Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson ‘read riot act’ in front of MPs for child abuse comments

Boris Johnson was given an angry lecture by a minister in the voting lobbies about his comments that money had been 'spaffed up a wall' for investigating child sex abuse, I understand. The former Foreign Secretary upset survivors of the crime by using the term during radio interview last week. He told LBC that 'you, know £60 million I saw was being spaffed up a wall on some investigation into historic child abuse'. [embed]https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1105787079483670533[/embed] On Thursday night, as MPs were voting on the latest round of Brexit amendments, he was confronted in the lobby by Victims' Minister Victoria Atkins who, according to several MPs present, 'read him the riot act'.

Guglielmo Verdirame

The UK’s legal right to leave the backstop is stronger than you’d think

As Sir Stephen Laws QC, Richard Ekins and I explained in a paper published by Policy Exchange this Friday, the good faith and best endeavours obligations in the Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol (the backstop), in addition to the Joint Instrument agreed at Strasbourg, offer the UK far greater legal comfort than seems to be appreciated. This is not enough for some sceptics in the ERG who want to be reassured that, if the worst came to worst, the UK could leave the backstop unilaterally. There has been much discussion about Article 62 the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), which deals with the right of states to terminate treaties when there is a fundamental change of circumstances.

James Forsyth

Would the EU reject an Article 50 extension request?

Any extension to the Article 50 process would have to be unanimously agreed by the EU 27. This has led to some speculation that there might be a veto. But this strikes me as highly unlikely. One of the EU’s priorities in this negotiation has been to try and avoid blame, which explains Michel Barnier’s cack handed social media diplomacy. Rejecting a UK request to extend Article 50 would turn that approach on its head. It is also worth remembering that the EU is far from perfectly prepared for a no deal exit—what to do about the Irish border being the most glaring example of this—and if the EU forced that outcome its leaders would then be held responsible by their electorates for what happened next.

Sunday

Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer’s stock picks for the post-Brexit era

The nation certainly needs optimism this week, so what better moment to start building our ‘UK Optimist Fund’ of shares with exciting prospects for the post-Brexit era, for which I invited suggestions last week? I’m grateful to all  respondents but was particularly glad to hear from former minister Edwina Currie — whose stock picks show a penchant for high dividend yields — and this column’s very own veteran investor Robin Andrews, whose market eye has stood Spectator readers in such good stead over the years. Our underlying quest is a serious one. We’re heading into new territory in which businesses will clearly suffer if they previously depended on tariff-free access to European markets.

Katy Balls

May under pressure to set an exit date to get her deal over the line

Is this the week Theresa May sets out an exit date for her departure from No. 10? There is hope in government that this will be the week the Prime Minister passes her Brexit deal. However, the price of her doing so could include a promise to resign before the second stage of negotiations begin later this year. No. 10 are working to try and ensure May passes her deal before this week's EU council meeting where she has to try and seek an Article 50 extension. In a bid to try and do this, ministers have been locked in talks with the DUP all weekend on what could be done to make the deal palatable to them.

Robert Peston

Theresa May’s offer to the DUP

The prime minister’s frantic last attempt to persuade Northern Ireland’s DUP to back her third meaningful vote on Tuesday involves a promise that if the controversial backstop is ever triggered, Great Britain would adopt any new food and business rules that could be forced by the EU on Northern Ireland. This is a high risk offer by Theresa May to NI’s unionist party - which has huge clout with her because without its votes in parliament her government would collapse. As a minister told me, for the DUP to accept the offer it would have to trust that a future prime minister and government would honour the pledge - which cannot be guaranteed even if May legislates for such alignment (because any law can always be repealed).

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Brexit on 29 March is ‘physically impossible’, Hammond says

Philip Hammond: Leaving the EU on 29 March ‘now physically impossible’... This morning, the Chancellor sat down with Andrew Marr following a week in which his Spring Statement was overshadowed by other events, including a series of critical Brexit votes in the Commons, and an appalling terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. With the government suffering another heavy defeat on its withdrawal deal, this time by a margin of 149 votes, Marr expressed the widespread concern that Brexit may never happen: AM: When are we going to leave the EU? PH: If the Prime Minister’s deal is able to muster a majority this week and get through, then we will need a short extension [of Article 50].

