You read that right. Since 2010, the European Union has nestled a base in Westminster’s Smith Square. It aimed to provide a reference point for stakeholders, specialists and the general public on all matters EU. Often known simply as ‘Europe House’, the place has long been London’s best-kept secret. But how could Brexit impact it?

What Was the Point of Europe House?

Firstly, some background. The purpose of the quasi-ambassadorial “Europe House” was always directly akin to that of the BBC: to inform, educate and entertain. It was long a source of information for nationals of the mainland continent based in the UK for any length of time. By answering questions relating to their rights while living and working in Britain, Europe House was always a go-to support measure for Europeans abroad.

Yet the vital information service was equally open to any British people who felt under-informed about the EU, its many committees and then-28 Member States, the irony being that only those with a working knowledge of political science were likely to even know such an information service existed. In regards to its educational component, Europe House ran a lively events program, including recent discussions and debates such as “Brexit and Gender” (2018) and “Climate Rights as Human Rights?” (2019). Evenings dedicated to learning the basics of EU languages were also commonplace. Most, if not all, of the educational events were free and open to all. The –somewhat highbrow- entertainment value of the EU’s London was to be found in its Twelve-Star Gallery, showcasing the artistic talent from across the Member States, with art that explores the very idea of Europe. An exhibition by Maltese artist Josette Fenech commemorated Malta’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, coupled with an evening of Maltese song, language-learning and performances. The European Union at its absolute best.

Jan. 31, 2020: Europe House Gets Rebranded

The institution hosted by Europe House was officially known as the Representation of the European Commission in the UK. It closed on the 31^st January aka Brexit Day. Walking into the building in the aftermath feels like entering a bank in the wake of the 2008 crash. The place exemplifies the dual meaning of the German word “Botschaft”: “embassy” and “subtext” with the undertone of Brexit simply inescapable. The Union Flag has been removed from its central room and has not been flying outside. The Twelve Star Gallery is also bare. Yet, following a brief period of uncertainty, this is not the end for the EU’s London headquarters.

What was previously the ‘Representation of the European Commission’ is now the ‘Delegation of the European Union to the United Kingdom’. The crucial change is the switch from ‘Commission’ to ‘Delegation’ and new signage has been installed to formalize this change. The ‘office will ensure continuity in the working relationship between the European Parliament and UK Houses of Parliament.’ It also wishes to continue informing and supporting the ‘3.6 million EU citizens who have made the UK their home.’ Its art gallery will be reinstated and a new program of events is already emerging.

Europe House Shows that UK-EU Relationship is Still Alive

As the issue of the Cuban Embassy in the United States tells us, when a country gains or is granted a base in another, it is never without significance. Opening the Delegation of the European Union to the United Kingdom signals that the UK and mainland Europe have not severed relations and remain on speaking terms. Statues are symbols that orientate us towards the version of history we wish to remember and teach. Such a version of history is based upon and carved out by the demands of the present. Similarly, the presence of the Europe House building clearly indicates the desire for EU-UK co-operation. The recent movement to remove statues of certain historical figures (#RhodesMustFall) indicates a climate in which any opposition to European presence or iconography in the UK would be made known.

The crucial point unearthed by the continued presence and usage of Europe House is the tendency to confuse the European continent with the European Union. As such, many on the Remain side have felt that leaving the EU is synonymous with Britain turning her back on the mainland continent as well as all our friends and fellow British there. This is not the case. It just seems that the phenomenon of Europe is one we are still fathoming and yet to arrive at a thesis for. Surely the EU’s presence in Britain can only be helpful to this end: to show the Isle how the mainland sees itself, not least of all through its Twelve Star Gallery. We have yet to find a thesis for the very idea of Europe and the recent Brexit chapter is only the latest chapter of this odyssey. Even if the EU crumbles, Europe is still intact.

L'articolo Brexit: What About the EU’s Headquarters in London? proviene da InsideOver.

It’s the most important election for a generation. ‘Boris’ is ahead in all manner of polls but the result remains unequivocally unpredictable.

The 2017 snap election presented many Brexiteers with an opportunity to unseat the MPs attempting to sabotage the result of the EU referendum. Other voters may have called it a ‘Selexit’: a means of selecting the political party to deliver Brexit and by extension nominating the preferred version. Either way, voters participated in the last general election on the assumption that Brexit was going ahead. That certitude has been increasingly eroded with each rejected deal and each episode in Parliament.

