While publicly committed to gender equality, Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohamed, has kidnapped his daughters, had them brutally beaten and imprisoned and drugged for years. All because they wanted to be free.
Read this extraordinary story of abject cruelty. 1/
newyorker.com/magazine/2023/… All along, the British establishment has protected Dubai’s rulers from prosecution. This week the Maktoums will be loinised at Royal Ascot. Nobody from the horse racing industry in UK or Ireland will speak up against them, despite all of this evidence being in the public domain.2

Bulgaria goes to the polls Sunday in what will be the fourth general election in eighteen months. If that number of elections in such a short period sounds extraordinary, it is reflective of different explicable phenomena within the society and politics.
A short thread. Bulgaria held 3 parliamentary elections in 2021 - in April, July and November. In addition, a presidential election was held in November which returned Rumen Radev to office.
So this will be the fourth parliamentary election in 18 months.

The results of the @IpsosIreland @IrishTimes poll on neutrality will seem baffling to many outside Ireland. A short thread. The headline figure is that 66% of Iriah people support Ireland’s policy of military neutrality.

So Ireland welcomes the Maktoum family with open arms and the UAE refuses to cooperate with us on bringing the Kinahan crime gang to account.
Why do we put up with this? Short thread. Sheikh Mohammed and his family established stud farms in Ireland decades ago. He and his family are feted by almost everybody in the horse racing and breeding industry. 2/

A short comment on the speech by @DavidGHFrost in Lisbon. It is full of half truths, untruths and an extraordinary re-writing of recent history. It is almost like he is asking his audience to forget what happened in late 2019 and late 2020. 1/
politico.eu/article/david-… Lord Frost suggests “there is no threat to the single market from what we are proposing”. In fact, what HMG is proposing to run a coach and four through the EU’s Single Market rules, implying a special status for the UK as a not quite third country. 2/

Yesterday, Hungary again became a dictatorship.

How does the European Commission and President @vonderleyen respond? With the most tepid press release possible, one that doesn’t even mention Hungary, or Viktor Orban.
A short thread on why this matters. /
ec.europa.eu/commission/pre… Although Hungary has been the subject of an Art 7 procedure, this had nothing to do with the Commission. Rather it was Judith Sargentini + @Europarl_EN who pushed for action against Hungary, outlining (in Sept 2018) "a systemic threat" to democracy. 2/
theguardian.com/world/2018/sep…

Anybody interested in international relations should read the diaries of Ivan Maisky, Soviet Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, 1932-43. They seem particularly relevant again as the UK exits the EU today. (A short thread) 1/ Despite the vast ideological gap between Maisky & his British interlocutors, he was a superlative diplomat & managed to pull off an unbelievable balancing act in the 1930s. He played roulette with Stalin’s purges and threw all his energy into developing a UK-USSR-FR alliance. 2/

A short thread about the Conservative party’s move into the world of disinformation and fake news. Dominic Raab says people "couldn't give a toss" about this. 1/
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi… Last night we saw one of the oldest political parties in the world shamelessly adopt tactics employed by Russian ‘political technologists’ & other warriors of disinformation. It was a deliberate effort to weaponize independent fact checking as part of the Tory election armoury. 2

I’ve spent most of today reading, re-reading and thinking about THAT Economist interview with President Macron. Some observations. 1/ Macron uses phrases over and over again which suggest he is a familiar combination of Metternichian Realist and traditional French imperialist. Anybody who still thinks of him as the embodiment of EU federalism, I’m sorry.
You’ve been horribly missold. 2/

A brief comment on the Johnson government’s new Brexit ‘offer’ to the EU. The sections on Ireland are replete with untruths, or claims that sit very uneasily with what London knows to be the reality of EU rules on CU/SM. 1/ The document claims that ‘our proposal is centered on our commitment to find solutions which are compatible with the Belfast Agreement’. In reality, the proposal would tear the Agreement to shreds, pulverize inter-communal relations & toxify relationship between Dub and London.2/

So, how does @BorisJohnson satisfy the Brexit ultras in the Tory party who choose him as leader and simultaneously get the Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament? Is there a pathway to get out of the EU by 31 October and stay in power?
Yes, I think. A short thread on such. 1/ If Johnson becomes PM over the coming days (still some doubt), he knows he cannot get existing Brexit deal through the Commons. So what to do? He could (relatively quickly) go to Brussels, and ask for the Northern Ireland specific backstop to replace the current UK-wide one.2/

A thread on the EU & the Western Balkans. On Tuesday the EU’s General Affairs Council in Luxembourg will discuss opening accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia and consider the European Commission’s recent evaluation of progress by Western Balkan states 1/ Membership of the EU remains the goal of all 6 WB states but I argue that they have had to contend with an enlargement process which “has been on ‘life support’ for many years, moving towards an increasingly uncertain destination” 2/
iiea.com/publication/ii…

A short thread on the Polish foreign minister’s suggestion (revealed earlier) of a 5 year expiry date on the Irish backstop. It has been the subject of some debate today. 1/
reuters.com/article/us-bri… This isn’t the first time Poland has made what has been perceived (In Ireland) as an unwelcome intervention on Brexit. In July 2018 the Polish Minister for European Affairs raised concerns about the backstop amongst other issues. 2/

Theresa May’s letter to the UK.I’m sorry to say I think it is full of falsehoods about the Brexit Deal, and what kind of future UK faces. I’m going to catalogue the fakeshiods in a thread.First, “we will take back control over our borders”. UK NEVER lost control over borders. 1 UK voluntarily chose to not apply restrictions on EU migrants over last 15 years.Those folks who did migrate to UK provided UK with a significant return on their presence within economy.They were an asset and not a burden. So there was never a need to “take back control” here. 2

So long UK, farewell.
A short thread on the Brexit negotiations. 1
The biggest problem the UK govt faces in the talks is that it has rhetorically entrapped itself. Not just over past 2 years.Decades of lies about the EU from leaders who then did a 360 degree turn in asking people to vote Remain constituted an impossible obstacle to overcome.2

THREAD on the bizarrely ill-informed piece by @cjbickerton and Peter Ramsay on Brexit and the Irish Border. Demonstrating yet again how British elites understand little or nothing about Ireland (and don't want to waste time trying to gain understanding) 1
thefullbrexit.com/irish-border The most striking assertion is that @MichelBarnier and @campaignforleo are seeking to exploit threats from diehard Republican groups in NI to bend UK to EU's will and that "renegade Republican groups have been effectively recruited as the armed wing of the European Union". 2

Thread: So, @ray_basssett has written another commentary on the Brexit negotiations and suggests EU and @MichelBarnier have weaponized the Irish border issue to keep UK in the EU and under EU control.
Here, I examine Mr Bassett’s claims and respond to them. Mr Bassett argues that the EU is “not prioritizing the border for Ireland’s benefit”. Rather Brussels is obsessed with maintaining the legal regime attaching to Single Market. Mr Bassett seems to think in one dimensional terms: it cannot be that interests of EU and ROI coincide 2

THREAD @davidmcw has made a daring proposal on making Ireland a “cutting-edge global leader”.
I will respond to the ideas below. 2. @davidmcw argues that Ireland has a problem in straddling the Atlanticist and EU horses and corporate tax in particular is emerging as an acute issue.