Charles Moore

Why great minds get Brexit wrong

A besetting sin in this process has been over-cleverness. As so often in our history, the ‘stupid’ people are right. The Brexit question is a classic example of something which is simple but not easy. It is ‘Do you want to be ruled by those you can choose, or by those you can’t choose?’ Voters understood this, and gave a clear answer. Clever people keep complicating it. Three leading examples of this, I am afraid — Oliver Letwin, Nicholas Boles and Michael Gove — are good friends of mine. Precisely the qualities which endear them to me in private conversation are proving a menace to the public weal.

Freddy Gray

Can the Republican Party finally win over minority voters?

 Washington, DC Republican strategists have long complained about how, every election, the Democrats mobilise minority groups against them. Now they’re trying to turn the tables. Right-wing social media warriors, encouraged by @realDonaldTrump, have spent months talking about ‘Blexit’: a black voter exit from the Democratic party. This week, the President and others have begun calling for a ‘Jexodus’ — a Jewish exodus — too. How Trump must delight in those clunky portmanteaus. He knows that, while black voters usually vote Democrat, they are not altogether anti-Trump. He also senses that Jewish voters, traditionally the most left--liberal people in America, are alarmed at a new Democrat tendency to bash Israel.

Saturday

Robert Peston

Why Theresa May might not hold another Brexit vote 

Although the prime minister wants to hold another 'meaningful vote' on her Brexit plan next week, it is by no means certain that, when it comes to the crunch, she will choose to do so. I am told by her close colleagues, that two conditions must be met for her to go ahead with the vote, probably on Tuesday. First, Northern Ireland’s DUP must say on Monday that they have, at the last, changed their minds and have decided to vote with her. To be clear, there is no logical reason why they should do this, given that there will be no last-minute alteration to what they hate most about her deal - namely the backstop which is designed to keep open the border on the island of Ireland and is enshrined in the Withdrawal Agreement.

Ross Clark

John Bercow should block a third vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal 

Not for the first time the Speaker of the House of Commons appears to hold the Brexit process in his hands. There has been speculation this week that John Bercow has the power to prevent a third vote on Theresa May’s deal by resorting to a parliamentary convention which prevents a motion being debated in the Commons if it is substantially unchanged from a motion already brought before the House during the same session of parliament. Given that a third vote on May’s deal – likely to be called on Tuesday – would be essentially the same motion as was defeated by 149 votes last Tuesday (and not all that much different from the one defeated by 230 votes in January) there would appear to be a good case for Bercow to act.

John Connolly

Nick Boles quits his local party

The relationship between Tory MPs who want a softer Brexit and local Conservative members has been strained for some time. This morning things came to a head. The backbench MP Nick Boles, who has been campaigning to stop a no-deal Brexit, announced that he was resigning from his local Conservative association. Boles will still remain as the MP for Grantham and Stamford until the next election, and hopes to keep the whip as a Conservative during that time. In a letter to his local party, Boles set out the reasons for his decision to leave.

James Forsyth

Better than 50:50 chance that the government can get the DUP on board for meaningful vote 3

This weekend all eyes are on the DUP. As I say in The Sun this morning, if the government can satisfy them, then Theresa May has a chance of winning the vote on Tuesday because of the domino effect that them coming across will set off. But if the DUP won’t come over, there’s no point holding a third meaningful vote. The DUP spent yesterday in intensive talks with senior government figures. I understand that these talks were broadly positive. One Cabinet Minister close to the process tells me that the chances of the DUP backing the deal are ‘a bit better than 50:50. I’d put it at 60:40.

