Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Katy Balls

Theresa May goes on tour – can the Prime Minister turn things around?

On Tuesday, the House will – finally – rise for the summer recess. Before we get there, and with MPs on a one-line-whip, Theresa May is decamping from SW1 and taking her Cabinet to Gateshead for an away day. As well as a Cabinet meeting in Gateshead, May will take part in a Q and A with staff at a local business. This is the first stop in a series of visits over the summer holidays in which May and her ministers will attempt to sell her Brexit vision at home and abroad. When I suggested May did this just last week by embarking on a town hall tour to sell her Brexit blueprint, it was met with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Sunday

Stan Labovitch

Brexit is an ideological civil war that will never end

I disagree with Robert Tombs that Brexit has played a greater role in determining English identity and a sense of national self-confidence than sport. The diverse makeup of the English team and its feisty performance in Russia has united people of every political persuasion — at least temporarily — under the same flag. Brexit, for all its claims of gaining back control, has torn this country apart, dividing family and friends in a never-ending and deeply unsavoury ideological civil war which shows no sign of ever being resolved.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday Shows Roundup: Dominic Raab – Brexit deal should be agreed ‘in October’

The House of Commons breaks for recess on Tuesday, and accordingly the Sunday shows will be taking a break. For his last show until September, Andrew Marr was joined by the Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, who has taken over the reins after David Davis' resignation and has already made the headlines by insisting that the UK could tear up the agreed £39 billion 'divorce bill' if the two sides do not reach a trade deal. Raab told Marr that he was 'striving every sinew' to get the best deal for the United Kingdom, and insisted that his government was on course to agree a deal in the timeframe they expected: DR: We are striving every sinew to get the best deal, but...

Steerpike

Vince Cable’s missed opportunity

This week the government narrowly avoided defeat on two government-backed amendments tabled by the European Research Group. In the end, the government squeaked through by just three votes. So, it didn't go down particularly well with the pro-EU crew that neither the former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron or his successor, Vince Cable, bothered to turn up to vote. And the reason for the Lib Dem leader's absence? It turns out Sir Vince was busy discussing the creation of a new anti-Brexit centre-ground party at a secret dinner, as The Sunday Times reports. Instead of trying to start a new 'stop Brexit' party, Cable could have got closer to stopping Brexit by just doing his day job. Who knew?

Saturday

James Forsyth

Theresa May should enjoy her summer break, for the autumn will be her toughest time yet

‘She’s safe until September’. That’s the verdict on Theresa May of one of those who knows the Tory parliamentary party best, I write in The Sun this morning. Number 10 want to use the summer to try and turn opinion around on Mrs May’s Chequers plan. Under consideration, is a plan for her to do events at various venues around the country to try and convince voters of the merits of it. Every Cabinet Minister has been told that they must devote one day over the summer to selling Chequers, including doing broadcast interviews on it. Ministers are already watching closely to see how Esther McVey, the Welfare Secretary, and the Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who are known sceptics of the scheme, handle this request.

Charles Moore

There is no such thing as a Brexit ‘no deal’

The collapse of Mrs May’s Chequers plan, followed by Tuesday’s failure of the Tory Remainers to defeat the government, creates a new situation. Mrs May greatly underestimated the threat to her from the ‘betrayal’ narrative which her plan invites. Two years of getting nowhere have made people long for decision and furious at Brussels dogmatism. There is a new appetite for no delay and for no deal. ‘No deal’ however, is not the right phrase. There is a deal — and we and the member states of the EU are already signed up to it. It is called World Trade Organisation terms. The clue to its nature is in the name: it allows the world to trade.

Friday

Katy Balls

Michel Barnier’s pointed questions suggest no deal

Michel Barnier's press conference responding to the UK government's Brexit white paper will have been music to the ears of 'no deal' Brexiteers. After Theresa May pushed her Cabinet and premiership to the point of near collapse with her Chequers proposals for a softer Brexit, the EU's Chief negotiator has today responded to her efforts with a heavy dose of scepticism. Barnier began by trying to play nice. He said he welcomed the development of the UK government's position – he understood that it was the result of a debate and, for some, that debate is still ongoing. He said that the proposals from May contained several things Brussels could get on board with and singled out security as one such.

