Politics

There are two choices for Amber Rudd now she has resigned, writes Isobel Wheeler… Do nothing and return to the Cabinet in a more minor role in six months to a year. Or, enjoying the freedom of the backbenches, make the case that British membership of the customs union must continue in order to avoid […]

Why didn’t the BBC report the House of Lords’ victory over the Customs Union on their morning news, asks David Perrin. In the time I spent watching and listening to the BBC Breakfast programme on the morning of April 19, there was no mention of the very important amendment victory the Lords concerning remaining in […]

A survey of EU companies with a British base reveals 46% will be reducing UK capacity, explains Magdalena Williams. The list of industries either moving, considering a move, reducing capacity or shutting up shop altogether because of Brexit uncertainty and rising costs due to the weak pound, now stands at: Airlines, car manufacturers (2.7 million […]

A Brexiteer writes to The New European with a request… I, who voted Leave, read TNE avidly every week, not as Alastair Campbell said to ‘know thine enemy’ but rather because your other cultural and political articles are generally excellent and reflective of the broad cultural bond we have with Europe, and long may these […]

If Brexit happens next March it won’t be the end – just the ‘end of the beginning’, explains Will Goble. The best analogy I’ve yet heard about the lunacy of Brexit is from an anonymous poster in the comments section of an online newspaper. It goes something like this: A man is driving at speed […]

Right-wing Tories will be furious, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox will resign, and we’ll stay close to Europe. It’s a no-brainer isn’t it? With David ‘Two Brains’ Willetts seeking to persuade the government to pursue a less isolationist post-Brexit policy, the time is surely ripe for the less cerebrally-endowed politician – Lord Lawson, Theresa May […]

As an EU national who has resided in UK for the past eight years, I will be using the ballot box in May to articulate my discontent with Brexit. Although local elections concern local matters, as an EU national I only have the local elections at my disposal to signal my disagreement with the Conservative […]

Alastair Campbell (TNE #90) reminds us of just how extraordinary it is that someone so clearly unsuited to holding public office as Boris Johnson has managed to gain such a strong foothold in politics. Gary Neville summed it up for me when, following yet another bit of foot-in-mouth idiocy as the foreign secretary suggested we […]

Both sides of Brexit think the BBC is biased towards the other side, as Chris Grey’s excellent piece points out. This may indicate that the Beeb is doing the right thing. So let’s just cut to the chase and stop hammering the BBC for showing or not showing any partiality during the referendum debate. What […]

For EU citizens who had been offered the right to remain in the UK the Government has failed to ‘take back control’, explains Paul Stein. In June 2017 TNE printed my letter responding to Theresa May’s ‘fair and generous offer’ to EU citizens living in the UK. Given that my wife entered the UK in […]

Many Remainers believe a second referendum will be the silver bullet that solves everything by sending the issue of Brexit back into the abyss. But unless we can convince a good percentage of the disenfranchised working class who voted Leave, a second vote could stoke up far greater problems than we have now. We would […]

The idea of a new centre party is tempting for Remain voters left feeling disenfranchised by the attitudes of the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition. I believe it could succeed despite our electoral system. I have been voting for nearly 40 years and can tell you that even in the late 1970s […]

As a long-standing centre-right Tory voter for more than 60 years, I am appalled by the extremist slide which has moved the party too far to the right for my taste. In fact, it has become so right wing that it is similar to the Republican Party in the US, something which is contrary to […]

Afghanistan treasures its relationship with Britain, says its ambassador to the UK, said Tayeb Jawad. Here he outlines his hopes that relationship will not be harmed by Brexit. Afghan ambassador  When Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, woke to the news that the country had voted for Brexit, he knew that his […]

Anette Schweizer argues that Remain needs to put a positive spin on freedom of movement to win the argument… I moved to the UK from Germany five years ago and live in a small market town in the East Midlands, in an average, middle-classy residential area. I love talking to all sorts of people from […]

