Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

James Forsyth

It would be a mistake for the ERG to not back the Brady amendment

Bernard Jenkin has just told ITV’s Romilly Weeks that he won’t currently be voting for the Brady amendment. This suggests that the amendment won’t have the numbers as a large chunk of the ERG won’t vote for it. Even from an ERG perspective, this is—to my mind—a tactical mistake. If the Brady amendment doesn’t get a majority on Tuesday, it will be taken by Brussels and by many in the cabinet as proof that a Tory DUP alliance can’t get any withdrawal agreement through. After all, anyone who won’t vote for Brady is saying that they wouldn’t vote for the withdrawal agreement even if the backstop was replaced by ‘alternative arrangements’ designed to prevent a hard border.

Theo Hobson

The liberal case for Brexit

Anyone for Whexit? I voted Remain. The theoretical arguments seemed finely balanced, so boring old pragmatism decided it. On the one hand I feel vindicated by the current shambles. But on the other hand, oddly enough, I have become more conscious of the case for leaving. And if we really are leaving it seems worthwhile to accentuate this. But ‘Brexit’ feels tarnished by crude jingoism, and I’m a liberal. I propose that we affirm our exit on old-fashioned liberal grounds: Whig Brexit: Whexit. The assumption is that the EU is a great promoter and defender of liberal values. But ultimately it’s an unhealthy assumption. Liberal values are only fully real when the nation state upholds them, puts them into law.

Steerpike

Watch: George Osborne takes another swipe at Theresa May

One of the bitterest and most public feuds in Westminster since the 2016 Brexit referendum has been between the former Chancellor George Osborne and the Prime Minster Theresa May. When Osborne was unceremoniously sacked by May from his cabinet position in 2016, he seemed to vow revenge, and has since delighted at every opportunity as editor of the Evening Standard to produce front pages mocking and attacking his former colleague. Recent signs suggest that the passage of time has not tempered his anger. Osborne appears this evening on the BBC documentary Inside Europe, which follows the negotiations between David Cameron and the European Union ahead of the Brexit referendum.

Sunday

Steerpike

Corbynistas intervene on Venezuela

Once upon a time Venezuela was talked up by British socialists – from John McDonnell to Richard Burgon – as an example of a better way. As Jeremy Corbyn put it back in 2013: 'Chavez showed us that there is a different and better way of doing things. It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice and it’s something that Venezuela has made a big step towards.’ Only ever since there were mass food shortages and toilet paper rations – with 82pc of households living in poverty – the majority of Corbynistas have gone a little quiet on the subject.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up – Simon Coveney: The backstop ‘isn’t going to change’

Andrew Marr was joined this morning by the Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney. The interview turned immediately to the divisive backstop, the arrangement whereby the UK could effectively remain in the EU's customs union after 2020 if no alternative arrangement is made to avoid a 'hard border' on Northern Ireland. Coveney told Marr that there was no appetite from either the Irish government or the EU for further change: AM: Can I ask you first of all whether you are prepared to shift at all on this very vexed question of the backstop? SC: Well, I mean, the straight answer to that is that the backstop is already a compromise...

Steerpike

Momentum’s job search fails

If there's one thing that really gets under the skin of Momentum, the campaign group for Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, it's that the economy has steadily improved under this Conservative government. While the group constantly tries to suggest that only Corbyn can rescue the country from economic peril, statistics that show, for example, that unemployment is falling across the country throw an awkward spanner in the works. The group has therefore recently alighted on a new response to counter suggestions that more people are in work, by pointing out that official employment statistics include people who only work one hour every week: https://twitter.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Can Theresa May get any Brexit plan through the Commons?

Tuesday is the last chance for those MPs who want to secure as meaningful a Brexit as possible, I write in The Sun this morning. That evening, MPs will vote on a series of Brexit amendments designed to show the EU what kind of withdrawal agreement the Commons would accept. If one of them passes, then Theresa May can go back to Brussels and say: look, this is what will get the deal through my parliament. It would give her a decent chance of getting the EU to engage. But if none of these amendments can muster a majority, then the EU will simply sit tight. It knows that this parliament is fiercely opposed to no deal, and so isn’t concerned that the UK will actually go down that route. So far, there are a variety of amendments down.

James Kirkup

Women get treated far worse than men in Labour’s transgender debate

'Retweets are not endorsements.' It’s possibly the most futile disclaimer of our times. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the hate-pit that is Twitter knows that sharing something renders you wholly responsible, not just for its contents, but for all the actions and opinions of its author, and the responses that people have to it. If you were, for instance, to retweet a link to a column this week by The Spectator’s Rod Liddle because you thought he made an interesting observation about, say, the BBC, you are of course endorsing something tasteless that he might have written in the Sunday Times last month or something horrible he did in real life a year ago. And you share responsibility for the upset those things have caused.

Friday

Henry Newman

Eight problems with a no deal Brexit

I’ve got sympathy with those tempted to tell the Brussels elite to stuff their Brexit deal. Quite a few of my relatives and friends feel a two-fingered salute is the appropriate response to demands for £39 billion and what they see as the naked instrumentalisation of the Irish border. They listen to Emmanuel Macron and European leaders drip disdain on the British electorate for exercising a right to leave the Union afforded to all member states in EU law, watch Jean-Claude Juncker’s weird hair-fluffing antics, and read about top German MEP Elmar Brok’s dodgy scheme to profit from European Parliament tours. They think Theresa May has made a pig’s ear of the negotiations, and watch her struggle to explain her own flagship policy.

