The Hungarian autocrat creates new political courts system and attacks workers’ rights – while benefiting from influx of European capital

AS Brexit chaos continues in Britain, it's easy to miss the wider crisis afflicting European society.

Nowhere is this more obvious or alarming than in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has for years pushed his opponents to the margins and eroded the space for dissent and opposition.

Theresa May tried to hide how much power would be left to the EU in post-Brexit Britain

THERESA MAY’s Government has taken a beating in parliament this week, particularly on Tuesday [4 December], where she faced a slew of defeats including a Commons vote that the government had been in contempt of parliament by refusing to release the cabinet's legal advice on the withdrawal agreement with the EU.

The vote is a major blow to May's ongoing attempts to get the deal passed through parliament.

Four pro-independence Catalan leaders imprisoned for their role in the 2017 referendum began their hunger strike last week

DOZENS of MEPs have called upon the Spanish state to release Catalan political prisoners with all charges dropped, as four of the jailed leaders continue with a hunger strike.

Vox is rooted in the Falangist traditions of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship of Spain, which ended after his death in 1975

VOX is the first party of the far-right in Spain to win seats since the end of the Franco era. Who are they, and what do they stand for? CommonSpace explains the key things you need to know.

CommonSpace editor Ben Wray finds no one seems to want to talk about the big substance issues affecting Scotland’s fishing communities, the three most important being inequality, ownership and technological change

FIRST Minister’s Questions on Thursday [29 November] saw another round of turgid debate on the future of Scotland’s fisheries.

The Political Declaration has been described as “25 pages of waffle” and “an agreement to have an agreement” by opposition party leaders

THE UK and EU have agreed a Political Declaration on the future relationship between the two countries. EU member states will meet on Sunday [25 November] to decide whether they will accept the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration, and if they agree it will then go the House of Commons in coming weeks. 

Sturgeon: “We may get into a situation where the UK government says ‘no, we’re not going to agree the Section 30 Order’, and I think if that happens we need to rise above that”

FIRST MINISTER and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has said that it may be necessary to seek another mandate for an independence referendum if the UK Government blocks a Section 30 order.

A soft-ish Brexit deal that satisfies the rich and establishment means the end of the 'respectable road' to Scottish independence

A CONSIDERABLE operation is now underway to generate momentum behind Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal deal.

Spearheaded by the business lobby and the media, it recognises the withdrawal agreement as a relative return to the status quo compared with other theoretical options.

So just whose deal is this? And what are the implications for Scotland and the independence movement?

Alignment

CommonSpace editor Ben Wray explores how the EU managed to get what they wanted out of Theresa May in the Brexit negotiations through the perspective of former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who has written the book on negotiating with the EU technocracy

FORMER Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis repeated what he had said in 2016 about Brexit at an event on Wednesday [16 November] evening at Oxford Student Union.

“Britain is heading for a Hotel California Brexit: you can check out but you can never leave.”