For many years Eurosceptic Conservatives have wanted the UK to be “opted out” of EU social legislation – John Major negotiated an opt-out from the “social chapter” at Maastricht (though he seemed to get no thanks for that from his […]

This afternoon as part of his new EU policy, David Cameron promised a National Sovereignty Act, to make clear that British institutions ultimately rule on our relationship with the EU. I watched his speech, and thought he made a pretty […]

Last month, when talking about the big Californian case about Proposition 8, I mentioned the unexploded bomb created by articles 2, 3 and 4 of Directive 2004/38 on the free movement rights of EU citizens and their families: they […]

On Tuesday the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the Lisbon Treaty is fundamentally compatible with the German Constitution – the Grundgesetz or Basic Law. The judgment is vast and verbose (German/English) but here’s a (still quite […]

I’m quite interested in the Court of Appeal’s recent decision in this tax case, about Vodafone’s attempt to structure its takeover of Mannesman in the most tax-efficient way, using a Luxembourg-registered holding company to take advantage of lower rates […]

Both Pub Philosopher and Paul Waugh have noticed something about the Equality Bill: the government’s explanatory note to clause 10 (scroll up the page for the note), which defines “belief” for the purposes of preventing discrimination on […]

The Equality Bill published yesterday does quite a lot of things: it aims to replace existing discrimination law on sex, race, age and so on, and update it, harmonising the protection given to each “protected characteristic”, which in many […]

This morning Charon QC spoke to me about Geert Wilders, and my view that his exclusion is unlawful – it was a good chance for me to put together all the strands of my analysis, as set out my […]

I’ve not heard any comment about this either from Liberty, or from David Davis. Why not? It’s a major free speech issue.

In my previous post on this I forgot another reason why the decision to exclude Geert Wilders from the UK breaches EU law. It’s arbitrary – in this sense of treating Wilders differently from UK nationals.

One of […]