Michael Ezra

In defence of no-deal Brexit

In 1990 Britain joined the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) of the European Union. This meant, in practise, that Britain pegged its currency, sterling (GBP), to a band relative to the Deutschmark, the German currency before the Euro. In 1992, with pressure mounting on sterling, it was becoming increasingly problematic for the government to keep the currency within its band and it had to keep selling foreign currency reserves to buy sterling to support it. Eventually, on September 16, 1992, after relentless selling of sterling from speculators and others, the government had enough. They allowed the pound to come crashing out of the ERM.

Steerpike

Sinn Fein’s border warning rings hollow

After spending months insisting that there could never possibly be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar raised eyebrows this afternoon when he suggested that Ireland may have to send troops to the border if there is a no-deal Brexit. The move comes as the EU's own position on the border has wavered in recent days, with Michel Barnier offering contradicting statements about whether the EU would have to check goods in Ireland if Britain left without a deal. Speaking at Davos, Varadkar insisted that if a hard Brexit took place, as well as cameras and physical infrastructure, the border would also need 'people in uniform' and an 'army presence to back it up.

Ross Clark

The new mood of Question Time audiences reflects the changing Brexit debate

Earthquakes in public opinion do not happen often, and when they do they can catch commentators unawares. But if you want to see one in motion you should go back and watch the last two editions of Question Time. Until recently, the BBC show could be relied upon to have a loud contingent of groaning audience members capable of drowning out the ‘gammon’ tendency. The programme even managed to find a broadly pro-Remain audience in Clacton, the one and only seat which Ukip ever managed to win at a general election. But no longer. The arrival of Fiona Bruce has coincided with a sharp change in audience tone.

Robert Peston

The Tory coup that could bring down Theresa May

I learned two things yesterday that will give extra frisson to those votes on Tuesday, when MPs attempt to wrest control of Brexit from the PM. First is that the six Tory MPs on the executive of the 1922 committee that comprises all Tory MPs, and who are led by Sir Graham Brady, hope and expect the Prime Minister to give official backing to the amendment to her motion that they have all signed. It “requires the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border; supports leaving the European Union with a deal and would therefore support the Withdrawal Agreement subject to this change”.

Jonathan Miller

Why doesn’t Emmanuel Macron like Britain?

Why is Emmanuel Macron raging against Britain? The French president has returned to the subject of the British once again in the course of his Great National Debate. To be honest, thus far this has been something of a great Macron soliloquy, as he finds it difficult to stop talking. It was inevitable that during one of his lengthy televised discourses (there have now been three) he would turn once again to his new favourite subject, and so he did.

Fraser Nelson

Apply now: The Spectator’s political mischief internship (no CVs please)

Every summer, The Spectator runs a paid internship scheme, which we arrange by categories: research, editing, data/tech, social media. Last year we added a new category: the political mischief internship. The quality of applicants was so extraordinary that we hired one of the applicants, John Connolly, who now works for The Spectator full time as assistant digital editor. So we're bringing it back for the new year - and out of season. Given the year-round demand for news, politics and an explanation to it all, we are looking for interns to help assist with Coffee House as soon as possible. We’re looking for someone who knows their Ben Bradshaws from Ben Bradleys. Someone digitally literate – who can file an FOI, navigate Photoshop and set up a Companies House alert.

Thursday

Katy Balls

The Sarah Baxter

28 min listen

Sarah Baxter is Deputy Editor of the Sunday Times. Katy talks to Sarah about what it was like to be a woman in the lobby before 'Blair's Babes', the best way to tackle sexism (she says, ignore it and go 'full speed ahead'), and whether Jeremy Corbyn is quite the Labour leader she hopes for. Presented by Katy Balls.

The Spectator

The Brexit vacuum

If knighthoods could be removed by vote of parliament, Sir James Dyson would be first in line. Knighted for being one of Britain’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, he backed Brexit — only to decide this week to scarper to lower-taxed Singapore. To Sam Gyimah, a former Tory minister, it is a ‘betrayal of the public’. To Labour’s shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, it exposes a ‘culture of short-termism’ in British business. To the Lib Dem Layla Moran, it is an act of ‘staggering hypocrisy’. This response encapsulates a failure to understand the economically liberal case for Brexit. The truth is that Brexit, in and of itself, will do very little for Britain. It brings new powers.

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 24 January 2019

This column has laughed before at the BBC’s satirical wit in having a slot called ‘Reality Check’ on Brexit. If ‘Reality Check’ were serious, it would ask every MP each time one appeared: ‘How do you intend to carry out parliament’s promise, both before and after the referendum, to implement its result?’ Orders from Davos on the Today programme on Tuesday: Roland Rudd, a PR man, tells MPs to ‘put country before party’. He does not say which country he has in mind. He particularly gives this instruction to Conservative MPs, despite being an active member of the Labour party and having Lord Mandelson as godfather to one of his children.

James Forsyth

Tory grandees table backstop amendment

One of the most dramatic examples of how Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement had lost the support of her backbenches came when Graham Brady—the elected chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs—walked into the no lobby. Brady has now put down an amendment ahead of Tuesday’s vote which makes clear in what circumstances he would back the agreement. It says the House would support the withdrawal agreement if the government and the EU ‘replace the backstop with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border’.

Katy Balls

MPs get cold feet about the Cooper no deal amendment

Is a no-deal Brexit about to be taken off the table? This is the expectation in Westminster after Yvette Cooper tabled an amendment to prevent the UK leaving the EU without a deal. The amendment paves the way for legislation that would mean ministers had to extend Article 50 if a no-deal Brexit looked likely. The Labour leadership are considering backing it – though there is some debate about whether Article 50 ought to be extended in three month batches rather than than the nine month period currently specified in Cooper’s bill. Brexiteers are so worried the amendment will pass that some – including Jacob Rees-Mogg – have gone so far as to claim that Theresa May ought to suspend Parliament in order to stop it.