Brexit
Brexit: On May’s mistakes and the best road ahead – Financial Times video
, 31/03/2019
Sharing a taxi with the FT to give my view on how Prime Minister Theresa May undermined herself – and on the steps that must be taken next. https://www.ft.com/video/01aef2cb-81b9-4dbb-9f8b-85a0c9559097
BBC Question Time, Sheffield 27th March 2019
, 31/03/2019
“Britain needs a People’s Debate on its business model and its Constitution independently of how Brexit pans out… The most sensible way would be for the UK to exit the EU but stay in both a Custom’s Union and the Single Market for an indefinite period (though not forever). After the People’s Debate is complete, […]
Why Norway plus gives Britain the time it needs to get out of its Brexit mess – op-ed in The Telegraph
, 27/03/2019
Brexit is, undeniably, important. The Prime Minister’s faulty negotiations have now turned what the majority of the British people considered an opportunity into a national crisis. However, now is perhaps the moment to reflect that, in an era of trade wars, geopolitical realignment and existential threats to our nations’ democracies, Brexit is not as important as we […]
Britain needs to choose its dominant Brexit strategy – The Telegraph
, 28/02/2019
Imagine that we knew the day of our death. Our lives would change drastically. Though we know we shall surely die, not knowing precisely when the mortal coil will be shuffled off makes all the difference, allowing us to live life productively on a day-by-day basis. For exactly the same reason, the fixed deadline embedded […]
Jeremy Corbyn’s necessary next step: A Speech of Hope for Britain – The Independent
, 31/01/2019
Britain’s prime minister has been remarkable in resolutely following a ruinous path that she keeps insisting remains the least perilous road to Brexit. Theresa May’s first crime against logic was to trigger Article 50 without a plan of what to do on 29 March 2019 if no deal had been struck with Brussels. Her second was to forfeit […]
Britain needs a People’s Debate, not a second Brexit referendum
, 24/01/2019
Britain is teetering on a knife’s edge: about to crash out of, or back into, the European Union. Either outcome would represent a defeat for democracy in the UK and in the EU. Crashing out would inflict substantial economic hardship on the weakest in Britain. It would boost jingoism and parochialism, drive England further apart […]
The Brexit clock must be run down, not re-set – op-ed
, 24/01/2019
The overwhelming defeat that Britain’s Parliament inflicted upon Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan was fresh confirmation that there is no substitute for democracy. Members of Parliament deserve congratulations for keeping their cool in the face of a made-up deadline. That deadline is the reason why Brexit is proving so hard and potentially so damaging. […]
Turning Brexit Into a Celebration of Democracy – Project Syndicate op-ed, 26 DEC 2018
, 14/01/2019
Paradoxically, while the current Brexit impasse is pregnant with risk, the British should welcome it. Their discontent with the choices before them is an opportunity, not a curse, and more democracy is the antidote, not the disease. ATHENS – Discontent without end looms over Britain. Leavers and Remainers are equally despondent. Her Majesty’s Government and […]
At the Edinburgh Festival, in conversation with Jeremy Corbyn on reviving socialism, with Maria Alyokhina (Pussy Riot) on despotism, and with Shami Chakrabarti on liberty
, 08/01/2019
In 2018, the good people behind the Edinburgh Festival kindly invited me to host a series of discussions under the title KILLING DEMOCRACY? My remit was: Further to explore the question of whether the current form of financialised capitalism is devouring democracy, reflecting on my work with the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). In a series […]
Talking Brexit, Bernie and Left Internationalism with Yanis Varoufakis – VICE
, 22/12/2018
Varoufakis talks to us about what he’s planning with the veteran US politician, why Jeremy Corbyn has been slow to support his campaigning efforts in Europe, and whether it’s possible for the UK to “remain and reform” inside the EU. VICE: Can you start by telling me about your trip over to the US. What […]
DiEM25’s European New Deal plan can succeed where Macron and Piketty failed – The Guardian
, 14/12/2018
