{"id":145,"date":"2022-10-27T13:56:17","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T12:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/?p=145"},"modified":"2022-10-27T13:56:17","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T12:56:17","slug":"have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-on-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/2022\/10\/27\/have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-on-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another month, another Prime Minister.<\/p>\n<p>The ructions in Westminster might well have launched a thousand memes about lettuce, but have also clearly put any policy work on hold.<\/p>\n<p>This holds true for British EU policy, where the only clear shift since Boris Johnson&#8217;s time in office has been a shift in discourse and framing: both Truss and Sunak have gone down the path of warm words and conciliatory statements, instead of a reflexive rejection of anything &#8216;European&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, at this stage in proceedings, it is hard to make any firm judgements about Sunak&#8217;s intentions, but the early indications are that he will follow Truss in talking up the possibilities of working better with the EU, but without much scope for moving on policy substance.<\/p>\n<p>This was already evident during Truss&#8217; brief stint:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Usherwood\/status\/1578295261717491715?s=20&#038;t=XtGzcHFLma9j7KJLLoTkvw\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/Usherwood\/status\/1578295261717491715?s=20&amp;t=XtGzcHFLma9j7KJLLoTkvw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s where I am now on Sunak:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Usherwood\/status\/1585552665651531776?s=20&#038;t=XtGzcHFLma9j7KJLLoTkvw\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/Usherwood\/status\/1585552665651531776?s=20&amp;t=XtGzcHFLma9j7KJLLoTkvw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As a reminder, EU policy matters, whether or not a Prime Minister has it as a priority item (which neither Truss nor Sunak do): it touches on multiple fundamentals of British polity, politics and policy, which both requires attention and imposes constraints on the ability to flex positions:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1503\" style=\"width: 1354px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1503\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1503\" src=\"http:\/\/euatou.ideasoneurope.eu\/files\/2022\/10\/Why-Europe-matters-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1344\" height=\"1008\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1503\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">PDF: <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/UshGraphic111\">https:\/\/bit.ly\/UshGraphic111<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s also useful to consider how that plays out in the Northern Irish context across the post-referendum PMs: Sunak seems set to follow Truss rather than either Johnson or May.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1504\" style=\"width: 1461px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1504\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1504\" src=\"http:\/\/euatou.ideasoneurope.eu\/files\/2022\/10\/PMs-and-NI.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1451\" height=\"1361\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1504\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">PDF: <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/UshGraphic110\">https:\/\/bit.ly\/UshGraphic110<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>The basic challenge remains one of a lack of strategic direction for European policy, something that a new PM will not change by itself. While the new tone will welcome, that cannot be a long-term solution for the problems that exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another month, another Prime Minister. The ructions in Westminster might well have launched a thousand memes about lettuce, but have also clearly put any policy work on hold. This holds true for British EU policy, where the only clear shift &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/2022\/10\/27\/have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-on-again\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,50,52,51],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-brexit","tag-prime-minister","tag-sunak","tag-truss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}