Boris johnson

Thursday

Katy Balls

Johnson and Varadkar: It’s not over yet

Is all hope lost that a Brexit deal can be agreed before 31 October? That’s been the mood music coming from both the UK and Brussels in recent days. However, Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar have this afternoon made a joint statement making clear that they haven’t given up on agreeing a deal just yet. After holding two hours of talks in a Cheshire countryside bolthole, Johnson and Varadkar released a joint statement in which they said that they could both ‘see a pathway to a possible deal’: ‘The Prime Minister and Taoiseach have had a detailed and constructive discussion. Both continue to believe that a deal is in everybody’s

Monday

James Kirkup

Can Boris Johnson survive if he breaks his Brexit promise?

It gives me no pleasure to report this of my former Daily Telegraph colleague, but some people who know Boris Johnson don’t trust him. Whatever the Prime Minister’s other virtues, he is not seen by some acquaintances as a man who will always keep his word, who always does the things he says he will do. Polls appear to suggest that the public isn’t much more impressed with Johnson’s integrity. YouGov reckons just 24 per cent see him as “trustworthy” and the same proportion rate him as “honest”. That should be a problem, given that so much of Johnson’s political strategy (and possibly Britain’s future) now rides on his ability

Sunday

Katy Balls

Is a Brexit deal now off the table?

Is a Brexit deal agreed before October 31st a realistic possibility? Technically talks between the UK and EU are ongoing – with Emmanuel Macron saying the EU will decide by the end of the week whether a Brexit deal is possible. Meanwhile, the weekend papers have been filled with op-eds from government ministers on the need for both Brussels and MPs to get behind Boris Johnson’s proposed Brexit deal. However, while Johnson appears to have made some progress with the latter group (a mix of MPs from across the spectrum have suggested they could vote for the proposal), the mood music in Brussels is gloomy. The differences between the two sides remain

Saturday

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson will have to win a majority to get the EU to engage with his Brexit plan

The Brexit talks between the UK and the EU are making very little progress. Number 10 say that there is the ‘potential for some meetings next week’. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, there is little optimism about what will come from them. There is doubt as to whether the process will even make it into the tunnel, the EU’s term for intensive serious negotiations. One Number 10 source tells me, ‘Not going to get into the tunnel without more compromise but we’re getting to the limit of what we can do.’ There are two essential problems. The first is that Theresa May gave away so much

Thursday

Sam Leith

For political discourse to survive, we must be more honest about language

When I was an English literature undergraduate, we were all very careful to avoid what used to be called the ‘intentional fallacy’. This is the idea that you can use a text to get at what the author ‘really meant’. The so-called New Critics said, quite reasonably, that the text is all you’ve got to go on and, what’s more, it’s impertinent and irrelevant for a critic to start trying to figure out, say, whether Shakespeare is a racist from the evidence in ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’. This is a useful principle in academic literary criticism (or one sort of academic literary criticism; that’s an argument

Toby Young

Is it time to revive our play about Boris’s sex life?

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference where Boris’s attempt to ram home the message that he’s the only party leader capable of getting Brexit done is being drowned out by the claim by Charlotte Edwardes, a Sunday Times columnist, that he squeezed her thigh under the table at a Spectator lunch 20 years ago. In the #MeToo era, this is a bigger news story than our imminent departure from the EU. Or perhaps just a blessed respite from the relentless Brexit coverage. I didn’t help by making a throwaway gag on Monday at a fringe meeting organised by the TaxPayers’ Alliance where I was a panellist. A blue

Mary Killen

The men I’ve groped (including Boris)

Charlotte Edwardes reports that Boris put his hand on her leg during lunch 20 years ago. Full disclosure, I put my hand on Boris’s leg 20 years ago during lunch. It wasn’t that I was making a pass at him. I just wanted to hold his attention while I was telling him something I wanted him to listen to. Now I am worrying. What if Boris and/or a cohort of other males come forward? ‘Mary assaulted me in a historic sex abuse incident. #SheToo.’ These are topsy-turvy times. Anything could happen and now I think about it, I’m sure I have been putting my hands on legs and generally assaulting