If Brexit demonstrates that leaving the EU is not the walk in the park that Eurosceptics promised, Emmanuel Macron’s current predicament proves that blind European loyalism is, similarly, untenable. The reason is that the EU’s architecture is equally difficult to deconstruct, sustain and reform. While Britain’s political class is, rightly, in the spotlight for having made a mess […]
“The EU declared war and Theresa May played along” – Interview in The NewStatesman
, 23/11/2018
In 2016, shortly before the EU referendum, Yanis Varoufakis warned that the UK was destined for a “Hotel California Brexit”: it could check out but it could never leave. The former Greek finance minister spoke from experience. In 2015, his efforts to end austerity – “fiscal waterboarding” – were thwarted by the EU (a struggle […]
The euro and Steve Bannon’s Fascist International – Oxford Union address, video & audio 16th November 2018
, 16/11/2018
On 17th October 2018, Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice President of the European Commission, addressed the Oxford Union in support of the motion that “the euro has never been stronger“. Today, Friday 16th November 2018, Steve Bannon is addressing the Oxford Union also. In between, on Wednesday 14th November 2018, I had the opportunity to also address […]
Talking to KPMG about Brexit – 27 September 2018
, 16/11/2018
Whether or not you agree with his politics, there’s no denying that Greece’s one-time Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, offers a lot of food for thought to British businesses. The economist, politician, author and dedicated European reformer addressed our KPMG Executive Exchanges dinner in Leeds in late September. Theresa May, Brexit, Angela Merkel, deflation, the northern […]
Discussing the Labour Party’s fitness for government, Brexit et al – on BBC 2’s Politics Live
, 01/10/2018
Yanis Varoufakis and Conservative MP Ken Clarke join Andrew Neil, along with Camilla Tominey from the Telegraph and Labour’s Rupa Huq. They discuss whether Labour is ready to govern, Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit meeting with the EU’s Michel Barnier and the Salisbury poisoning suspect reported to be a Russian military officer.
, 01/10/2018
ATHENS – As deadlines approach and red lines are redrawn in the United Kingdom’s impending withdrawal from the European Union, it is imperative for the people of Britain to regain democratic control over a process that is opaque and ludicrously irrational. The question is: How? Democracy can never aspire to being more than a work […]
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM, NOT SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY: On the UK Left’s relation with Europe – Open Labour document
, 17/07/2018
Socialism is internationalist. As socialists, we ought to be taking down borders between workers; not putting new ones up. Labour deserves, at a minimum, the same rights and freedoms as capital if we are to be masters of the system, not its servants. The political aim of the Left has always been to improve labour, […]
The terrible prophesies of Brexit – op-ed in literary magazine FIVE DIALS
, 03/06/2018
Brexit rode to victory on the coat-tails of a type of discontent whose power sprang from its insuperable reluctance to specify its nature. Seemingly focused on a foreign power centre that British voters saw (with some justification) as the usurper of their democratic rights, its real focal point was nebulous and imprecise enough to encompass […]
Turn the Brexit page and let’s move on by uniting progressives in the UK and in the EU: Interview in BIG ISSUE NORTH, 22 APR 2018
, 15/05/2018
Progressive people and politicians in the UK should end the “idiocy” of wishing for a second referendum on Brexit and instead turn to what can be salvaged from leaving the EU, according to Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister. Even though the UK is likely to leave the EU with a bad deal, it […]
Addressing Sheffield’s Festival of Ideas: DiEM25 is here to help heal the rift between progressive Remainers and progressive Leavers – audio, 18 APR 2018
, 20/04/2018
Ladies and gentlemen, the main reason for being here tonight is to use, in our capacity as the Democracy in Europe Movement – DiEM25 -, to press whatever resources we have into the service of healing the rift between progressive Remainers and progressive Leavers. We have enough divisions in the UK, we have enough divisions in […]