Street in a matter of weeks. But what does this mean for the UK and its relationship with the EU?
Missing the wood for the trees – the EU’s unloved deforestation law reaches endgameThe EU’s deforestation law may not be as popular as when it was passed with massive majorities in 2023 – but has already spawned imitation from the UK.
Brussels just dodged a Brexit‑fuelled airport meltdown with its biometrics U‑turnThe EU Commission says that the EES will reduce the average time spent at passport control from 90 seconds to 20 seconds per person. Airlines have warned of five-hour queues at airports.
Between 2006 and 2016, the number of homicides fell by 56 percent in Glasgow alone. And across Scotland as a whole, the homicide rate dropped by more than a third.
Uncertainty about the US military commitment to Europe, plus the near-certainty of a continuing threat from Russia, places the UK centre-stage in all defence and security discussions. So who prime-minister designate Andy Burnham appoints as foreign secretary, and defence secretary, is crucial.
With most Britons now saying Brexit was a mistake, any future bid to rejoin would still force the UK to swallow full free movement and EU rules again. Is that actually a realistic possibility?
Brexit: A stormy night in Brussels 10 years ago – and a failure of journalismIn 2016, I had had a very uneasy feeling for many months that Leave, under the joint leadership of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, was going to win. Not a single other British journalist in Brussels agreed with me.
Tuesday, 23 June 2026, marks the 10th anniversary of the UK decision to leave the European Union. Ten years on has anything been learned?
Keir Starmer’s efforts to rebuild bridges with the EU, after six hostile Conservative PMs, will be one of the defining legacies of his time at Number 10. But what can we expect from his successor?
What UK voters can learn from the Irish gay-rights movement on how to avert a Farage nightmareIf it seems insane that a man of Farage’s low calibre might lead the world’s fifth largest economy, it would be on trend for recent British prime ministers, who plumbed nadir (Johnson) after nadir (Truss).
As EU leaders dine, 70,000 voters in the north of England pick a new UK PMOn Thursday (18 June), as the 27 EU leaders meet in Brussels, Britain will elect its next prime minister.
Not strictly true, but don’t panic – you haven’t missed some snap general election on the Brexit island.
Global resettlement figures have dropped by some 50 percent to 81,800 in a downward trend that points to the general political backlash against migration and asylum in the US and in Europe.
EU officials have played down the prospect of a radical change in EU-UK relations, despite talk from Keir Starmer’s government that the UK could rejoin the single market.
The last time the UK burnt through prime ministers at a similar rate was in decade-long stretches in the 18th century (1760–1770) and the 19th (1827–1837).
Goodbye, Keir Starmer?By the time you read this, Sir Keir Starmer will … still be prime minister of the UK. But only just. And not for long.
Probably until this autumn, in fact. But that’s only because his enemies (by which I mean his own Labour MPs and cabinet ministers, not the opposition Conservatives) have nobody lined up to replace him.
A Post-Nato Manifesto: Given that no country can defend itself alone, the priority is to make new alliances — flexible, capable frameworks of threat-aware allies that are willing to take risks and make sacrifices for themselves and for others. The most promising group of like-minded states includes the Nordic five (Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and the Baltic three (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). Together with Britain and the Netherlands they are part of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF).
![“‘Fuck AfD [Alternative for Germany]’ reads a placard at a German demo against the far-right party, which in 2023 secretly advocated for ‘remigrating’ millions of German citizens (Photo: Unsplush)](https://static.euobserver.com/2024/05/b2c619b6-b2ca-4dd7-a490-ac7070c7dc94-8b882efc-c4a2-41db-af80-e18ae66508e0-aa58df87-50f7-4989-aa68-bc706e74cbc9.jpeg)
The war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran is exposing a growing problem. What once looked like a coherent far-right political alignment is increasingly strained by the realities of governing in a volatile global economy. Ideological affinity is one thing, but national interest is quite the other.
To be or not to be (involved) — that is the questionIs the UK involved in the US-Israeli attack on Iran – or is the UK *not* involved in the US-Israeli attack? The answer (apologies to Shakespeare’s Hamlet) seems to be: depends upon who you ask?
The far-right’s unity unravels when the debate shifts from domestic grievances on migration and climate-change denial to foreign policy. Nowhere is this clearer than in their response to the US-Israeli war of choice in Iran. Far-right parties across Europe are divided – both internally and among themselves – over how to respond to the US-Israeli war of choice in Iran – and so are their voters.
Cypriots have long felt that — far from providing protection from the tribulations of their geographical neighbourhood —the existence of two British sovereign base areas on the island effectively placed a target on the back of Cyprus and therefore of Cypriots.
