Regulatory Divergence: Where UK and EU Rules Have Parted
Years after the referendum, Brexit's practical story is selective regulatory divergence. This report audits where UK–EU alignment shifted, and where it held.
14 min read
Brexit Retrospective
The campaigns, votes and consequences of the EU referendum, in hindsight.
This desk revisits the Brexit years with the benefit of hindsight — the referendum campaigns, the parliamentary deadlock, the votes that decided the outcome and the consequences that followed. The aim is a factual record rather than a re-argument of the case: what the campaigns claimed, how the process unfolded, and what the settlement changed. Entries treat the period as recent history, drawing on the public record.
The period is documented as a sequence of events with dates, actors and outcomes rather than as an open argument. Entries reconstruct what the campaigns claimed, how the deadlock in the Commons developed, which votes broke it, and what the eventual settlement altered in law and in practice. The People’s Vote campaign, the case made against the deal and the youth-led mobilisation around the result are each set down as part of that record.
Particular attention goes to the constitutional strain the process placed on Westminster: a government without a reliable majority, contested procedural rulings from the Chair, and the prorogation that the Supreme Court found unlawful. The referendum tested parts of the system that ordinary politics rarely reaches, and the retrospective follows that strain rather than the slogans.
The desk also records the generational divide the vote exposed, which the polling traced in detail, and the particular consequences for Northern Ireland, where the settlement reopened questions about the border and the Union. The purpose throughout is a clear account a reader can use to understand how the present arrangement came about.
Distance is part of the method. Writing after the event, with the outcome known, the desk can weigh what each claim turned out to be worth and how each procedural gambit actually played, rather than reporting the contest blow by blow. The aim is not to relitigate the referendum but to leave a record clear enough that a reader who did not follow it closely at the time can understand what happened and why it still shapes British politics.
Our Future, Our Choice: A Retrospective
Of the youth-led groups formed after the 2016 referendum, Our Future, Our Choice was among the most visible. This retrospective examines what it was and did.
8 min read
Reading the Withdrawal Deal: What the Critics Catalogued
Opponents of the negotiated Brexit deal compiled long lists of objections. This retrospective examines what those catalogues argued, and how they have aged.
7 min read
The People's Vote Campaign
For three years a coalition pressed for a public vote on the Brexit terms. This retrospective examines what the People's Vote sought, and why it failed.
8 min read
The Campaign Bus: A Touring Format in British Politics
The branded campaign bus became an iconic image of the Brexit years. This piece examines the touring bus as a campaigning format — its theatre and its limits.
6 min read