A Tory peer has just told Today that "We need to get back to a form of policing that is more colour-blind". When was that, precisely? The idea that we *used* to live in a colour-blind society, until minorities got special privileges, goes against *everything* we know of the history of policing.

📈 Livermore told the House of Lords on Monday that, in his personal view, the UK will eventually re-enter the European Union because doing so is in the country’s economic interest. 🗯️ His comments mark the first public endorsement by a serving minister of overturning the referendum result.

Roland is one of my favourite commentators on Brexit and much more besides. Chris, obviously, is an absolute boss. This'll be worth listening to.

Home Office sends letters to children as young as five saying they must leave UK

Born in Częstochowa, to Bronislawa and Dawid Kozak. The Germans took their factory away. Polish nuns hid the Kozaks from the Germans. It's close to miraculous she survived. In the 1970s, she did a PhD on women munition workers in WW1 at Hull. May her memory be a blessing.

This from the man who spent years hectoring us about how crucial it was for 'our own laws to be debated and made in our own sovereign parliament'.

Last week, @thenerve.news published #TheHarborneReceipts, a forensic examination in cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne’s donations…& how closely they tracked Farage & Johnson’s pro-crypto policy statements. Yesterday, the FT published an editorial making this exact point about Reform. 1/

A new national conversation, or just the same old one? New post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog discussing the different strands of the now intensifying revival of discussion about Brexit, including the latest developments in the 'reset': chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2026/05/a-ne...

I remember a Tory confidently telling me "In a decade, everyone will say they voted Leave even if they didn't".

Deeply pathetic that BBC is reporting this as a Reform power struggle rather than explaining that Reform's policies would require deporting people -including pensioners - who have lived and worked here legally for decades. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Interesting that the idea of another EU referendum is regularly discussed on broascast media as something that would cause division and thus a bad idea. But plans to deport literally millions of people are discussed as administrative questions.

But I'm afraid this is the new norm. A general commentariat unthinkingly passing on their own or others prejudices then telling anyone with any greater knowledge that they're wrong. And this is bleeding into government making a hard job worse.

One way or another immigration being sharply down yet the salience of immigration being very high is a major failure for the current government.

If journalists were doing their job properly, it would simply not be possible for the public to be labouring under this degree of ignorance when it comes to immigration. inews.co.uk/opinion/immi...

Rafael Behr nails it. Again and again. It’s why I feel such deep despair.

A child born on the Regent’s Park estate when the demolition started will be in their late 20s when they can get a HS2 train to Birmingham. What an avoidable mess.

Every penny of tax you've ever paid, every penny of tax you'll ever pay, every single penny everyone you have ever met will ever pay - literally down the drain. Could have built tram networks in (x) cities, (?) 50 hospitals, could have refinanced Higher Ed. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

How about: a) I believe the UK should rejoin the EU; but b) Neither we nor Brussels are ready for a formal negotiation; and c) EU membership would not be a panacea for our national challenges; so c) I will work to build trust and lay foundations with the EU, while advancing other priorities.

For the benefit of Labour leadership hopefuls and anyone else with an interest in the issue, I have removed the paywall on my post on the overwhelming case for Rejoin. The public deserves an honest debate about the options and trade-offs, not delusions and wishful thinking

Farage almost never talks about brexit any more. He's pivoted entirely to the issue of "illegal" migration which I a bit ironic because one of the main planks of his own leave campaign was that Brexit would stop "illegal" immigration...

One fact Leave supporters never address is that Brexit has hit the “left behind” towns that depend most on manufacturing hardest.

Actually the more I think about it (and this isn’t exactly a genius insight) the more I think that having relitigating Brexit as an election issue must generally be worse for Reform.

Reform's argument will be what? Politics has failed so vote for us rather than the bloke who has been running Manchester to general acclaim who is also promising to change politics? Straight fight, Burnham to fix it, Farage to take 5 million quid and buy himself a house

Britain’s post-Brexit ungovernability. New post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog discussing last week’s elections, the Labour leadership crisis which has followed, and what both tell us about post-Brexit politics: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2026/05/brit...

