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What will the ‘new normal’ be? Despite the blow COVID-19 has inflicted, we now have a unique opportunity to re-evaluate many aspects of modern economy, society, and government. Simon Hix (Pro-Director for Research, LSE) explains how the LSE’s new initiative can help shape the post-COVID world.

With the battle over Brexit returning to the House of Commons with the Internal Market Bill, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture: what the British public wants in terms of a longer-term relationship with the European Union. To try to find out, Simon Hix (LSE), Clifton van der Linden (McMaster University) and Mark Pickup (Simon Fraser University) conducted a survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where they asked them to choose between hypothetical “package deals”. This forced voters to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British voters overall prefer a “softer” form of Brexit: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for quota-free and tariff-free access to the EU’s single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much “harder” trade-off: of regulatory sovereignty but restrictions on UK exports. Reconciling this difference will continue to plague British politics.

Two years after the vote, there is little certainty regarding the UK's political and economic future. Brexiters themselves are split between wanting a Singapore-on-Thames or a Belarus-on-Trent. Simon Hix (LSE) assesses where the UK-EU relationship is heading. He argues that despite persisting uncertainty, a No Deal is the least-preferred option of both the UK or the EU27, and hence the least likely. He suggests that some sort of agreement will be reached before March 2019.

What are the chances of another country following the UK out of the EU? Eurosceptics in other states may be emboldened by the deal the UK manages to secure, especially if it includes access to the Single Market. Moves to further EU integration could have a similar effect. Simon Hix (LSE) and Nick Sitter (Central European University) look at the cases of Hungary and Sweden.

Professor Simon Hix, Harold Laski Professor of Political Science at the LSE Department of Government, explains potential ways in which Brexit will affect the EU.

Despite the argument that Brexit was about sovereignty and only secondarily about immigration, new data suggest otherwise. Simon Hix, Eric Kaufmann, and Thomas J. Leeper show the importance of reducing immigration levels – especially from outside the EU – to British voters.

Are UK civil servants at the centre of EU bargaining – at the “top table” – or are they on the periphery? Simon Hix is Harold Laski Professor of Political Science at the LSE and Senior Fellow on the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe programme.

In recent blogs I have looked at policy outcomes, voting records and policy-makers’ connections to analyse whether the UK is ‘marginalised’ in the EU Council. But the Council is only half of the EU’s bicameral legislature. The other half is the European Parliament, which now has the power to amend and block EU laws in almost all policy areas. So, are UK Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) marginalised?

German economic policy advisor Jeromin Zettelmeyer (far left) joined the LSE’s Simon Hix (near left) and former UK business secretary Vince Cable on 7 September to discuss how Germany plans to negotiate Brexit. How much will Angela Merkel – herself under domestic pressure – be prepared to concede to keep the UK in the Single Market (assuming Britain wants to do so)? What does Germany want out of the final agreement? Robert van Geffen reports on the discussion.

Amid the rows about EU migrants and the economic impact of a Brexit, let’s not overlook the incredible achievements of the EU, writes Simon Hix. The single market is not just a matter of ‘free trade’ – it enables the free movement of people, goods and capital between 28 countries, something we now take for granted. The EU is still too technocratic and unaccountable, though it has taken great strides to improve that over the past decade. But now is the opportunity for the UK – with the help of Scandinavian and Visegrad allies – to further liberalise the single market and re-energise the EU project.

The further fragmentation of the UK’s party system in 2015 is likely to lead to the most disproportionate outcome of any election in the post-war era. In this post, Jack Blumenau and Simon Hix, along with the team from electionforecast.co.uk, ask what the House of Commons might look like if the election were held under a more proportionate voting system. If members were elected from small multi-member constituencies, the main beneficiaries would be the Liberal Democrats and UKIP, while the main losers would be Labour, the Conservatives and the SNP.

Hopes are high in the Department for International Trade that Britain can quickly negotiate its own free trade agreements (FTAs) with countries like South Korea. The EU already has a very comprehensive FTA with the East Asian state, so is the UK in a position to negotiate a better one? Simon Hix and Hae-Won Jun examine the factors at play. They conclude that it will not be in South Korea’s interests to negotiate a deal more favourable to the UK – not least because it probably cannot give Britain more access to the market in services without offering the same deal to the EU.

Like it or not, Britain is leaving the single market. But there is still plenty to play for, argues Simon Hix. With a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement, we could limit the economic damage. This probably means accepting some EU regulatory standards and devising a scheme to allow EU citizens to work in the UK (and vice versa) if they had certain qualifications or a job offer in a sector with skills shortages. The immediate priority, however, is to resolve the question of how much the UK should pay to the EU, both now and in the future.

European Parliamentary elections are due to be held in May 2014. Simon Hix and Christophe Crombez look ahead to the campaign, noting that the elections will not only provide an opportunity for Europe’s citizens to express their opinions over the handling of the Eurozone crisis, but will also allow them to take an active role in the selection of the next President of the European Commission. For the first time we could have genuine ‘European’ elections, with the potential to have a real impact in shaping European politics over the next five years.

