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For those of us living in the "West", the pandemic has been the most significant (cataclysmic) event since the Second World War. Few remain alive today who would remember that (even the oldest 80-year olds would have been barely 5 when the war ended and the youngest soldiers are now well into their 90s).

The election results from early May saw the usual outpouring of commentary. The near-universal conventional wisdom is that these elections were a disaster for the Labour Party and a triumph for Boris Johnson's Conservatives, with the notable exception of Scotland.

That the earth faces a period of rapid warming due to human activity is now beyond reasonable doubt (and has been for some time). Whilst there remains some room for genuine scientific discussion over the magnitude of the effect, the direction is clear (I won't labour the analogy with the economic impact of Brexit here).

Whilst Brexit is by no stretch of the imagination "done", the framework within which the UK's new relationship with its nearest and most important neighbour will evolve over the next few years is now set. I fully expect to see substantial changes in the medium term, probably from the mid-2020s onwards but for now there is at least a degree of clarity.

For better or for worse, the United States of America is a colossus astride the world. The election of Joe Biden therefore has ramifications for all of us. The beginning of the Biden administration has seen a flurry of executive orders aimed at dismantlingthe Trump legacy.

One of the more interesting phenomena of recent years has been a resurgence in nationalism. Brexit is a manifestation of this: the belief that decisions should, as a matter of principle, be taken at the level of the nation-state.

I'm afraid this blog post focuses on something that might appear esoteric to most of us: the nexus between economics and our moral compass. This has come up in several presentations I've had the good fortune to attend and is something that people seem to be paying more attention to than usual given a desire to reimagine a "new normal" – or in government parlance to "build back better".

On Tuesday, the Office for National Statistics produced an initial analysis of the UK's trade in goods during the first quarter of 20211. Fascinatingly (but perhaps unsurprisingly) it showed a dramatic drop (almost one quarter) in trade with EU countries relative to the same quarter in 2018.

Something has become increasingly apparent in both my academic work as well politics and the media: the importance of methodology. Fundamentally, both empirical work and policy must be pragmatic.

Much ink has already been spilled (and doubtless much more will be) on policies to "solve the social care crisis". A great deal of focus is on intergenerational fairness, given that young people have borne and overwhelming burden to (mostly) protect older adults during the COVID crisis.

Recent votes for populist parties and policies have been a focus for an increasingly significant body of academic research. In the UK this has particularly focused research on the drivers of the vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. In spite of a growing body of work on the subject, the literature investigating the applicability of spatial econometric methods is surprisingly thin. This paper applies such methods to hitherto unused data for the West Midlands region, where we have an unusually rich set of small-area results. The work finds substantial spatial autocorrelation even after demographic differences are accounted for. Whilst focusing on a particular region, the rise of populism globally gives these findings a wider salience.

Centre for Brexit Studies Researcher David Hearne has shared his expertise and views on the news announced this week that low-skilled workers will not get visas under post-Brexit immigration plans.

With apologies to Dylan Thomas, I believe the final two lines of his famous poem precisely sum up Brexit. Perhaps, at the moment of the Brexiters' greatest triumph, this seems bizarre. After all, the UK is due to leave the EU tomorrow at 11pm. And yet, forall the arguments over 50p and whether a clock should chime, the light will die and that good night will overtake us.

Centre for Brexit Studies Researcher David Hearne has shared his thoughts and views on coronavirus (COVID-19) and the recent changes to England's lockdown measures.With confusion surrounding the updated measures, David discussed how well Boris Johnson andthe Conservative Party Government are coming across during this pandemic, and what Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland sticking to the 'Stay at Home' message, rather than adapting to the 'Stay Alert' message, says about the Prime Minister's leadership.