In my house, “rock’n’roll” has a very specific meaning. When uttered in the context of getting people out of the house it denotes that we have arrived at the actual moment of departure and no more delays will be tolerated: everyone is moving to the door.* Put differently, I have established a credible set of […]
The upsides of getting older are relatively few and far between, but one of the best is that you get to annoy younger people by dragging up things from the past that they have no memory of. And so it’s been this week: I’ve been musing on the late 1980s and the oddities of monetary […]
As we roll around to a new round of Article 50 negotiations, it’s perhaps useful to revisit another key structural dimension of this process. Negotiation theory spends a lot of time trying to educate users into the language of positive-sum games. Those inexperienced in such things typically see negotiations as zero-sum: your loss is my […]
Even if the Article 50 negotiations have yet to move to Phase II (transition arrangements), it is clear that such matters are increasingly on people’s minds. The European Council a fortnight ago did concede that the Commission should start to prepare a draft mandate for Phase II, so that as and when Phase I (tying […]