The so called ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ process, in which European-level political parties proposed formal candidates for President of the European Commission prior to the European Parliament elections, has been strongly opposed by David Cameron and the British government. This opposition has led to intense disagreement between the UK and other EU states, notably Germany, over whether Jean-Claude Juncker, the candidate for the European People’s Party, should be selected as the next Commission President. Simon Hix and Stuart Wilks-Heeg assess differences in the media coverage of the Commission candidates in the UK and Germany. They illustrate that the candidates received substantially less coverage in the UK press, which may offer one reason for why both countries appear to have completely different understandings of how European Parliament elections should work.

How influential is the UK in EU decision-making? In the third in a series of articles, Simon Hix presents evidence on the countries EU member states choose to cooperate with during negotiations in the Council of the European Union. He writes that UK officials appear to be the best connected of all the member states’ officials, with more member states indicating that they choose to work with the UK than for any other country. Overall, the data suggest that the UK is at the heart of EU policy-making alongside larger states such as Germany and France.

How influential is the UK in negotiations over EU legislation? Simon Hix writes that while there is a perception among some actors within the UK that the country is marginalised during EU negotiations, the best available data on EU decision-making would suggest that this is not the case. Citing figures from the DEUII dataset on EU decision-making, he illustrates that the UK’s stated negotiating position is on average closer to the agreed outcome in EU legislative decisions than most other member states. Nevertheless, as these figures only run until 2008 and do not relate to more high profile negotiations such as those over the EU budget or EU treaties, more research is required to assess the true nature of the UK’s influence in Europe.

How do British MEPs fare in the European Parliament? Using detailed voting records from 2004 until 2015, Simon Hix illustrates the percentage of times MEPs from different member states, European political groups, and national parties are on the ‘winning side’ in votes in the European Parliament. The figures indicate that British MEPs do particularly poorly in comparison to those from other member states. This is partly a reflection of the fact that a large number of MEPs from the UK do not sit in the most powerful political groups, while even those parties that do sit in important groups, such as Labour, tend to vote against their own allies’ positions more frequently than other MEPs.

The extent to which British MEPs are appointed to key positions in the European Parliament can be expected to have an impact on their influence over the EU’s legislative process. In the latest article in our UK influence series, Simon Hix and Giacomo Benedetto assess how successful British MEPs have been in this respect since 2004. They note that despite a growing number of UKIP MEPs, who have not competed for many key offices, British MEPs have managed to capture a number of powerful agenda setting positions.

How do British MEPs fare in the European Parliament? In a previous article in our UK influence in Europe series, Simon Hix demonstrated that British MEPs are less likely to be on the ‘winning side’ in European Parliament votes than MEPs from any other state. In a follow up post, he breaks down the success by policy area, noting that British MEPs do reasonably well in some policy areas UK voters care about, such as internal market regulation, international trade, and international development, but are most marginalised on budget issues.

How does knowledge about the EU vary between citizens of EU Member States? Using data from Eurobarometer surveys, Simon Hix writes that respondents from the UK perform worse than citizens from any other state when asked factual questions about the EU. However, he notes that while there is a perception that providing more information about the EU to UK citizens would increase support for the country’s EU membership, there is little evidence for this in the survey data, with those displaying high levels of knowledge being just as likely to hold negative views about the EU.

The UK’s proposal for a “red card procedure” for national parliaments to stop EU policy proposals would have affected less than two per cent of votes in the EU Council of Ministers – and that’s assuming governments lose the plot. Sara Hagemann, Chris Hanretty and Simon Hix discuss.

Many supporters of remaining in the EU are in denial about Brexit, writes Simon Hix. But if the referendum result is not accepted, the 48% who voted to stay are in danger of being sidelined in an extremely important debate. We need to accept the fact that the UK is leaving the EU, and emerge from it with the best possible deal. He identifies four policies pro-European Leavers – as well as dismayed Remainers – could adopt.

Much of the UK’s referendum debate has focused on the extent to which EU decision-making is democratic, with the European Commission a source of particular criticism from leave campaigners on the basis that it is unelected. Simon Hix writes that while there are legitimate problems with the EU’s system of democracy, there is little to justify the idea that the EU is run by unelected bureaucrats, and the procedures in place for appointing the Commission are now far more democratic than they were in the past.

The practice of holding European Parliament plenary sessions in both Brussels and Strasbourg has frequently been criticised on the basis that it is financially wasteful and damages the environment. But what shapes the opinions of MEPs on the subject? Based on survey evidence, Simon Hix and Richard Whitaker illustrate that while there is support among a large number of MEPs for holding all plenary sessions in Brussels, the travel distance from an MEP’s country to Strasbourg goes some way toward explaining their view on the issue.

One of the key issues in the context of the UK’s debate over EU membership is the level of influence the country has within the EU’s institutions. In the second in a series of articles examining whether the UK is marginalised in EU decision-making, Simon Hix and Sara Hagemann present data on how the UK fares in decisions made in the EU’s Council of Ministers. They write that Council voting records suggest there has been a significant shift in the position of the UK government between 2004-09 and 2009-15, with the UK voting against the majority far more often in the latter period and being on the losing side more than any other state. Nevertheless, there remains a high level of agreement in the Council, with the UK still part of the winning majority in almost 87 per cent of cases.