Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
If you voted for Brexit, did you think it was a state of pure and perfect national independence, or did you think that given how connected the UK is to the EU – economically, diplomatically, in respect of security – it might be a bit of a fudge and compromise? Is Brexit an absolute state of putative grace – or a place on a spectrum, somewhere between Switzerland and Norway, which are semi-independent, and North Korea, which is wholly independent?
The upshot of Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen’s conversation this evening is that the pair will meet in Brussels in the ‘coming days’ to see if they can resolve the remaining ‘significant differences’ on the level playing field, governance and fish. Presumably this meeting will take place before the European Council on Thursday. Johnson and von der Leyen are being left with a lot to resolve in their summit. This isn’t going to be simply about finding a compromise on fish but on sorting the three issues that have bedevilled the negotiations from the start.
The Covid wars in the Tory party aren’t going away any time soon, not least because MPs are expecting a change of policy on the tiered system later this month. But rebels aren't just demanding a more localised approach to the tier system. They also want a change of tone from ministers. There was fury in the party when the government used Public Health England analysis predicting 4,000 deaths a day by December to justify the second English lockdown. This model has become known among lockdown sceptics as the ‘dodgy dossier’ because of problems with the data used — yet it has still surfaced during presentations to backbenchers from officials.
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It looks like Brexit talks could finally be coming to a head. After Boris Johnson and Ursula Von Der Leyen decided that efforts to reach an agreement should continue, negotiators spent the weekend bartering over fishing rights and the level playing field. The pair are set to have another call later today, but can it break the impasse? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth.
This morning the new vaccine deployment minister, Nadhim Zahawi, appeared to change his tune when it comes to the use of ‘immunity passports’ for the British public. After telling the BBC last week that UK residents might need some proof of their Covid vaccination status to dine out at a restaurant or attend a sporting event, Zahawi rolled back his comments on Spectator TV. In a Q&A following his keynote speech at The Spectator's Health Summit (held in partnership with MSD), Zahawi told broadcaster Alastair Stewart that so-called 'immunity passports' were not actually on the cards: 'There will not be an immunity passport. I may have misspoken or it was conflated in the interview I gave. I was talking about the brilliant use of the app...
The Brexit negotiations are continuing in Brussels this morning. But Michel Barnier’s briefing to EU member states suggests that little progress was made yesterday. Boris Johnson and the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are due to speak this evening. It seems highly unlikely that there’ll be a deal for them to bless in that call. Rather, it will again come down to whether their conversation can lead to a breakthrough in the negotiations, which is surely going to have to come from some creativity rather than just the two sides going over the same well-trodden ground again. I had thought that today really was the deadline on Brexit because of the return of the Internal Market Bill to the Commons.
It now seems more likely than ever that the UK will leave with no deal at the end of the year. But let’s imagine for a moment that I’m wrong and the UK and the EU manage to overcome their substantial differences. It would then have to be voted on in Parliament – and Labour should vote it down. Why? Because the deal put before the Commons would not be between Brexit and Remain. That ship has long since sailed. It would instead be between the thin deal Boris Johnson will have agreed with the EU and the choice of leaving with no deal whatsoever. Whichever way Parliament votes, we leave the transitional arrangements on 1 January in full.
I've been passed the government's 'reasonable worst case scenario planning assumptions to support civil contingencies planning for the end of the transition period'. The 34-page document describes itself as a 'challenging manifestation of the risk in question' but 'not an extreme or absolute worst case scenario'. A government source confirmed the official sensitive document, which was written in September, still underpins contingency planning. It is 'not a forecast' but a 'reasonable' assessment of what could happen to us if, in the next day or so, talks collapse on a free trade agreement with the European Union and the negotiations can't be rescued.
The UK's chief negotiator David Frost has arrived in Brussels for last-minute talks with the EU's Michel Barnier. After a phone call between Boris Johnson and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday failed to break the deadlock, these latest talks are being billed within government as a 'last throw of the dice'. The main differences that remain are on level playing field and fishing. As senior Brexiteers call on Johnson not to blink and cabinet ministers voice their support in the papers for no-deal if the Prime Minister sees it fit, the likelihood of no-deal is viewed to have increased in recent days. Senior government figures on the UK side now just suggest the chance of a deal is around between 50/50.
Boris Johnson's internal market bill is back in the House of Lords next week, but will peers let it through? The bill gives the government an express power (a written one in a statute) to break an international treaty. The Lords do not like that the government might break a specific treaty. Where you stand on those are political, not legal questions — so not for a lawyer like me to answer. But what is for law, is to firstly recognise (whether peers like it or not) that the power to break a treaty, does exist. Think of it like a physical thing; it is in our constitution and we’ve lost track of exactly where it is. We let the EU use it for us. But we know it is there. It is in the EU’s constitution, via a court case.