Isabel Hardman

Julian Smith and the political art of not-lying

Theresa May's defence of Julian Smith this afternoon hasn't gone down amazingly well. The Prime Minister stuck to the line that Smith's instruction to Brandon Lewis to ignore the pairing arrangement he had with Lib Dem Jo Swinson and vote on two key Brexit divisions was an 'honest mistake'. This seemed somewhat implausible before the Times reported that Smith had in fact asked other paired Tory MPs to vote, and that he had also admitted to a chief whip from another party that he had instructed Lewis to vote. But the Tories now look dangerously as though they are sticking to a lie. Of course, this being politics, Labour has accused the Prime Minister of offering 'blatantly untrue excuses' rather than the straightforward word 'lying'.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 19 July 2018

Remainers are to blame Sir: I was intrigued by the parallel drawn by an ally of Michael Gove’s in James Forsyth’s piece on Brexit (‘Brexit in a spin’, 14 July), comparing Mr Gove to the Irish Independence leader Michael Collins. I think this misses the fundamental point that Collins and the Sinn Fein ultras led by De Valera were agreed on the destination: independence from Britain. It was just the timing and context on which they differed. There was no organised political body within the Irish Free State seeking to remain in the UK. In contrast, to ‘leave’ the EU under Mrs May’s plan, Mr Gove is supporting a platform on which the Remainers will seek to ensure that any difficulty, any problem, becomes a rationale to rejoin the EU.

The Spectator

The road not taken | 19 July 2018

Handling Brexit was never going to be easy for Theresa May, given that the Tories have been fighting a civil war over Europe for at least a quarter of a century. But the past ten days have been so calamitous that there is a real possibility that her Chequers gambit — threatening a general election unless MPs support her watered-down version of Brexit — could lead to the fall of the government and the ceding of power to the most left-wing Labour administration in history. The mood in Parliament is now as anarchic as it was during the last days of the Callaghan government in 1979: the Maastricht crisis in 1992 looks rather tame by comparison.

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 July 2018

The collapse of Mrs May’s Chequers plan, followed by Tuesday’s failure of the Tory Remainers to defeat the government, creates a new situation. Mrs May greatly underestimated the threat to her from the ‘betrayal’ narrative which her plan invites. Two years of getting nowhere have made people long for decision and furious at Brussels dogmatism. There is a new appetite for no delay and for no deal. ‘No deal’ however, is not the right phrase. There is a deal — and we and the member states of the EU are already signed up to it. It is called World Trade Organisation terms. The clue to its nature is in the name: it allows the world to trade.

Matthew Olex-Szczytowski

An alternative history

On 20 July, Germany’s political elite recalls the day in 1944 when Colonel Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg exploded a bomb intended to kill Hitler, and ran an abortive coup which ended in his own death and that of other plotters. To mark the anniversary, a military band in Berlin will thump out ‘Prussia’s Glory’, whereupon Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen will urge massed recruits to emulate the rebels’ ethics. Many of us know these events from the 2008 film Valkyrie with Tom Cruise as Stauffenberg and Kenneth Branagh as co-conspirator General Henning von Tresckow.

Katy Balls

Julian Smith gets whiplash

As Dominic Raab headed to Brussels for his first meeting with Michel Barnier since his appointment as Brexit Secretary, all eyes were on the drama unfolding in Westminster. Theresa May's Chief Whip Julian Smith found himself in hot water over a pairing arrangement that went wrong in this week's crunch customs union vote. On Tuesday, Jo Swinson was quick to cry foul after the Liberal Democrat MP discovered that Brandon Lewis – Tory party chairman – voted with the government on two crunch amendments. The problem? As Swinson has just given birth, she was supposed to be on a pairing arrangement with Lewis which meant neither would vote – and it would thereby cancel out their absences. Initially both Lewis and Smith said it was an honest mistake and apologised to Swinson.

