In 1999, Vladimir Putin was angling to become president, a complex task considering the amount of money and violence in Russian politics at the time. He needed to talk to all the players and needed to do so somewhere unobtrusive, so he convened a meeting at an oligarch’s Mediterranean villa. This, however, caused a problem: how could he travel to southern Spain without alerting the Spanish, who might monitor the conversations and learn what was going on?

Fortunately, there was a solution: Gibraltar. The then-FSB chief flew into the British territory, hopped on a boat and entered Spain illegally, on perhaps as many as five occasions. Russian spooks are not the only thing Gibraltar has smuggled across the border. According to media reports quoting a confidential EU investigation, the Rock imported 117m packets of cigarettes in 2013, enough for every Gibraltarian to smoke almost 200 a day. The cigarettes didn’t stay there, however; they, like Putin, were passing through. This epic smuggling operation may have cost EU countries €700m in lost tax revenues over four years.

Britain’s response to Spain’s demand that it have a say over how Brexit affects Gibraltar has been one of almost universal fury, but it shouldn’t have been. If you imagine that, owing to some ancient treaty, Spain had a base in Dover, from which Russia’s chief spy had repeatedly sneaked into Kent, and smugglers had flooded the country with cheap fags, massively undermining our tax base, we would be pretty cross, too. It’s something of a wonder that Spain has put up with it for so long.

Gibraltar hasn’t always been this way. It used to be a naval garrison blockaded by Spain and with almost no links to its neighbours at all. Naval spending made up almost two-thirds of Gibraltar’s economy in the 1980s, but the money dried up with the end of the cold war and the Rock had to diversify. Like most of the other remaining British colonies, it did so by aggressively undercutting the rules and taxes of its neighbours. In time, it found a comfortable niche enabling business projects that were too dodgy for Jersey or the Isle of Man...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/08/defend-gibraltar-condemn-it-as-dodgy-tax-haven

... Ami Ayalon and Carmi Gillon were speaking ahead of a public meeting at a Jerusalem gallery which is threatened with closure for hosting a meeting organised by the military whistleblowing group Breaking the Silence, one of the main targets of the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu...

..."Incremental tyranny (is a process) which means you live in a democracy and suddenly you understand it is not a democracy any more,” Ayalon told a small group of journalists, including the Guardian, ahead of the event. “This is what we are seeing in Israel. The tragedy of this process is that you only know it when it is too late.”

Ayalon cited recent moves by ministers in the Netanyahu government to change the laws to hit groups such as Breaking the Silence by banning them from events in schools and targeting their funding, while also taking aim at the country’s supreme court and independence of the media. Issues of freedom of speech and expression have become one of the key faultlines in Israeli society – in everything from the arts to journalism – under the most rightwing government in the country’s history...

... “This country was established on the values of liberal democracy, values written in the only kind of constitution we have – which is our declaration of independence – values we don’t fulfil any more. You can analyse what happened to us in the last 50 years, but everything is under the shade of occupation. It has changed us (as) a society. It has made us an unpleasant society.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/former-israeli-security-chiefs-warn-of-tyranny

Scotland can, should and hopefully will leave the United Kingdom. The question for non-Scottish Brits now is, if we are going to say goodbye to the union, how should we frame our own national consciousness after that? What institutions should we design?

The original argument for independence was strong: Scotland has developed a national culture and consciousness on a different trajectory to that of England. Large numbers of its people are convinced their economic interest is harmed within the current structure of devolution. With a hard Brexit, all forms of devolution seem an inadequate protection from the bomb that is about to go off.

Theresa May’s determination to pursue hard Brexit is the equivalent of stepping off a 10-metre diving board without checking there is any water in the pool below. But a no-deal Brexit will not only trigger severe economic dislocation. It will trigger an ideological crisis of all the nationalisms in the UK. English nationalism – half-formed, turbulent and untheorised at the moment it defeated Ed Miliband and then delivered Brexit – will be forced to become concrete. Leaping off the diving board handcuffed to May will be bad enough; leaping handcuffed to a people having a national identity meltdown is definitely something to avoid...

... But if Scotland leaves – and Northern Ireland is given some kind of halfway status to prevent a border being re-erected with the Republic – then what’s left cannot be called “rUK” – the rump or remainder UK. It will be England-Plus. This new country will still be a major global economy, a nuclear power (albeit in need of a new port for its nuclear-armed submarines), a permanent member of the UN Security Council and home to the head of the Commonwealth. And it will need an ideology...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/20/can-england-avoid-a-meltdown-of-national-identity

... It’s as if the crew of the Titanic eyed the iceberg ahead and promptly decided to have a big squabble over whether to serve white or red.

This failure to wrestle with what’s coming goes wider. The public conversation since 23 June 2016 has barely differed from the debate before that date, each side – leave and remain – still refighting the EU referendum campaign, uncertain how to get out of the old groove.

That failing is most obvious among the Brexiteers, characterised by a refusal to own their victory and take responsibility for it. So when a voice of experience or authority dares point out the possible dangers ahead, they are either sacked, as was the fate of Michael Heseltine, attacked personally, like John Major, or else branded an “enemy of the people” who refuses to bow to the “popular will”.

Those with concerns are accused of “talking down the country” or lacking sufficient faith – as if, should Brexit make us poorer, the fault will belong to those who didn’t screw their eyes tight enough and believe. Credit to Jonn Elledge for calling this what it is: the Tinkerbell delusion...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/10/brexit-real-triggering-article-50