Brexit & Beyond
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons
Chris Grey is Emeritus Professor of Organization Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and was previously a Professor at Cambridge University and Warwick University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). He originally studied Economics and Politics at Manchester University, where he also gained a PhD on the regulation of financial services. "Best guy to follow on Brexit for intelligent analysis" Annette Dittert, ARD German TV. "Consistently outstanding analysis of Brexit" Jonathan Dimbleby. "The best writer on Brexit" Chris Lockwood, Europe Editor, The Economist. "A must-read for anyone following Brexit" David Allen Green, FT. "The doyen of Brexit commentators" Chris Johns, Irish Times. @ChrisGrey@mastodon.online & Twitter @chrisgreybrexit
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I blog in a personal capacity and all views expressed are mine, not those of any institution or organization.
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 30 December 2020 English
The protracted drama of whether or not there would be a Brexit future terms deal finally ended on Christmas Eve, and today it has been overwhelmingly approved by MPs. Perhaps, …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 13 December 2020 English
So yet another supposedly final deadline has come and gone, and the ludicrous ‘will they, won’t they’ theatre of the last few months continues. Ludicrous, but debilitating, too, in a …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 9 December 2020 English
There are several important developments in progress this week, and I’ll write about them in my next post (depending on how events pan out, that may come hours or even …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 4 December 2020 English
It’s now less than a month, and less than 20 working days, until a massive change in the way that the UK trades with and relates to its own continent, …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 27 November 2020 English
The Ancient Greek philosopher Zeno articulated a series of paradoxes, one of the most famous being the ‘dichotomy’ or ‘race course’ paradox. In order to reach a destination, a runner …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 20 November 2020 English
I am not sure which cliché to apply to the current Brexit situation. Nail biting? Like having teeth pulled? Like watching paint dry? Perhaps it is some grotesque combination of …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 13 November 2020 English
With Joe Biden’s victory now assured, millions of words have now been written – in the UK, if nowhere else – as to what it means for the US-UK relationship …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 6 November 2020 English
The absence in the last week or so of the sound and fury that has accompanied the Brexit future terms negotiations since the end of the summer holidays might betoken …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 30 October 2020 English
The last ten days were supposed to be my break from Brexit hence, as trailed two weeks ago, there was no post on this blog last Friday. But escaping did …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 16 October 2020 English
A month ago Boris Johnson set a deadline of 15 October for a trade deal with the EU to be done. That date has passed, no deal has as yet …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 9 October 2020 English
This will be the shortest post on this blog for some time, since little of note has happened in the last week. The Brexit negotiations continue, albeit in an unofficial …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 2 October 2020 English
As this supposedly final week of Brexit trade talks ends, the ‘will they, won’t they?’ show continues to play out like an amateur production of an absurdist play or, perhaps …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 25 September 2020 English
By recent standards it has been a relatively quiet Brexit week, although also a revealing one in which several chickens have come home to roost as the end of the …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 18 September 2020 English
The Internal Market Bill (IMB) and its repercussions have been the predominant theme of this week’s developments. Almost as soon as I wrote my previous post, Brexiter MPs started justifying …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 11 September 2020 English
The relatively quiet summer has ended with a bang, and Brexit has now pushed Britain into a dark and dangerous place. The developments this week have been extremely complex, so …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 4 September 2020 English
There’s a distinct ‘back to school’ feeling in the air – and never has the beginning of the school year been the news story that it is in these Covid …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 28 August 2020 English
No one knows if there is going to be a UK-EU trade and other future terms deal, and nothing has happened this week to make that clearer. The last two …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 21 August 2020
Despite another round of negotiations having been held it has been a relatively quiet Brexit week. The main noise emerging from the talks has been about UK fury at the …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 14 August 2020 English
This week’s headlines about migrants seeking to cross the channel served as a reminder – not that it should ever be forgotten, still less forgiven – of the way that …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 7 August 2020 English
Almost since the day of the Referendum, the Brexit process has gone round in circles with the same issues resurfacing, and the same contradictions and paradoxes recurring. That continues to …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 31 July 2020 English
It’s about six weeks since Boris Johnson said there was no reason why the outline of a Brexit deal couldn’t be sealed by the end of July, as he put …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 24 July 2020 English
The ‘Let’s Get Going’ government information campaign, which was just starting when I wrote last week’s post, is now all but unavoidable. This is the ‘shock and awe’ approach which …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 17 July 2020 English
This week, the practical realities of what Brexit is going to mean came into central focus for perhaps the first time, with a new government information campaign. Although there have …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 10 July 2020