The upcoming election is, at first glance, a coded second referendum. Remainers are being persuaded towards the Liberal Democrats who vow to cancel Brexit, whereas the Conservatives, who pledge to ‘Get Brexit Done’, are going for the Eurosceptic vote. The newly created Brexit Party is deliberately not standing in Conservative strongholds to avoid splitting the pro-Brexit vote. Early speculations even envisaged the Brexit Party and Liberal Democrats as the two new major parties. But this general election is not simply an EU referendum in party political clothing. If it were, the result would be predictable and it is anything but.

In the time that the UK Parliament has vainly negotiated a Brexit deal, so many socio-economic issues disappeared from the frontlines of political discourse. These include poverty, inadequate housing, low wages, educational cuts and poor job security, especially zero hours’ contracts. The announcement of the December election caused these problems to step back into the limelight and they became highly weaponised in the Labour Party’s election manifesto that vows to address them.

While the other parties’ Brexit policy is their main vote winner, the promise to address ongoing austerity is central to Labour’s game plan with the Party promising to give the People ‘a final say on Brexit’. Reminding the electorate of the problems that have worsened while Brexit has dominated has worked in the Party’s favour, providing ‘its strongest lead over the Conservatives as the Party most concerned about people in real need in Britain (59% vs 34%)’. Thus, the return of forgotten austerity seems capable of securing a Labour victory and affecting the subsequent ‘Final Say’. We could see voters persuaded to forgo Brexit in favour of fixing the austerity long overshadowed by EU matters. Just that outcome seems plausible, further opinion polls contradict it.

The latest Ipsos MORI Political Monitor polls show Labour to have convinced voters of their compassion, but not their leadership competency. The party’s ‘being fit to govern’ rating is nine points lower than in 2017 and a staggering 75% of those asked described the Party as ‘divided’. The perceived schisms in Labour can only have been strengthened by its ‘Leave’ wing that actively opposes the Party’s official ‘Remain’ stance. And here is where the Conservatives’ selling points come in. Until now, the Tories were always more divided by the EU than Labour. Now the tables have turned and that ability to keep to a consensus and plan may well be what is attracting voters. 49% of those polled see Boris Johnson as ‘the leader who would make the most capable Prime Minister’ and Johnson has a 21% lead over Jeremy Corbyn for general likeability. More voters say the ‘Conservatives have a good team of leaders (37% [+10] vs 22% for Labour) and are fit to govern (46% vs. 29%).’ Concurrently, the polls predict traditional Labour strongholds of Bishop Auckland, Great Grimsby, Stoke-on-Trent North and Workington will elect the Conservative candidate. These are all places that voted to leave the EU.

That the traditional Socialist heartlands are now favouring Tory rule poses the question – why? Is it simply because voters there favour the Brexit that Boris promises or because the Tory Party seems simply more organised? Or does it bleed into the wider issue of delivering the will of the People? Many voters feel those with the power to uphold the referendum result have deliberately sabotaged it. That some Labour MPs have needed to be persuaded to respect the ‘Leave’ outcome has angered so many, as did the vetoing by the ‘Tory Rebels’. The Liberal Democrats have been ridiculed by some for keeping the word ‘democrat’ in their name while vowing to overrule the result of a democratic vote. Yet 18% cannot trust them to keep their promises in any event. Thus, are the Tories doing so well in the polls and winning in Labour heartlands because voters are adopting a ‘better the devil you know’ mentality, enhanced by the good organisation the Party espouses? Or is it because many British voters feel ignoring the vote to leave would be so undemocratic, any future votes would simply not be worth the ballot paper they are cast on?

Simply put, this election is chiefly so unpredictable because it is impossible to tell what people will prioritise: tackling austerity, party reliability, good leadership and organisation, delivering Brexit or the upholding of democracy, the definition of which is open for interpretation.

L'articolo UK ‘Elexit’: The Most Important and Unpredictable UK Election proviene da InsideOver.

