Farage’s Authoritarian Dream Nigel Farage has unveiled another round of “policy announcements” — less a manifesto, more a vision for a whiter, more conformist Britain. Meanwhile, the Government appears asleep at the wheel, or perhaps snoozing on a deckchair. Angela Rayner provokes tabloid paroxysms by vaping in a dinghy or drinking rosé in a dry … Read more
I grew up in close-knit former mining villages in East Durham—places not unlike Seaham, a town I know well. For years, I was a regular at the Seaham Food Festival, which takes place again this weekend. Where I’m from, solidarity mattered. People stuck together and looked out for each other. These were the kinds of … Read more
Britain never really loved the EU. We didn’t join the Common Market because we loved Europe or bought into a pan European vision, We signed up because we were in the doledrums as a nation. We had lost an Empire, and not really worked out a role in the world. The excitement of the 60s … Read more
The UK food and drink industry is recovering slowly from 18 months of crisis. Covid closed down lots of producers roots to market as shops shut. Brexit took away export customers. The apparently endless supply of low paid workers who kept everything running has dried up. This week we signed a post Brexit free trade … Read more
Did Brexit help Britain succeed at Vaccinations? Did it help us do better than the EU? No. Britain’s success on vaccination has nothing to do with Brexit, not matter how many flags people wave Britain performed catastrophically badly on Covid in 2020 because the Government put their mates in charge of it, who outsourced it … Read more
We did OK for food before we joined the EU, we’ll be fine when we leave I have heard this statement a lot over the last few months as we get closer to the end of transition, and a period of disruption. Frankly I don’t believe it. The UK is highly dependent on food imports … Read more
The Government has made a massive mess of it’s response to Coronavirus. An unmitigated disaster. Boris Johnson and his team prioritised managing the news cycle over managing the virus; too many eye catching announcements without any actual thought about whether they would work. With so many gaffes it’s hard to pick a low point, but … Read more