Politics

It’s been even more humiliating second time round. The United Kingdom has again been reduced to asking the European Union for an extension to the Article 50 process. Once was bad enough but twice marks a profound failure of government and Parliament. It has left the EU deciding the country’s future. In Westminster, there is no sign of a resolution to the Brexit impasse. Cross-party talks between Labour and the Tories continue. Sources close to those talks feel that a common position is unlikely to be found. A deal between the two parties would require that Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn both be prepared to split their parties. This seems unlikely.

This is no time for schadenfreude — but take comfort from the fact that the UK isn’t built like Germany. Being a world-leading exporter of manufactured goods — which they are and we’re not — is all very well until orders from China fade, Donald Trump adds you to his list of trade foes, your flagship car industry goes into spasm, and even the mystic waters of the Rhine get in on the act by falling to levels that impede the movement of cargo. Now the German economy is close to recession, with falling factory orders and a Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing (in which results below 50 indicate contraction) of 44.7, its lowest since 2012. Consensus 2019 growth forecasts have dropped to 1 per cent, and some pundits expect much worse.

Dear Remainer parliament. Although we’re the voters who spurned the petition for this very course of action, we the undersigned formally request that you please revoke Article 50 at your earliest convenience. For Philip, Oliver, Dominic, Amber, Greg, et al (forgive the familiar first names, but over the last few months we’ve come to feel we know you so terribly well), this appeal from your nemeses may come as a surprise. After all, it was to appease us knuckle-draggers that you invoked the Article in the first place. Apologies for seeming so fickle. But in what Charles Moore has aptly dubbed Europe’s contemporary ‘empire’, all roads lead not to Rome but to Brussels.

So the New Statesman decided to interview Sir Roger Scruton. Perhaps there are those who think that Scruton should not have agreed to be interviewed by the New Statesman, the left-wing magazine being unlikely to conduct a fair interview. But Scruton was the magazine’s wine columnist for many years, and under the editorship of Jason Cowley the magazine has been a slightly fairer and less battily leftwards publication than it was of old. But today the magazine’s deputy editor, George Eaton, took to social media to announce the results of what he is parading as a 'gotcha' interview. The interview – which Eaton conducted himself – was, he promised, positively crammed full with ‘a series of outrageous remarks’.

Is this the end? The tragedy is that she no longer knows. The Prime Minister’s destiny is in the hands of Britain’s de facto head of state, Donald Tusk. On March 20th, Mrs May told Parliament that ‘as Prime Minister’ she couldn’t countenance delaying Brexit beyond June 30th. If Tusk refuses her request for a second short extension, it’s hard to see how she can continue.  Theories and predictions abound. The noted political philosopher, Gina Miller, suggested yesterday that Mrs May could be using the Lab/Con talks as a scam that will enable her to complete a no-deal Brexit on April 12th and saddle Labour with the blame. The flaw in this scenario is that it credits the noodle-brained May with a degree of intelligence.

In November last year, a row kicked off when the government asked the philosopher Roger Scruton to chair the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, which will investigate the beauty of architecture in the UK. The 75-year-old philosopher was criticised by opposition MPs in the Commons for remarks he had made in the past about homosexuality, Islamophobia and alleged anti-Semitism. Now, fresh scrutiny has been applied to the government's decision once again, after Scruton gave an interview in the New Statesman in which he repeated some of his more controversial remarks. The government have since axed Scruton as an advisor. However, many are still questioning why Scruton was appointed to the position in the first place, given that many of his views have long been public.