Steerpike

Olly Robbins’ Brexit bonus

Theresa May's Brexit plan is going down badly and the EU is telling members states to step up preparations for 'no deal'. You'd be forgiven for thinking that Brexit isn't going entirely to plan. But this mess didn't stop the Prime Minister's Brexit guru Olly Robbins getting a bonus last year. Robbins was rewarded with a payment of between £15,000 and £20,000, according to figures released by the Department for Exiting the EU. As if that wasn't enough, Robbins also earned a salary of at least £80,000 before his transfer from the Brexit department to No.10. Whatever happens with Brexit, Robbins, at least, has plenty to smile about...

Theresa May’s Brexit fear is selling Britain short

The EU is afraid of us, but we’ve got a prime minister who is afraid of the EU. The declaration by the European Commission that member states should prepare for ‘no deal’ is a powerful reminder that EU oligarchs are petrified that we will make a success of independence and expose the flaws in their dream of domination. They fear that we will reform our taxes and update our regulations to raise productivity and take market share from them. Their reaction is not to start improving their own competitiveness but to try to suppress our ability to compete, unfortunately with the willing compliance of the Chequers agreement and its anti-competitive ‘common rulebook’. Competition frightens the EU because it knows only too well what kind of people we are.

Steerpike

Kate Hoey on Jo Swinson vote pairing row: ‘she was okay to go on an anti-Trump demonstration’

Although the government managed to win the crunch customs union vote this week, the victory was short-lived thanks to a row over the fact Brandon Lewis voted despite being on a pairing arrangement with Lib Dem Jo Swinson – who missed the vote after recently giving birth. Today the Times reports that despite claims from the Chief Whip that it was all an 'honest mistake', two other Tory MPs were told by Julian Smith that they should vote on Tuesday despite being paired. On Wednesday, Kate Hoey waded into the row. Only the Labour MP – who voted with the government on Tuesday – has questioned the behaviour of not just the Tories but Swinson too.

James Forsyth

May’s summer madness

The summer holidays couldn’t come soon enough for Theresa May. So desperate was she to get MPs away from Westminster that she wanted to send them home early. Normally, prime ministers would do almost anything to avoid headlines such as ‘MPs vote to go to the beach’. But in these circumstances, Downing Street decided that was the lesser of two evils. In the end, Members of Parliament persuaded No. 10 that it would be wrong for the government to send the Commons into recess at a time of looming national crisis. It would have looked like an abdication of responsibility. But the fact that this idea was even contemplated reveals the panic gripping the Tory hierarchy. Westminster is more febrile now than it has been in more than a decade.

Matthew Parris

We can delay Brexit – and we must

Omissions can be as instructive as inclusions. I noted a curious example in a column Nick Timothy wrote last month for the Daily Telegraph: ‘Why Dominic Grieve’s push for a “meaningful vote” really would mean stopping Brexit.’ Until he left Downing Street, Mr Timothy was jointly principal adviser to Theresa May. He wrote the following: ‘According to ministers, the choice Parliament will face is to leave on the terms negotiated by the government, or leave with no deal. And they are right: the European treaties assert that the withdrawal process can last no longer than two years…’ This is not the case. Mr Timothy seems to have overlooked a key provision laid out in Article 50 of the relevant treaty (my italics): ‘3.

Colin Freeman

Unhappy returns

What to do about illegal migration from Africa into Europe? The EU’s repatriation programme seems at first like a great idea. Rather than just watching as desperate people risk their lives in the Med, we persuade them to go back home and help them to remake their lives there. The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa has coughed up £125 million for the scheme and about 25,000 migrants have already taken part, most heading home to west and central Africa. The poster boy of the programme is Smart Akawa. Two years ago, Akawa was flown by the EU back to his native Sierra Leone from a detention centre in Libya. With a modest EU grant, he has set up his own street-cleaning business, employing 14 other returnees to give garbage-strewn Freetown a much-needed scrub.

Lionel Shriver

Remainers will win. The powerful always do

Before the referendum, I predicted behind closed doors that even if Leave improbably prevailed, Britain’s political establishment would ensure that for all practical purposes the UK stayed in the EU. ‘So Britain wouldn’t be called a “member” anymore,’ I supposed to my husband, ‘but, you know, an “associated affiliate once removed” or something.’ I might as well have said, ‘We’ll join a customs partnership.’ I’ve never been more depressed by being right. The drift seems unmistakable.