Writing elsewhere (mainly about Brexit)
If you follow this blog but don't bother with Twitter and other social media, you may have missed some of my more recent articles. As phase 1 of the Brexit negotiations struggled to a slightly chaotic conclusion, I looked at some of the features of an emerging deal, at Conservative Home . I argued that 'convergence', which has subsequently become 'alignment', was not necessarily the same as membership of the Customs Union or Single Market. "All the fundamentals of Britain’s final deal with Brussels should apply equally across all its regions. But if there are parts of the economy that benefit from harmonising regulations with the EU, without compromising the United Kingdom’s integrity, we should be clever and pragmatic enough to show some flexibility." At the website, Reaction , I examined how a deal could affect the 'principle of consent', which underpins the Good Friday Agreement. The Irish government's attitude to consent re