Rod Liddle

Sorry, sir, we only stock books we agree with

I was on my way to the pub the other evening, about seven o’clock, rain lashing down on my head, when I saw that there was a dim, yellowish light on in the bookshop. Peering closer through the downpour I could see five women sitting on a circle of chairs around either a table or a cauldron, talking animatedly to one another. Or perhaps chanting, I don’t know. I crossed the road and stood directly outside the shop window with my arms outstretched, mouthing at those inside: ‘Where’s my book? Where’s my book?’ Six weeks previously I had wandered into the shop to see if they were stocking The Great

Martin Vander Weyer

Why Downing Street still hasn’t named a new Bank governor

Private secretary: ‘The Bank of England governorship, Prime Minister… opposition MPs have been saying it’s a political stitch-up and calling for the shortlist to be made public. Have you had time to look at the file?’ Boris, distracted: ‘Stitch-up piffle! I thought we’d picked my economist chum Gerard Lyons — very sound on Brexit.’ ‘Treasury wouldn’t have him, Prime Minister. They’re trying to fix it for one of their own, Sir John Kingman, former second permanent secretary, now chairman of Legal& General.’ ‘And weren’t we going to pad the list with women and, ah, minorities? Like Baroness Wossername?’ ‘You mean Labour peer Shriti Vadera, chair of Santander UK, Prime Minister?

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Why did Boris Johnson bother giving his conference speech at all?

What was the point of Boris Johnson’s speech? It didn’t contain any announcements for Tory activists to clutch as they left the hall. Details of his proposals to resolve the Brexit stand-off were missing, and will instead be unveiled to parliament later today. It even finished on a strangely low-energy note, rather as if Johnson had ended up emulating the electric cars he had been praising by running out of battery sooner than expected. Yes, there were jokes, but many of them, particularly his fish-themed mocking of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, have turned up in conference speeches of years gone by. So why bother? Before he appeared to run

Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson’s weapons-grade speech

This was not just the best speech that Boris Johnson has given since becoming Prime Minister, it’s the first proper weapons-grade speech that he has given since running for the job. It showcased his gift of communication, his ability to mobilise language to uplift, enthuse and motivate. To convey a sense of cheerful mission – even when it comes to Brexit and correct the tone: seek to replace the acrimony with optimism.   To say that we love Europe but after 45 years of constitutional change we need a new relationship with it. It showed use of comic metaphor. ‘If parliament were a laptop, the screen would be showing the pizza

Sunday

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson won’t surrender the metaphor

In a feisty interview on The Andrew Marr Show, Boris Johnson defended his use of the term ‘surrender act’, calling it a ‘martial metaphor’ of the type that has long been used in British politics. He said that he had been a ‘model of restraint’ in his own language. He did, however, express regret for sounding so dismissive of the Labour MP Paula Sherriff’s concerns about death threats. It was clear that Boris Johnson had three intentions in this interview. First, to ram home his message that the Benn Act is a ‘surrender act’ – I lost count of the number of times he used the phrase. Second, to try

Saturday

Robert Peston

We will find out in a few days whether Brexit will happen

There is probably now just a week or so from the end of the Tory conference for Boris Johnson to make a breakthrough on a Brexit deal, or for talks to end. Why? Well, government sources tell me the EU Commission has been told by British negotiators in no uncertain terms that Johnson will not quit to avoid being forced by the Benn Act to ask for a Brexit delay. And Brussels was also told that if Johnson is still prime minister on October 19, he will find a way to get round the law and refuse to ask for a delay. So Barnier and Juncker have literally no time to decide

