Politics Archives

Saturday

16 February 2019

Is Emmanuel Macron about to call Theresa May’s bluff on the Brexit backstop?

The EU has agreed a standard exit clause on almost every treaty it has ever negotiated - so why not the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement? Olly Robbins made a grave error in failing to have such a clause inserted, and Theresa May made a worse one in signing up to a deal that Parliament was never going to accept. But it’s easily fixed: just make it temporary, something that can be done in one sentence adding an exit clause, and Parliament would (probably) agree the deal. So what’s the problem? It seems that other EU leaders are beginning to wonder. The Times today reports that they are willing to compromise on the Withdrawal Agreement. The acid test of all this is whether Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney-General, will agree that the changes make it temporary.

James Forsyth

What can May now get on the backstop?

When Theresa May goes to Brussels next week to bat for changes to the backstop, she’ll do so with a large crack in her bat—I say in The Sun this morning. The symbolic defeat that MPs inflicted on her Brexit plan on Thursday night has significantly weakened her negotiating position. The EU doesn’t want to make significant changes to the backstop. When the Brady amendment passed the House of Commons, saying parliament would accept the deal if the backstop was replaced, the EU responded by saying that they didn’t think this parliament majority was ‘stable’. Thursday night’s vote helps them make that argument.

Christopher Caldwell

The clash between Italy and France is a battle for Europe’s soul

Two weeks ago Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s vice-premier and Labour Minister and the top politician of the Five Star Movement (M5S), appointed a new commissioner for the UN cultural organisation Unesco. He chose the dog--whistling, bum-slapping sex--comedy actor Lino Banfi, star of How to Seduce Your Teacher, Policewoman on the Porno Squad and other films. The M5S was launched online by the 1980s comedian Beppe Grillo. It is run on the basis of a private computer operating system called Rousseau. Most Italians look at the M5S as either a breath of fresh air, a necessary gesture of defiance, or a ridiculous episode that will pass. But you need a sense of humour for that. French President Emmanuel Macron has lately shown himself unable to take the Italian government in his stride.

Friday

15 February 2019

Steerpike

Was Jacob Rees-Mogg telling the whole truth about HS2?

Jacob Rees-Mogg often describes himself as a straight-talker who gives honest answers, no matter how unpopular they might be. But did his performance on Question Time last night live up to this billing? It was held in leafy Aylesbury, which lies on the proposed HS2 path thereby hitting house prices in the area - which explains why only a single member of the audience admitted to supporting it last night. The Moggster got perhaps the loudest cheer of the night when he was asked what he thought of the project and replied: 'Oh, it's a complete waste of money. And the costs and costs go up'. Perish the thought that he was playing to the gallery.

Steerpike

Andrew Neil on Winston Churchill: when this country needed a hero, he was there

What would Winston Churchill have made of the hysterical debate yesterday, which tried to boil his legacy down to whether he was a 'villain' or a 'hero'? Mr S wonders if the man who liberated Europe might have been amused at the situation, not least by being called a 'villain' by a shadow chancellor who thought it fit to wave Mao's little red book at the dispatch box. More clear, is that after all the rubbish talked about Churchill's life on the airwaves yesterday, including some awful Question Time responses, one man seemed to get the tone just right. Andrew Neil, introducing the political show This Week, gave this monologue on Churchill's legacy and the difficulty of judging historical figures by today's standards, last night: https://twitter.

Thursday

14 February 2019

The Spectator

Barometer | 14 February 2019

Places in Hell President Donald Tusk said there must be a ‘special place in Hell reserved for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely’. Yet there are a number of places, as defined by Dante, where many on either side of the Brexit debate could be accommodated. Some groups who have space reserved in the Inferno, in descending order: Opportunists; Hoarders and wasters; Wrathful and sullen; Fortune Tellers; Hypocrites; Evil Counsellors; Sowers of Discord; Falsifiers. Lost planes The wreckage of a plane was discovered off the Channel Islands and the body of the footballer Emiliano Sala recovered. How many planes are there on the seabed off the British Isles?

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 February 2019

On Tuesday, Le Monde published a piece it had commissioned from me to explain why, from a British point of view, Brexit is not mad. (I was told that all the paper’s readers think it is.) I enjoyed doing this for two reasons. The first was seeing how my English came out in French. Le Monde sent me its translation. I was delighted to sound so much brainier and statelier, though French feels less flexible than English. The second was that writing for an intelligent audience which knows little of the background is an interesting exercise. It forces one to distil. I no longer had to analyse, say, the intricacies of the Northern Ireland backstop or the merits of the Malthouse compromise. I had to work out what this is all about.

