Labour MEP for Yorkshire & Humber
Two thirds of the way into her speech at the State Opening of Parliament this afternoon, the Queen announced what we’ve all been expecting: “My government will renegotiate the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union and pursue reform of the European Union for the benefit of all Member States. Alongside this, early legislation will […]
Tomorrow sees a crunch vote in the European Parliament to tackle the deadly trade in conflict minerals around the world — an issue on which I’ve received more than a thousand messages over the past few months. Minerals such as tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold are part of many European companies’ supply chains. But the […]
British Influence have today published my open letter to David Cameron. The full text is below. Dear Prime Minister, Firstly, congratulations on your election result. Your majority is thin, and your government will be fragile — but it is a government nonetheless. In the course of winning power, you have committed us all to a […]
Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been providing regular updates on the work Labour MEPs are doing to address the so-called VAT-MOSS issue, where originally well-intentioned changes to cross-border VAT rules have ended up affecting small and micro-businesses severely and disproportionately. I’ve raised the problem in conversations with Frans Timmermans, First Vice-President of […]
There will be no honeymoon for our returning Prime Minister. He can savour his moment of triumph, but governing over the next five years with such a slim majority — the smallest of any incoming Conservative PM since the 1840s — will leave him in hock to even the smallest of rebellions on his backbenches, […]
The Times ran a story yesterday on the vote in the European Parliament to discharge the annual budget, and specifically on a vote we took on transparency of MEPs’ expenses. (Read the original story here — not free.) The Times alleged that MEPs across the political spectrum — including Labour, Tories and UKIP — voted […]
Later this evening, the Times Higher Education Supplement will publish its rankings of the top 100 universities in the world which were founded in the past 50 years. In previous years, British universities have been very well represented in the list. In 2014, no country in the world had more entries on the list than […]
Yesterday, the European Parliament debated one piece of EU legislation that almost everyone considers a good idea — everyone, that is, except the Conservatives, the French Front National, and presumably UKIP, none of whose members bothered even to speak in the debate. The proposal is to include an inbuilt ‘eCall‘ mechanism in new car manufacturing […]
The European Commission has today waved a yellow card at Thailand for not taking sufficient measures to fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU). The card follows an initial denouncement from the European Commission in 2011 and now marks the opening of a formal dialogue with the Thai authorities to ensure corrective measures are […]
From today, you can download and install my free mobile app, Doorstep EU, on both Apple and Android devices. Doorstep EU is very much more than just a copy of my website. It includes up-to-the-minute, detailed analysis of British EU media coverage — both explaining the background to each story, and assessing its reliability with […]
Business for New Europe, a campaign group which represents the voice of UK business on EU-related issues, is circulating an excellent graphic comparing key points on Europe from the manifestos of the main parties plus UKIP. Seeing everything laid out side-by-side highlights a few oddities which I couldn’t resist highlighting. So here’s my annotated version! […]
The deadline for registering to vote in the general election in May is almost upon us. It’s simple — if you’re not registered by Monday 20 April, you won’t be able to vote.
I wrote a piece on Monday looking at Labour’s manifesto commitments on Europe. Now it’s the turn of the Conservatives to come under the microscope. Rather than putting words into David Cameron’s mouth, I thought I’d let him speak for himself — and add my notes and observations as we go along. The Tory manifesto […]
With our manifesto launch today, Labour continues to prioritise a positive and constructive position on our membership of the European Union. Labour believes that our membership of the European Union is central to our prosperity and security. It is why we will work to change the EU, so that it operates in the best interests […]
In case you had any doubts that Europe would be a key battleground in this general election, the last few days has scuppered those doubts once and for all. Labour’s lead on day one was a heartfelt pro-European message about the importance of our EU membership to British prosperity, a bold start which prompted defensive […]