Until Prime Minister Johnson suspended the UK Parliament, the Irish border posed the biggest question in the Brexit negotiations. The topic has become known as the ‘Irish Backstop’. Currently, citizens of both Irelands enjoy a seamless transition when driving between Northern Ireland (‘NI’) and the Republic, their change in location marked only when the road signs morph from ‘miles’ (NI) to ‘kilometres’ (Republic). This fluidity of movement, and the resultant erasure of fences, is a result of the Peace Process. But this hard-earned progress of the past twenty years is now under threat by possible Brexit policies.

When Northern Ireland, as part of the UK, exits the EU, it will share a border with an EU member state, necessitating what is known as Hard Border. Hard border would entail customs checks for citizens and goods moving between the Irelands, as well as the resurrection of fences. As hallmarks of the British rule in Northern Ireland, it is feared that fences would inflame tensions anew and cause the island of Ireland to return to the decades of fighting known as The Troubles. In the space of three decades, The Troubles brought 15,000 bombs, 3,800 fatalities and 36,000 shootings. There was an average of ten killings per month. No surprise then, that negotiators and diplomats have been thinking up every possible solution to avoid a hard border in Ireland. One suggestion is to scan lorries using technology, so that no physical customs checks need stand between the two Irelands. Another option is to scan the goods vehicles away from the border, but the remote scanning points may become targets for attacks instead.

While British politicians are desperately trying to resolve the Irish Backstop, something has been happening that could save them the task.

The Belfast Agreement, more commonly known as the Good Friday Agreement, was finally reached on April 10th, 1998. It permits those born in Northern Ireland to choose British citizenship, Irish citizenship or both. In 2017, the year following the Brexit referendum, over 80,000 Northern Irish residents applied for Irish passports, the highest annual figure on record. While the backstop has complicated the Brexit process, it may achieve what William Gladstone never could: the reunification of Ireland. Naturally and intrinsically, simply from people voting with their feet.

What do the Irish passport applications reveal?

To answer this, we must consider Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation: ‘an imagined political community’.

Their record applications for Irish citizenship shows how Northern Irish citizens see their homeland as unconfined to the six counties of Ulster. Rather, they identify and connect with a geographical space that transcends the Irish border, as well as the wider family of the European Union. While they used to say, ‘Ulster says ‘No’’, their line is now, ‘No border’ and the Irish

question of the 1990s has remodelled into a new Irish idea of progressivism, Freedom of Movement and –crucially- as part of the EU.

The Irish MEPs and diplomatic core in Brussels secured the Irish border as one of the three red line issues in the Brexit negotiations. This alone demonstrates Ireland’s eagerness to engage with the EU. Given that Northern Ireland voted 55.8% in favour of remaining in the EU, the two Irelands appear to be on the same page in matters of foreign policy.

So why is the above enough to reunite Ireland?

When debating whether or not Britain should join the Euro, people on both sides mentioned something called the Eurocreep. This was the argument that the Euro was already operating in the UK because big firms with UK bases already conducted their business in and –more importantly- thought in Euros. It is a similar situation with Ireland. By rejecting Hard Border and binding each other closer together by imagined –or rather, mental,- association, it’s easy to see how a reunited Ireland would form in the collective mind of the island’s inhabitants and return a positive result if NI held a referendum on reunification with the Republic. The Good Friday Agreement permits such a poll to take place if ‘it appears likely’ that most voters (in Northern Ireland) would want to ‘form part of a united Ireland’ and give up their part in the UK. As well as a shared mentality between its peoples, Strand Three of the Good Friday Agreement could do a lot to reunite Ireland.

The third Strand ‘established the British–Irish Council and the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference to encourage co-operation and develop good relations between Britain and Ireland. These are forums where the two Governments discuss Reserved Matters which are not the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Assembly.’ In having a platform for the discussion of matters that exclusively affect the two Irelands, they have laid the foundations for operating together politically if they ever reunited. Since both are very pro-EU nations, taking their shared affairs to Brussels would be unlikely to cause any problems. They may benefit from the Union’s support for minority languages and allow Ulster-Scots to flourish alongside Irish Gaelic.

The new and shared progressive Irish idea can only have been helped by the recent gay marriage and abortion referendums in the Republic that saw the country turn its back on its traditional Catholic values, thus eroding the religious divide that once defined Irish division. It seems the island of Ireland is heading towards reunification and, like the current border arrangements, its transition will be seamless.

L'articolo Could Brexit Reunite Ireland? proviene da InsideOver.