Henry Newman

John McDonnell’s mask is slipping

One of the more interesting developments over the last year is the attempted transformation of John McDonnell from a hard-left activist who joked about “lynching” a female Conservative MP, towards a softer, more jovial, chancellor-in-waiting. It seemed to be going quite well. I appeared with McDonnell on Politics Live last year and he laughed heartily as I teased him about coveting the Labour leadership. SW1’s water-cooler chat is that McDonnell is a far more effective advocate of a Corbynite Labour position than Jeremy Corbyn himself, particularly because the Labour leader often looks so irritated at being asked relatively normal questions on television. But could that be about to change?

Ben Sixsmith

Winston Churchill was no angel, but he wasn’t a demon either

Winston Churchill can be blamed for many things. He was an essential figure behind the disastrous landings at Gallipoli. It was on his word that the thuggish 'Black and Tans' were sent into Ireland. His racial animus towards Indian people did not help Britain to formulate an effective response to the Bengal Famine. He was insultingly quick to abandon our Polish allies to the Soviet Union. Yes, Churchill can be blamed for many things. Many British writers and politicians, in an effort to retain their national pride as Britain declined on the world stage, have tended to deify the old bulldog. As Peter Hitchens wrote: 'As a child, I studied many patriotic accounts of the war, my favourite being a cartoon strip produced by the boys’ weekly The Eagle, called The Happy Warrior.

Richard Ekins

Why Brexit won’t lead to a bonfire of human rights

Faced with the prospect of the UK’s departure from the EU, some Britons are contemplating urgent measures, whether applying for an Irish passport or migrating to New Zealand. Nothing wrong with either, of course, but the latter is an odd reaction. After all, one of the implications of Brexit is that it restores the fundamental similarity between the structure of government in the UK and New Zealand, the last two bastions of the Westminster constitution. In both countries, parliamentary sovereignty is fundamental and judges do not reign supreme. EU membership has long complicated this picture, with the UK subject to binding European law, enforced by the confident and inscrutable – not to mention largely unaccountable – Court of Justice.

Robert Peston

MPs need to wake up and see reality: the choice is a customs union or no-deal Brexit

It is time for Labour and Tory MPs to wake up and see the Brexit reality staring them in the face. Which is -- after tonight’s demonstration that the government doesn’t have the votes to push through a Brexit plan of any description with simply its MPs and those of Northern Ireland’s DUP -- all MPs face a simple choice. Forget the idea floated by Olly Robbins in a Brussels bar of a 21-month Brexit delay - which was overheard by my ITV News colleague Angus Walker. I cannot find a single senior serious person in or around the EU who thinks it is going to happen. Truthfully they regard it as an example of eccentric British humour. Second, there is literally no possibility of the backstop being time-limited or altered to give the UK a unilateral right of exit.

Isabel Hardman

After Brexit defeat, Downing Street insists nothing has changed

After Theresa May mysteriously evaporated from the Commons following tonight's government defeat, Downing Street has issued a statement insisting that nothing has changed. The official line is, somewhat tortuously, that the previous set of indicative votes from MPs were the ones that mattered, whereas this one didn't. A No.10 spokesman said: 'While we didn't secure the support of the Commons this evening, the Prime Minister continues too believe, and the debate itself indicated, that far from objecting to securing changes to the backstop that will allow us to leave with a deal, there was a concern from some Conservative colleagues about taking no deal off the table at this stage.

James Forsyth

MPs have dealt May’s Brexit negotiating strategy a big blow

The government has been defeated by 45 votes tonight. This loss doesn’t force a change in policy on Theresa May, but it is a significant blow to her negotiating strategy. She has been saying to the EU that with legally binding changes to the backstop, she could get the withdrawal agreement through parliament. The EU will argue that this result shows that even with changes to the backstop, May couldn’t get a deal through. They’ll therefore become more forceful in their attempt to urge her to come to an arrangement with Jeremy Corbyn on a customs union. The ERG have, ironically, made it less likely that May will get anything significant on the backstop and increased the chances of the UK ending up in a customs union with the EU.