As the talks between the UK and the EU limp on – this week, again, they finished early with little sign of progress - and coronavirus and its consequences continue …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 3 July 2020 English
The most important Brexit event of the week came and went with relatively little fanfare, yet it marks a significant moment. The opportunity to extend the transition period went unused …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 26 June 2020
It is now four years since the Referendum result which convulsed British politics and set the country on a path whose destination remains unknown. In this post I’m not going …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 19 June 2020 English
The much-hyped meeting between Boris Johnson, Ursula von der Leyen, David Sassoli and Charles Michel did not, apparently, see Johnson “banging the table” or even “warning” the EU that Britain …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 12 June 2020 English
The irritation in Michel Barnier’s press statement at the end of last week’s negotiations was palpable. “Things cannot go on like this”, he despairingly warned, and his particular concern was …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 5 June 2020 English
With the last week of talks prior to the end of June cut-off for agreeing an extension finishing today, there is no sign (£) of progress towards a deal and …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 29 May 2020 English
The Brexit process is in another of its periodic ‘lull before the storm’ moments. So this will be quite a boring post, but at least it's fairly short. There were …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 26 May 2020 English
There are numerous obvious connections between Brexit and the Dominic Cummings lockdown affair that has dominated the last few days. For one thing, the very existence of the present government …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 22 May 2020 English
This week the UK government, belatedly, made public its draft legal texts for an agreement with the EU, for the first time authorising them to be communicated to EU Member …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 15 May 2020 English
This week saw the third round (by videoconference) of the increasingly surreal post-Brexit negotiations, which rumble on as the one supposedly immutable thing in a world otherwise transformed by the …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 7 May 2020 English
There’s relatively little happening as regards Brexit developments this week (although the increasing row over the Northern Ireland Protocol is important), and little new to say about such developments as …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 1 May 2020 English
This week’s Brexit news, such as it is, continues to circle around arguments for and against extending the transition period. The government’s substantive arguments against doing so – state aid …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 24 April 2020 English
It is now increasingly clear that there is a complex web of interconnections between Brexit and responses to the coronavirus crisis. I have been writing about that on this blog …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 17 April 2020 English
Once again, there’s not a great deal to say. But, once again, for as long as there is no change to the Brexit timetable it is worth looking at what …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 9 April 2020 English
The delusion that the Brexit negotiations are ongoing, as discussed in my previous post, continues and in doing so becomes ever more surreal. Last Friday, spokespeople for both the UK …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 3 April 2020 English
There’s always been something delusional in how Brexiters talk about negotiations with the EU. It started with Vote Leave’s lie that these would be completed before starting the legal process …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 27 March 2020 English
Unsurprisingly, there is little Brexit news since – rightly – most attention is elsewhere. Yet, as argued in my previous post, for as long as it remains ongoing it remains …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 20 March 2020 English
As foreshadowed in my post two weeks ago and amplified in last week’s post (most of which remains relevant, although last week feels almost a lifetime ago) the key, pressing …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 13 March 2020 English
Despite news coverage being inevitably swamped by the coronavirus pandemic Brexit is still ongoing and indeed there are several points of comparison or connection between the two. For Britain, unlike …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 6 March 2020 English
With Britain having left the EU, this week saw the beginning of the negotiations about the future terms of UK-EU trade and other relationships. That anodyne sentence ought to anger …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 28 February 2020 English
In the very first post on this blog, in September 2016, I noted that the complexity of delivering Brexit and the lack of realism of Brexiters meant that in the …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 21 February 2020 English
During the Cold War, the Stasi perfected techniques of psychological warfare known as Zersetzung, sometimes translated as ‘disintegration’. Targeted at individuals and dissident groups, it involved “a systematic degradation of …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 14 February 2020 English
We’re in a strange kind of limbo period in which the UK has left the EU, and the Transition Period has started, and yet the crucial talks about future terms …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 7 February 2020 English
Brexit day has come and gone. But as has been widely remarked, though apparently not universally understood, nothing really changes in the Transition Period, so there is no radical rupture …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 31 January 2020 English
So today it will happen. For some, it will be a day of joy and triumph and celebration. Yet, though those celebrations will be occurring, it seems likely that they …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 24 January 2020 English
Hardly had the electronic ink dried on my previous post, which included some discussion of the government’s approach to the business effects of Brexit, than Sajid Javid gave a clear …
Individual Contributors to Policy Commons · 17 January 2020 English
A report from Bloomberg Economics this week estimates the cost of Brexit since the Referendum result to be £130 billion, with a further £70 billion predicted by the scheduled end …