It is now over two months since the British electorate voted narrowly to leave the European Union. The UK has a new prime minister and cabinet, including two new government departments created to implement this decision. So what have we learnt about our future relations with the EU? And what does this mean for health […]
Category: Brexit
Peter Roderick: Brexit, a public health nightmare
Since the Brexit referendum result, much attention has been paid to when and how the UK government will notify the European Council of its intention to withdraw from the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Under this Article, the EU and the UK following that notification “shall negotiate and […]
Peter Thomson: Would revoking the European Working Time Directive improve surgical training?
The President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England suggested recently that leaving the EU will allow surgeons to undergo thousands of hours of extra training. Following the Brexit result, we are faced with the potential revoking of the European Working Time Directive (EWTD). The anti-EWTD-ers may now see their dreams come true, and […]
Farewell to DECC: What does its closure mean for the UK’s commitment to tackling climate change?
In among all the recent political developments, it may have been easy to miss that the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) became the latest fatality of the Cabinet reshuffle. DECC has been folded into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), to now become the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial […]
Clare Marx: Making the best of Brexit for the NHS
Change, challenges, setbacks, and advances are the hallmarks of modern medical careers. We can either let “Brexit” type moments consume us, whispering from the sidelines, or show the leadership necessary to deal with the uncertainty which now confronts us. It is in this latter spirit that I believe the NHS must respond to leaving the […]
Martin McKee: What will happen to EU citizens living in the UK after Brexit?
One of the few things that almost everyone, whichever side of the Brexit argument they are on, can agree on is that the NHS would face severe problems if the large number of EU citizens working in it were to leave. However, a combination of uncertainty about their future status and a rising tide of […]
Mark Porter: The NHS and a £350m lie
It was a lie. A big lie strewn down the side of a battlebus. A lie, knowingly and cynically peddled, of which there was nothing left but a bad smell within hours of the Brexit result. Doctors are not naive: we have seen promises get broken, forgotten, or quietly melded into “ambitions.” But the claim […]
Martin McKee: Fair and balanced? Science in a post fact society
No one can be in any doubt, after the referendum campaign, that large parts of the British print media have abandoned any attempt at balance. A detailed study by academics at Loughborough University has described in detail how much of the tabloid press ran a relentlessly negative campaign against the EU, but more especially against […]
John King: The Oracle has Spoken
I stand on a cliff top and ask my dog to bark twice if it doesn’t want me to jump. It fails to bark so I jump. That is a paradigm for our situation with the EU referendum. “The country has spoken” are the words we hear time and again, delivered with the same reverence […]
David McCoy: Brexit, despondency, and hope
For many who work to promote the universal right to health, Brexit has brought despondency. While some people voted Leave on the back of democratic and progressive arguments, many who sought a rupture with Europe appeared to do so out of insecurity and mistrust, driven by a combination of austerity, alienation with the political establishment, […]