Isabel Hardman

Defeat looms for government as Brexiteers decide to abstain in key vote

The European Research Group has decided it will abstain on the government's Brexit motion, which MPs will be voting on in the next hour. An ERG source said that there was a 'collective decision' at a meeting this afternoon to abstain on the motion if no other amendments to it were passed. Voting has begun, but Anna Soubry has suggested that she won't be pushing her motion calling for the government's no-deal assessments to be published, after ministers said they would do so. This means that there will definitely be a vote on the main motion, and with the ERG abstaining, the government looks as though it is heading for a defeat. There was a split in this afternoon's meeting between a majority of MPs who wanted to abstain, and those who wanted to vote against the motion.

Steerpike

Chris Williamson: Churchill was in the ‘right place at the right time’

Winston Churchill is a war hero who saved Britain from the Nazis. At least, that is what many think of a man consistently hailed as one of the greatest ever Brits. Not so Chris Williamson. Instead, the Labour MP agrees with the shadow chancellor John McDonnell that Churchill was a 'villain'. Speaking on the BBC's Politics Live, Williamson also said Churchill was in the 'right place at the right time' when the war was won and whatever Churchill's achievements in stopping Adolf Hitler, 'some of the things he said' meant he was no hero. Mr S thinks it's a shame that Williamson doesn't take the same rigorous assessment of character when it comes to making his mind up about Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro...

James Forsyth

If May loses tonight, the EU will want her to do a deal with Corbyn

Today’s vote is not a meaningful vote. But that doesn’t mean it is meaningless. If Theresa May’s motion is passed tonight, it will enable her to carry on saying to the EU that parliament supports her approach and that a legally binding change to the backstop is needed to get a deal through. But if May loses, then the EU will be confirmed in its view that May doesn’t have a stable majority for a deal even with changes to the backstop. Brussels will become surer and more vocal about its view that the way for the UK to pass the withdrawal agreement is for May to do a deal with Jeremy Corbyn on a customs union. Right now, it isn’t certain what the result of tonight’s vote will be.

Britain can manage no-deal Brexit tariffs

As the possibility of no deal gets closer, the hyperbole is getting more hyperbolic. But catastrophe metaphors like crashing out, falling off a cliff edge, and burning in hell ignore the less than exciting fact that leaving the EU without a deal leaves us, at most, with transitional problems that can be managed. Despite what Donald Tusk says, people who campaigned to leave the EU thought carefully about how best to overcome any temporary problems the absence of a free trade arrangement might bring. Most notably Business For Britain published a massive 1,000-page analysis called Change or Go, How Britain would gain influence and prosper outside an unreformed EU as early as 2016.

Steerpike

Watch: John McDonnell says Winston Churchill was a ‘villain’

It's fair to say that shadow chancellor John McDonnell is no stranger to controversy, but last night he managed to outdo himself when he entered into the debate on Winston Churchill's legacy. At a Politico event, McDonnell was asked by the host, Jack Blanchard, whether Winston Churchill was a hero or a villain. After a dramatic pause, the shadow chancellor replied: 'Tonypandy: villain' McDonnell was referring to the Tonypandy industrial dispute, which took place in the coal mines of Rhondda, Wales. Churchill, who was then home secretary, took the controversial decision to send police and troops to quell the riots that were taking place there. Watch the exchange here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Steerpike

Does Labour’s Wavertree CLP have an anti-Semitism problem?

Tensions between the Labour leadership and some of its MPs reached breaking point once again this week, over the party's failure to deal with anti-Semitism within its own ranks. Key to the dispute has been the treatment of Liverpool Wavertree MP, Luciana Berger, who her colleagues say has been targeted by a hard-left group in her local party because she is Jewish. The latest feud began on 7 February, when Wavertree's Constituency Labour Party (CLP) tabled a motion of no confidence in the heavily pregnant Berger for 'criticising' Jeremy Corbyn. Soon after, it emerged that one of the members who had tabled the motion was, according to Jewish News, a 9/11 truther who had called her a 'disruptive Zionist' in the past.

John R. MacArthur

The hypocrisy of Jeff Bezos

It is tempting to view the blow-up between Amazon’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos and David Pecker, publisher of the tabloid National Enquirer, with the peculiar glee some journalists experience when they cover a natural disaster: it can be exciting, fun even, to sit back and observe the flames. As political earthquakes go, the Bezos-Pecker face-off is spectacular, since Pecker is a long-time ally of Donald Trump and Trump is the sworn enemy of Bezos and the newspaper he owns, the Washington Post. Trump calls him ‘Jeff Bozo’, presumably because the Post has been so aggressive in its coverage of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia and seems determined to bring down his presidency.