Brexit – An IB Global Politics Site

The EU was crucial to securing peace in Ireland. This plan puts it in peril

August 12, 2021

The Good Friday Agreement was born of the most painstaking talks I ever took part in. Now our prime minister threatens to rip it apart

Crucial to maintenance of the peace was the idea of an open border between north and south in recognition of the fact that around the border families intermingled, did business and trade and moved, often several times a day, across it. They were separate countries but treated for the practical purposes of daily life as if they were the same.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/05/european-union-crucial-to-securing-peace-in-ireland-this-plan-puts-it-in-peril?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR1l84AJJN6ourj-wLZjdP8MlCdYY2081o0XU10RB7eCZrPUe7JGvQgL3WA

Why the Left Should Embrace Brexit

August 11, 2021

The Left’s anti-Brexit hysteria, however, is based on a mixture of bad economics, flawed understanding of the European Union, and lack of political imagination. Not only is there no reason to believe that Brexit would be an economic apocalypse; more importantly, abandoning the EU provides the British left — and the European left more generally — with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show that a radical break with neoliberalism, and with the institutions that support it, is possible.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/brexit-labour-party-socialist-left-corbyn

‘Against supranationalism: in defence of national sovereignty (and Brexit)’

August 11, 2021

The repercussions of the post-national ideology that (re-)emerged in the 1980s, and then became all-pervasive in the 1990s and 2000s, are still being felt today. Conventional wisdom holds that that globalisation and the internationalisation of finance has ended the era of nation-states and their capacity to pursue policies that are not in accord with the diktats of global capital. But does the evidence support the assertion that national sovereignty, which so often throughout the twentieth century has been wrongly proclaimed dead, has truly reached the end of its days?

https://plutopress.wordpress.com/2017/09/22/against-supranationalism-in-defence-of-national-sovereignty-and-brexit-by-bill-mitchell-and-thomas-fazi/?fbclid=IwAR0AF6flPugXpm35RrT1CQOaN8zKwINDBhOlr48MRvGhb3ZGIGu9OnbetXY

Graphic Representation of the EU and Consequences of Brexit

February 18, 2021

https://www.statista.com/chart/24212/uk-status-in-european-agreements/?utm_source=Statista+Global&utm_campaign=5ae298011e-All_InfographTicker_daily_COM_AM_KW05_2021_Th_COPY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_afecd219f5-5ae298011e-313370982

Book: The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel

February 18, 2021

This book covers a lot of ground but Chapter 1, titled “Winners and Losers,” makes an interesting case that the use and abuse of the concept of “merit” is what led to populist backlashes of Donald Trump’s election and Brexit.

You can actually read the whole introduction and first chapter on Amazon by clicking the “Look Inside” image of the book.

Below are a couple of links to reviews or interviews with Sandel in which he outlines his basic ideas.

Click to access tyranny-of-merit-transcript.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/06/michael-sandel-the-populist-backlash-has-been-a-revolt-against-the-tyranny-of-merit

How Brexit happened ($)

February 10, 2021

Britain went from enthusiastic commitment to the EU to an acrimonious departure on unfavourable terms

Britain’s history meant it was always ambivalent towards the European “project”. For most continental countries, building European unity was a reaction to the horrors of the second world war and its aftermath. The Germans were escaping Nazism, the French defeat and collaboration, the Italians dictatorship, the eastern Europeans, when they eventually joined, Soviet domination. Britain was the only member that felt no need to escape from its past—indeed, in many ways, it preferred wallowing in the past to confronting the future. For Britain, unlike the rest of Europe, the nation state is something to be celebrated rather than transcended.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/01/02/how-brexit-happened