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uk election: yet another broken promise April 21, 2017

Posted by Bradley in : brexit , add a comment

I have lived outside the UK for long enough that I haven’t been able to vote in elections. This did not bother me too much to begin with because the constituency I lived in before I came to Miami was so obviously going to vote in a way that made one vote irrelevant. But it did bother me when the referendum happened: I would have liked to have a vote recorded on that issue. So I was very pleased to read that there was a new plan to allow expatriates to vote in UK elections. I know the theory was that most of them would be older and would vote conservative, but all the same. Now it seems that the election will take place without allowing a vote to the disenfranchised living abroad, probably because most of them are in other European states and worried (rightly) about their futures. So it is yet another lie/broken promise in this Brexit context.

For this election, where attitudes to the EU are significant they (we) don’t get a vote. But afterwards – after we are all disadvantaged by this decision – what chance any of those people will vote conservative in future? So probably a promise broken not just now, but for the future also.

brexit paper April 17, 2017

Posted by Bradley in : brexit , add a comment

Here’s a new paper on Brexit I have been working on for a while: European (Dis)Union: From the 1992 Single Market to Brexit.