Theresa May may have been a little confused when she received a round of applause from the remaining twenty-seven members of the EU in Brussels last evening. It appeared to me akin to the polite applause that is given on a reality TV show when the gallant loser is sent home.

The U.K. Political Landscape is heading for an earthquake. The politicization of Brexit which has turned the entire process into a party-political issue could bring about the “hard Brexit” that the Government appears to be trying to avoid.

British voters, in a bitterly unprecedented referendum, chose to leave the European Union (EU) on June 23, 2016. Brexit is a shorthand way of saying the United Kingdom is leaving the EU - merging the words Britain and exit to get Brexit. 

Difficult and prolonged negotiations between the UK and EU27 have not resulted in any trade deal as yet and the prospects to reach a deal by 2019 look pretty slim. And how can it? When British parliament and it’s MP’s cannot even agree on a common approach to Brexit, how to move forward?

The U.K. has lost the European Banking Authority to France and the European Medicines Agency to Netherlands, in one of the first concrete signs of Brexit as the country prepares to leave the European Union. Theresa May's government was defenseless to stop the relocation of these two prized European regulatory bodies, which were formerly secured by former Conservative prime ministers. The U.K. will have to build new administrative capability following Brexit. 

In economics there are certain topics that are close to mythical; one is certainly stagflation and the other, although more a market word, is parity.

Over the past week or so I have read reams of reports and conjecture about the UK’s proposed exit from the EU from publications as widely diverse as the Economist and Private Eye (actually, maybe they aren’t that diverse), political commentators, BBC economic reporters and various hacks and rabid demonstrators on both sides of the argument.

Banks are going through a dramatic transformation. The digital age has left banking broken beyond repair. This is creating huge disruption, but also opportunities for those who dare to challenge long-held conventions and move quickly to embrace change.

Is it ever easy to predict a revolution? It has obviously become easier to predict unrest in any area of the world since we now live in what is termed the information age. But this is merely a transitory period on the journey to the next big event in human evolution. How did my counterpart in Paris in 1789 or Moscow in 1917 know that change was coming? Were there subtle hints or did wholesale change become the only option ?

Can the EU affordto be tough over Ireland?