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Denis MacShane

Denis MacShane was a Labour MP for Rotherham from 1994 to 2012, and was Minister for Europe in Tony Blair's government. His 2015 book predicted the vote for British exit from the E.U. and his new book is Brexit No Exit: Why (in the End) Britain Won’t Leave Europe.

Recent Articles

Confidence Game

Despite House of Commons drama, Britain is no closer to finding the answer to Brexit. 

Denis MacShaneJan 17, 2019
AP Photo/Alastair Grant British Prime Minister Theresa May walks past the EU flag at the conclusion of an EU summit in Brussels. A s the dust settles on one of the House of Commons' un-finest hours, the future of Britain as a European power-player is as unclear as ever. On Tuesday, the Commons voted to humiliate Prime Minister Theresa May. On Wednesday, the Commons voted to enshrine her prime minster for as long as choses to stay. The UK Parliament came close to making itself a laughingstock as MPs pirouetted to both condemn and console the Prime Minister in the space of 24 hours. One can only feel sorry for the poor leaders of European nations as they try and decipher what on earth is the message British MPs are trying to send. The problem is that Britain’s political class is locked in three separate contests. The first one is between plebiscite and parliamentary democracy. For three centuries the way of governing Britain was by means of representative parliamentary democracy—...

British Labour’s Self-Inflicted Marginalization

Why Her Majesty’s Opposition is failing to demolish the feeble Theresa May

Denis MacShane | January 10, 2019

The Brexit Mess Will Go On for Years

Prime Minister Theresa May’s long-awaited deal is likely to be voted down in the House of Commons. If it somehow survives, it is only the beginning of a long, painful, and needless slog.

Denis MacShaneNov 19, 2018
AP Photo/Alastair Grant British Prime Minister Theresa May arrives for an EU summit in Brussels. T he deal agreed to between the United Kingdom and the European Union has detonated the biggest political dispute in British politics since Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich in 1938 waving a leaf of paper and proclaiming he had won “peace in our time.” Far from uniting Britain after the bitterly divisive Brexit referendum vote when just 37 percent of the total British electorate voted to leave the European Union, the Withdrawal Agreement and linked declaration on future areas to be negotiated has launched a new round of recriminations. Several ministers have resigned and others are forming a cabal to demand that Prime Minister Theresa May return to Brussels and renegotiate a new accord. There have been loud calls from senior Conservatives headed by Boris Johnson denouncing the deal as the end of a thousand years of parliamentary supremacy in the U.K. The former minister of foreign...

Another Ominous Transition in Europe

With the impending departure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the continent’s fragmentation intensifies.

Denis MacShaneNov 01, 2018
(Kay Nietfeld/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)
(Kay Nietfeld/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images) German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Ukraine on November 1, 2018 T he most famous geopolitical cartoon the London weekly Punch ever published was called “Dropping the pilot,” showing a weary Otto von Bismarck coming down the gangplank of a ship called Germany in 1890 after 28 years as chancellor. Angela Merkel has done only 13 years as her nation’s leader, though see seems like an institution. Now she is stepping down as leader of her Christian Democratic Party. Her departure marks a turning point in German and European history. She stays on as chancellor until the end of her term in 2021, and there has been talk in Brussels and Berlin of her moving to be president of the European Commission—the executive bureaucracy of the European Union, or the European Council on which sit all the heads of Europe’s government, soon to be minus Britain. The German horse cannot be ridden by two masters, and once her successor is installed in December,...

Brexit Panic as Brits Run Out of Toilet Paper

As Brexit nears, Economic Britain moans but does not mobilize, complains but does not campaign.

Denis MacShaneOct 26, 2018
(Press Association via AP Images)
(Press Association via AP Images) Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement in the House of Commons on October 22, 2018. T here is palpable sense of panic slowly developing in London. Each Brit consumes 110 toilet rolls a year—two and half time the European average. The United Kingdom is Europe’s biggest importer of loo paper and it is said that only one day’s supply of toilet paper exists in stock. If Britain leaves the EU Customs Union and Single Market in five months’ time and the trucks transporting toilet paper are held up at Calais or Dover, British bottoms will have to be wiped with torn-up newspapers as in bygone days. Some 1,300 trucks carrying goods from the continent arrive every day just for the giant German-owned low-cost supermarket chain Lidl. Airbus imports a million components on a just-in-time basis, as do all U.K. automobile manufacturers. Britain’s economy is now completely integrated in terms of supply and transport into the rest of Europe. There are no more...

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