Whilst there is a suspicion amongst the more ardent Remain supporter that Brexit was simply about immigration, there were those who claimed that, by voting to leave the European Union, we could reclaim our sovereignty, taking back control, as they put it.
Now, I’m in a sense relaxed about that, in that if that was their genuine wish, then it is at least philosophically consistent. Yes, the question of cost was never really discussed – like the Scottish independence campaign, the supposed benefits were in the headlines, the price in minuscule type, if it was ever mentioned at all. Fair enough, one might suppose – there is yet to be the political salesman that raises the relative drawbacks of their product.
But the problem is that sovereignty is a concept that, in a complex, inter-related world, is becoming increasingly blurred. Do nation states have the ability to “take back control” any more?
In his recent Ditchley Lecture, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke of the increasingly complex nature of jurisdiction, noting that the United States has signed more than 800 international agreements, most of which defer supervision of some element of our lives to transnational, unelected, unaccountable bodies – the internet being the most universal of its type – yet which go virtually unnoticed by the general public.
Hello, hello, can you hear me? Is this thing working?
A packed lecture theatre in St James’s Square, London, was the setting for this year’s Isaiah Berlin Lecture, hosted by Chatham House and introduced by Liberal International President, Dr Juli Minoves. Tickets had been swallowed up within three hours of becoming available in anticipation of a typically robust contribution from the recently appointed negotiator for the European Parliament, and Guy Verhofstadt didn’t disappoint.
Yes, it’s election time again, as the ALDE Party elects different positions in alternate years, the Presidency and some Vice-Presidents in odd-numbered years, the Treasurer and a few more Vice-Presidents in even-numbered years.
Yes, this week saw the last meeting of the International Relations Committee in its current form, as the Governance Review has renamed it the ‘Federal International Relations Committee’ and given it a perhaps sharper focus than hitherto. And, whilst the agenda wasn’t exactly a full one, there were matters of import to discuss.
The tombstone of Susan B Anthony, the great campaigner for women’s suffrage, covered in “I voted” stickersBack again for another stint, as Caron is still quite rightly focused on Bob, and I suppose that it’s appropriate that a member of the Party’s International Relations Committee should be at the wheel today. As I write, polling stations are beginning to close across the United States, and, as the end of what can only be described as one …
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