James Forsyth

How the Tories intend to avoid a repeat of the 2017 manifesto disaster

The Tory plan was to fight the 2017 election as a Brexit election. But that strategy was derailed by a disastrous manifesto that alienated the Tory base and allowed Labour to change the subject to domestic policy. One of the problems with that manifesto was that it was written by a very small clique, meaning that problems weren’t spotted or ignored. To try and avoid a repeat of this, Boris Johnson has put a committee of Cabinet ministers in charge of overseeing the manifesto, I report in The Sun this morning. In line with the Pickles Review into what went wrong at the 2017 election, the Chancellor, the Home Secretary,

Thursday

The Spectator

The balance of power in our constitution has been lost

Until recently, we used to comfort ourselves with the thought that the United Kingdom’s uncodified constitution was a great national strength. We didn’t need guidance laid down in one document because precedence, compromise and common sense were enough to ensure the smooth operation of power. As soon as a document is written, power passes from democratic institutions to courts where activist judges can interpret these documents in a political way. In Britain, this is not meant to happen. Our legal system has been seen, world over, as politically neutral, one of the most trustworthy in the world. So what are we to make of a Supreme Court granting itself powers

Alexander Pelling-Bruce

Has the Supreme Court handed Boris Johnson a Brexit escape route?

The Supreme Court’s judgement is the latest constitutional perversion after the Benn act. But ironically it may assist the Government in achieving its objective of Britain leaving the EU by 31 October, without having to seek an extension to the Article 50 process. In paragraph 34, the Supreme Court states that its ‘proper function’ under our constitution is to give effect to the separation of powers (which justifies court intervention in relation to prorogation). Then, in what appears to be an innocuous sentence in paragraph 55, it says that it is to be “remember[ed] always that the actual task of governing is for the executive and not for Parliament or the

Isabel Hardman

Has Boris Johnson ruined his chances of passing a Brexit deal?

Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the Commons last night was clearly part of his strategy to set up a ‘people vs parliament’ narrative ahead of an election. We can debate the rights and wrongs of telling MPs that the best way to honour Jo Cox would be to get Brexit done, but there are also political implications of this. The Prime Minister’s team has, over the past few weeks, been making contact with Labour MPs to try to persuade them of the merits of supporting a Brexit deal should one come before the Commons. Many of them have been sympathetic: they regret not supporting Theresa May’s deal and are fearful of

Katy Balls

The torture chamber: how opposition MPs plan to humiliate Boris

When Jeremy Corbyn declared at Labour conference that his party would only allow an election once no deal had been taken off the table, MPs began to wonder if it could be put off until the new year. The Prime Minister’s tormentors can’t agree when exactly they would like to go to the country, but all agree that there are plenty of ways to torture Boris Johnson. It’s as good a way as any to pass the time. The Tories no longer have a working majority, so these opposition MPs — aided by activist Speaker John Bercow — now hold the power. What will they do? Well, the Conservatives are meant

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson has shown a worrying lack of emotional intelligence

The House of Commons has just turned very ugly indeed, after Boris Johnson dismissed a Labour MP who was complaining about the abuse and threats she and other colleagues are receiving as ‘humbug’. Paula Sherriff – who has had a particularly sustained campaign of abuse against her, including swastikas being left at her office – made an angry appeal to the Prime Minister to consider his language, and referred to the murder of her colleague Jo Cox as she did. This is what happened: Paula Sherriff: I genuinely do not seek to stifle robust debate but this evening the Prime Minister has continually used pejorative language to describe an Act of

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn clash spectacularly in the Commons

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just clashed spectacularly in the House of Commons. Boris Johnson repeatedly goaded Jeremy Corbyn over his refusal to go for an election now.  This was not a Prime Minister acting like one who had been chastened by the Supreme Court’s decision, but one determined to set himself up as the man determined to deliver Brexit against a parliament that was trying to stop him. One of the most striking features of his speech was how frequently he declared that the public could tell what was really going on, that MPs were trying to block Brexit. In response, Jeremy Corbyn was not at his best.