Grantham in Lincolnshire has an interesting history. Newton went to school there. Turner produced several paintings of local scenes. During the last war, the town, set in flat countryside ideal for airfields, made a significant contribution to the bombing of Nazi Germany. In private, the most famous person ever to be born in the town might well have said: 'jolly good thing too.' Margaret Thatcher never found it easy to forgive what happened during the war. A lot of people still do not find it easy to forgive her. Some locals are now complaining about a proposal to add laurels to their town by erecting a statue to this greatest of Granthamites. Apart from concluding that these critics are wrong, it is worth looking behind their list of supposed grievances.
Sophy Ridge was joined this morning by the Environment Secretary George Eustice. The first item on the agenda was the reconvening of post-Brexit trade talks after negotiators failed to reach an agreement last week. Eustice confirmed that EU demands on access to British coastal waters and on state aid were still the key barriers to a deal: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1335504050553565185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw GE: These [talks] are... in a very difficult position, there's no point denying that... There was some hope early last week... at one point it looked like there might be a breakthrough... We're going to continue to work on these negotiations until there's no point in doing so any further.
Brexit talks are back on between the UK and EU after a brief break. Both sides paused talks on Saturday due to remaining differences on level playing field rules, governance and fishing rights but the hope was that a phone conversation between Boris Johnson and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen would help to break the deadlock. While a deal is yet to be agreed, that call has led to both sides agreeing to return to the negotiating table.
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After promising news about the coronavirus vaccines, Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, a former adviser to Matt Hancock, about what this will mean for experiencing life as we knew it.
That France was the country to throw a grenade threatening to blow up the UK-EU trade talks just as they were about to pass the finish line, does not come as a surprise to seasoned euro-watchers. No other EU member would so brazenly promote its own domestic self-interest at the cost to other EU members such as Germany and Ireland. To the British it has echoes of de Gaulle saying ‘non’, when vetoing the UK’s first attempts to join the Common Market. Many of the EU’s problems and (in my view) the ultimate reason Brexit happened, is down to a fundamental cause that is little remarked on in the UK.
It was always going to be the case that a Brexit deal would require an intervention from Boris Johnson and the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. But today’s conversation between the pair is going to have to do more work than either side would have liked. Rather than nudging a deal over the line, this phone call is going to have to give the talks a proper shove. Von der Leyen has the more difficult task today. Johnson is speaking on his own behalf, von der Leyen is speaking for 27 governments, including one – France – that is publicly threatening to veto any deal it doesn’t like. But if she sticks rigidly to the current EU position, the talks will fail and there’ll be no deal; an outcome that von der Leyen does not want.
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On this week's episode, the Spectator's Scotland editor Alex Massie asks why Nicola Sturgeon's popularity keeps growing, despite her government's underperformance. (00:55) Next, Paul Wood argues that the next six weeks are crucial for the future of the Middle East. (12:00) Finally, Melissa Kite wonders what the new Covid rules mean.
Few will be surprised that Unite has reportedly given no money to the Labour party since Keir Starmer took over as leader. Unite boss Len McCluskey and those around him were hardly thrilled at Starmer’s victory in the leadership contest. Why? Because they knew that it represented the end of the far left’s control over Labour. But if McCluskey is seeking to undermine Labour’s new leader, this will end badly and ultimately benefit only one person: Boris Johnson. It will also make the prospect of another thumping Tory win at the next election more likely. And, what’s worse for McCluskey, is that it could speed up the death of unions like his.
The terms of the Covid debate have changed markedly since Nigel Farage decided to re-enter the political arena after Boris Johnson's second English lockdown. Even with multiple vaccines coming on stream, we can still not rule out a third lockdown — but we can be pretty darned sure there won’t be a fourth. It’s not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end. So Farage and his chief lieutenant Richard Tice can no longer depend on anti-lockdown fervour alone to give them a flying start, despite the rebellious mood of Tory MPs. Could they, therefore, decide that discretion is the better part of valour and call the whole thing off, especially if there is no Brexit deal and Britain ends up going for WTO rules as they have called for?
Peter Mandelson's remainer credentials are impeccable. He is a former European Commissioner who helped run Britain Stronger In and then the People’s Vote (PV) campaign. He is as committed and eloquent a champion of EU membership as you’ll find. Which makes his Brexit intervention in the Guardian so important: All the new benefits from every global trade deal we could ever aspire to will not begin to equal the size of our present European trade. This is the price we will pay for the triumph of hardline Tory Brexiters over those with a stronger sense of national interest in their party.