Charles Moore

I’ve been surprised how useless the civil service have been during the negotiations

Obviously the Prime Minister herself bears chief responsibility for Brexit mistakes, but she must have been terribly badly advised throughout, not only by political staff — who always get it in the neck when things go wrong — but by the professional civil service, which tends to escape censure. I have been genuinely surprised by the bureaucrats’ uselessness in the negotiations. In my Thatcher studies, now drawing peacefully to their close, I find that the mandarinate, though out of sympathy with Mrs Thatcher, did, on the whole, do its best for her. It was excited by the possibilities she opened up, and enjoyed surmounting the various crises.

The Spectator

The Tories are squandering the opportunity of Brexit

In all the madness of the Brexit voting, it's easy to forget that Philip Hammond revealed a mini-Budget this week. Even the Chancellor started his speech by promising not to talk for long, so MPs could discuss the no-deal Brexit which he has so lamentably failed to prepare for. Ever since the referendum result, he has been expecting economic gloom. It has refused to follow: the figures in his statement seemed to mock his general pessimism. Disaster has struck Westminster though. Theresa May has lost control of her party and her government and yet her opponent, Jeremy Corbyn, is so weak that he strikes most voters as an even worse option. It’s hard to think of a time when our politics looked more dismal.

Friday

Anna Nadibaidze

What the EU will say when Theresa May asks for a Brexit extension

Now that Parliament has backed an extension to the Brexit process, the ball is effectively in the EU's court. Whether her Brexit deal passes or not, Theresa May will head off to the European Council next week with a demand to delay the UK's withdrawal, which is still scheduled for 29 March. In the last few weeks, officials from the European Commission and the European Parliament have been very vocal about their reluctance to extend Article 50 unless there is clarity about what the purpose of the extension would be. But ultimately, EU institutions do not have the final say on this matter. And if it comes to a point where it is either delay or no deal, they would not want to be seen as forcibly expelling a member state.

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: the surrealism of Brexit, three years on

In Salvador Dalí's Persistence of Memory, several clocks are melting away in a surreal desert scene where a distorted horse-like creature fades into the sand, below a ledge where a pocket watch crawls with ants. The bizarre painting is rather reminds one of the surrealism of the Brexit process, especially after this week. The government has gone into full meltdown mode - it lost yet again on May's Brexit deal (though this time by a smaller margin, only by 149 MPs); ended up whipping against itself on a motion rejecting no deal, where 13 government ministers defied the whip; and just about wrested control of Brexit from the Commons on a vote on Thursday night. Meanwhile, we are two weeks away from 29 March.

James Forsyth

Is there a risk Britain will get stuck in the Brexit backstop?

The prospects of Theresa May’s Brexit deal passing now hinge on what risk there is of the UK being trapped in the backstop against its will. A compelling new legal analysis by Policy Exchange suggests that this risk is significantly lower than thought. Written by three distinguished lawyers—a professor of international law at King’s College London, a former first parliamentary counsel and an Oxford professor—the paper makes clear that the new protections on the backstop have greater force than appreciated. First, the ‘good faith’ obligation in international law is more meaningful than thought.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 14 March 2019

Turn it off and on again Sir: The conclusion of your leading article of 9 March (‘Close the deal’) that MPs should ‘hold their noses and vote for May’s deal’ is understandable, but deeply disappointing that this seems to be the best choice left. It occurs to me, however, that there is another solution which might remove many of the obstacles we are currently facing. Could we not revoke Article 50 (as we are unilaterally permitted to do), but then immediately trigger it again? This would wipe the slate clean and give us two years to negotiate in the way you think it should have been done in the first place — hopefully under a new prime minister with a modicum of negotiating nous.

The Spectator

Barometer | 14 March 2019

Cox’s codpiece Attorney general Geoffrey Cox returned from Brussels without even a ‘codpiece’, the name used by some Tories for the concession on the backstop which he was hoping to win from the EU. — Why is a codpiece called by that name? The expression is traced by the Oxford English Dictionary to the year 1460, a pivotal year in the Wars of the Roses, when the Battles of Northampton and Wakefield were fought — It has survived in spite of the fact that the word ‘cod’, to indicate scrotum, has since fallen into disuse. This itself can be traced back to Old Norse, which used ‘kodd’ to describe something distended and unevenly shaped.