Tag Archives: nationalism
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Diversity is the Heart of Britishness
One of the least pleasant aspects of Boris Johnson’s recent rant was his comment that young people in Britain today have “split loyalties” because they wear or fly the European flag. Identity is pluralistic, not uniform.
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Brexit and Northern Ireland: There’s a Stormont brewing
Theresa May talks of strengthening the Union and not returning to the borders of the past in Ireland. But in reality her actions only serve to undermine the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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May’s ‘clean’ Brexit can hide neither dangers nor dirty dealing
Theresa May’s journey towards a bleak, deluded UKIP view of the world continued today as she abandoned key areas of potential negotiation over the Single Market (favoured by most businesses, trade unions and economists) and instead moved the battleground to an ill defined (and unlikely to be agreed) partial membership of aspects of the Customs […]
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Brexit and Ireland
Much of the debate around Brexit thus far has rightly centred on the government’s shambolic handling of the process, and its cavalier attitude to the potentially disastrous impacts on the UK economy. However on the rather serious constitutional question of Ireland, the Leavers’ astounding recklessness has gone almost unnoticed.
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History has stopped repeating itself
The Battle of Waterloo was one of the great milestones in European history — and today marks the 200th anniversary of the episode that concluded an extremely prolonged military campaign. I’m delighted to be attending the Waterloo 200 Service of Commemoration at St. Paul’s Cathedral today to mark the occasion. The ceremony is testament to […]
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“The British are simply different”
Yes, and so is every other country! All have their different languages, cultures, histories and laws.
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Stirring up nationalism
Despite the No vote, the Scottish referendum shows just how powerful a force nationalism remains. The big challenges facing mankind — peace, climate change, prosperity, social justice — are not going to be solved more easily by having more states. And solving them might possibly be made more difficult. High turnouts are always to be […]
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Scotland and the EU: the facts
I am often asked whether an independent Scotland can become an EU member. The answer is simple: it can, but not without going through a lengthy procedure with several potential pitfalls. The EU treaties list the member states. Scotland is not on that list. To become a member state with a seat at the table […]
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Lessons from history
Spending my summer break pottering along the Baltic coast from Germany through Poland, Lithuania and Latvia is a reminder of how recently Europe saw horrific slaughters like those now on our television screens in Iraq and Syria. I write these words from Bialystok, where, seventy-five years ago, the Jewish community comprised almost two thirds of […]
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The First World War
The madness that saw millions of young people go out to slaughter each other on the battlefields of the First World War started 100 years ago today. Of course, on all sides, most were motivated by high ideals: to defend their country, to right a wrong, to do their duty. Killing people who had precisely […]
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A view from Ypres
Travelling back from Brussels to Yorkshire by car this time, we decided to go via Ypres (or Ieper, to give its proper name). It’s always moving to visit the area, with its countless war cemeteries, but never more so than on this 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. The Menin gate […]
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Remembering Srebrenica
This weekend, I spoke at two commemorations of the Srebrenica massacre — one in Leeds (at the Makkah Masjid mosque) and one in Bradford (at the town hall) — marking the 19th anniversary of the cold-blooded massacre of over 8000 Muslims in the Bosnian civil war. I visited Srebrenica three years ago. Like others in […]
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Never again
This week is the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Vienna which triggered the start of the First World War. Two highly symbolic events to mark it stand out: one by governments in Ypres and one by civil society organisations in Sarajevo. Herman van Rompuy’s initiative to convene the heads of state […]