The most damning resignation letter yet, I think:

New piece on the STV flavour of PR and why it is so urgently needed. I have been meaning to write this for a long time, but the saliency of PR has never seemed higher. @pimlicat.bsky.social www.progressivepulse.org/uk/towards-a...

In the run up to the 10th anniversary of Brexit I think we need to remember what was promised by the Brexiters and what threats they made about what would happen if we didn't leave. Here's Farage 10 years ago this month. www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-p...

The quid pro quo of a Starmer leadership was that - fine - we weren't getting a storyteller or a charisma powerhouse, but we'd at least get serious, competent leadership committed to delivery. In fact we got neither.

Starmer can't promise to put the UK at "the heart of Europe" and not change his Brexit red lines – a contradiction in terms.

It’s not surprising that a Labour Party in search of a new growth strategy and national narrative is debating rejoining the EU. Here’s my post on why the geopolitical and economic case is now overwhelming - and why none of the halfway houses work (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/nixons/p...

Whether it is on the EU, tax, immigration, or something else - and it is probably only one of these initially - I think this Labour government has to clearly and deliberately break a political taboo to show "change"

The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals. Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:

Breaking: it turns out that a strategy that literally every political scientist went 'No, don't do that. That's nuts!' is, in fact, nuts.

What's happening is we're moving to a European party system but without PR.

These two statements are contradictory and Brussels isn't interested until the second one at least softens with regard to people

As an example of everything deficient with the “focussed on winning” Starmer project, there are so many to choose from. But today’s is that they went into their first set of local elections with first past the post still in place for mayorals and went into the second with voterID still in place.

It gets weirder by the day. Here, a health secretary whose policies directly undermine children's health rambles on about physical fitness for military service in front of a POTUS who got exempted as unfit and now appears to be virtually catatonic.

'My son was torn from my arms and I was sent back to prison for crime I didn’t commit.' Thousands received indefinite imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence, abolished in 2012 Many still in prison, can't easily be rehabilitated. 'Throw away the key' mentality caused Injustice, pain.

This story is completely insane. Beyond belief.

Could Labour run in the next election on a Rejoin EU platform? It would be quite the turnround, but in a way it would also reflect the crucial learning since 2024 - that there is a limit to what barriers can be removed even a UK government that wants to do so. However --->

New post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog, reviewing @sarahobolt.bsky.social & James Tilley's new book "Tribal Politics. How Brexit Divided Britain": chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2026/04/book... (this is an additional post to the normal fortnightly posts, which continue as usual next week)

This would seem the obvious moment for a European Defence Union of EU countries (and the EU itself), Norway, Ukraine, and the UK. Others if they wanted to join. Given the Ukrainian loan is granted, the Russian spy is voted out, and Trump's threats.

An internal Pentagon email outlines options for the United States to punish NATO allies it believes failed to support U.S. operations in the war with Iran, including reviewing the U.S. position on Britain's claim to the Falkland Islands, a U.S. official told Reuters www.reuters.com/world/pentag...

This thread is long, but that’s because it is so comprehensive and, in my view, near-definitive. It’s also very easy to read, so please do take the time to.

#FoodStandards #PublicHealth #AnimalWelfare We do not want dreadful US standards in the UK. But seems this government does www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

The Man Who Knew Too Little: my SKETCH of Keir Starmer trying to pin the Mandelson blame on Olly Robbins. thecritic.co.uk/the-...

really good post by @davidallengreen.bsky.social

Brexit. British Exit from the EU. But also stands in my mind for British Exceptionalism. That of being as a country so different to say France or Germany or any other that we couldn't really be happy members of a bloc. Which was always nonsense.

I am planning on appointing someone who has publicly resigned twice in scandal. They resign a third time in even bigger scandal. The fallout should, however, not include me, the person who made the big call in the first place. Totally untenable.