Thomas Harris encourages The New European readers to ensure their friends and family are all registered to vote in the local elections… Theresa May asked the electorate last year to endorse her hard Brexit posturing. It delivered no such endorsement but she has carried with it on regardless. May’s ministers have continued to ‘negotiate’ with […]

The EU has more democratic checks than any other international structure we belong to. EU legislation requires approval both of those directly elected MEPs and of the Council, composed of national ministers accountable to national parliaments. The EU’s central administration, the Commission is headed by a team of Commissioners, each one nominated by the Prime […]

Tens of thousands of us march against Brexit in Leeds, Edinburgh, Brighton, Oxford and the rest making it onto the national news agenda. A handful of Brexiteers throw dead fish off a boat and the coverage is everywhere. This will shock some TNE readers but it isn’t an example of mainstream media bias against Brexit. […]

‘Exposure of Cambridge Analytica’s links with Vote Leave has obviously touched a raw nerve’ claims Anthony West. By crying foul at the Observer and Channel 4 and also haranguing journalist Carole Cadwalladr in the process, all Isabel Oakeshott did on the Marr show was to betray her anxiety that something was obviously amiss as far […]

Jeremy Corbyn’s dismissal of Owen Smith is yet more evidence that Labour is just as bad as the Conservatives when it comes to Brexit. Both are pursuing a disastrous Brexit with catastrophic outcomes as the end scenario. This is further illustrative of the long-standing fact that the 48% do not have a place in either […]

Michael Romberg doesn’t believe Jeremy Corbyn will ever change his mind on Brexit – here he explains why. Those who hope that Jeremy Corbyn will change his line (Zoe Williams, The New European, issue 87) should imagine what his conversion-to-Remain speech would have to say. The first line is easy: ‘The deal that Theresa May […]

Stephen Bayley wants to set the record straight on our original membership of the European Community – it was never just about trade, he argues. Reading the Wilson government’s leaflet about the 1975 referendum, sent to every household in the country, is a very interesting exercise. For one thing, it dispels one of the big […]

In this week’s diary column, the editor of the Today programme is spotted at lunch with an unholy trinity. My picture shows a lady named Sarah Sands supping with Nigel Farage, Rupert Murdoch and Liam Fox at a party held in south London not long after the EU referendum result. Miss Sands happens to have […]

Alan Quinn argues that the Conservatives are putting party before country on Brexit, jobs and manufacturing. The recent article in The New European about the threat to our automotive industry is a stark reminder to us all about the insanity of Brexit. As my union Unite points out, one million well-paid jobs depend on this […]

Rick Llewellyn wrote to his MP one final time before leaving Britain and emigrating to France. Here he quotes the parting words he received from his MP. On February 24 I wrote to my (now ex) Labour MP John Cryer asking to be removed from his mailing list. I explained: ‘As a consequence of Brexit […]

One reader has started defining the Brexiteers that the BBC and mainstream media continues to roll out as the ‘Dismissers’. I wrote to the BBC, almost daily, during the Referendum of June 2016 complaining of their bias. Then, as now, the Remainer argument is put forward first, to be followed by some standby Brexiteer who […]

David Woodhead wants to remind Eurosceptics what former Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher had to say about Europe. Andrew Adonis refers to Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech of 1988. Although this is regarded as having injected the anti-EEC/EU poison into the Conservative party from which we have suffered ever since, it is worth recalling those aspects of […]

Readers cautiously welcome Labour’s shift in position on Brexit – here they explain why. Jeremy Corbyn’s speech does not go far enough for me and I cringed at the ‘Brexit that puts the working people first’ soundbite. However this is a welcome first step. We have moved on significantly from sixth-form dismissals of the EU […]

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Kate Hoey, David Davis, Boris Johnson and that big red bus. Just some of the subjects covered by correspondents in this week’s mailbag. David Davis’ Vienna speech (it meant nothing to me) seemed to indicate that there would be no bonfire of regulations and standards after Brexit. Yet this is exactly where people […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]