Brexit

Theresa May’s appearance in the Commons today debuted some new language but didn’t tell us much about what she’ll set out to the Cabinet on Friday. May repeated that membership of the European Economic Area would not respect the result of the referendum. Now, she has said this several times before but her comment will reassure some Brexiteers. They’ll be less reassured, though, by her dodging the question when Jacob Rees-Mogg asked her if the UK would continue to be bound by the Common External Tariff after Brexit. May was conciliatory in her tone at the despatch box, but she seemed particularly keen to calm Brexiteers.

'It’s not just backbench Conservative MPs who expect ministers to pull together behind May: the great swathe of the electorate which either voted Leave, or voted Remain but recognises that a united team will achieve a better trading relationship for the future than a divided one, expects it too.' This is the warning Graham Brady issued to badly behaved Tory ministers over the weekend. Writing in the Guardian, the chair of the all-powerful 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, presented the feuding Cabinet with a choice: get behind May or prepare for a Corbyn victory at the next election similar to 1997. This isn't the first time Brady has had to speak out in a bid to get his party to take a minute to breathe before going into self-destruct mode.

Oh so you all love Danny Dyer now? The turnaround in Dyer’s fortunes over the past 12 hours has been extraordinary. He’s gone from being the butt of posh tweeters’ jokes to a celebrated political sage. From a ridiculous uber-lad whose cosying up to football’s hard men and promiscuous use of words like ‘slags’ and ‘twats’ provoked laughter and/ or horror among the chattering classes, to the Twitterati’s favourite working-class person. What changed? He dissed Brexit. And if you diss Brexit, they love you.

England may have lost their World Cup match to Belgium but happily some Thursday night entertainment was found in ITV's Good Evening Britain. Danny Dyer – the EastEnders actor – hit out at David Cameron, also known as 't--–', over Brexit: 'This whole Brexit thing when you're judging them. Who knows what Brexit is. You watch Question Time and it's comedy. No-one knows what it is it's like this mad riddle. What's happened to that t--- David Cameron that called this on. How come he can scuttle off? He called all this on. Where is he? He's in Europe, in Nice, with his trotters up. Where is the geezer? He should be held to account for it.' https://twitter.

My commute to work yesterday was just like any other, until I was interrupted from my thoughts by a fellow passenger: “I don’t like your bag,” he said. Looking down, I remembered that I was carrying a tote bag emblazoned with the words: “The EU is not my bag”. I thought for a moment it was the colour – a vivid magenta – that had offended him. Then it dawned on me: the EU was, in fact, his bag. “That’s OK, you don’t have to,” I replied. My response seemed to infuriate him further.  “I don’t know whether you’re racist or stupid – or even both,” he said.

Airbus will abandon the UK. The car factories will all be closed down. Trade will grind to a halt, we will run out of food and medicines, and Harry Kane will be sold to Real Madrid and made captain of Spain instead of England. Okay, I made that last one up, but all the others are among the dire warnings that big business have issued over Brexit in the last few weeks. Project Fear III, or IV, or possibly XXVII by now, keeps coming back. Right now, it seems to have as many sequels as Jurassic World, and with plot-lines that are about as original. That, however, is a mistake, and potentially a serious one. Sure, industry has plenty of legitimate concerns about our departure from the EU. But it should be trying to shape Brexit, not just re-run a failed referendum strategy.

It’s just over two years since the UK voted to leave the European Union in what proved to be a shock result that caught both politicians and commentators off guard. Unlike Lord Ashdown’s hat-eating, or Matthew Goodwin’s book eating after the two most recent General Elections, many didn’t get held accountable to their off the mark Brexit predictions. Happily, Mr S is on hand to correct that. Steerpike has compiled a list of some of the Brexit predictions that failed to come true: 1. JP Morgan: Scotland will leave the UK and get a new currency Days after the EU referendum, investment company JP Morgan announced in an email to clients that they expected Scotland to leave the union and change currency. (As did Andrew Marr in the immediate aftermath of the vote.

After any major interview, I turn with great interest to discover from Twitter whether I am currently a sinister Marxist undermining the Tories; a foam-flecked believer in the hardest of hard Brexits; or a mildly outdated Blairite propagandist. Maybe, I’m all three. Or, just possibly, I ask the questions, rather than taking responsibility for the answers. Our job at the BBC is not to denounce, lampoon, deride or sneer at elected politicians but to ask them, politely, direct and relevant questions — pause — and let the viewers decide. The number of viewers watching the show suggests the majority understand this. But there’s no doubt that the vote to leave the EU has made many people in certain parts of British public life almost uncontrollably angry.

Next week’s EU Council will see little progress on Brexit. As I write in The Sun today, migration—not Brexit—is the biggest issue on the agenda for the EU 27. Migration is roiling European politics again. Angela Merkel’s coalition is threatening to break apart over the issue. While in Italy, the new government is threatening to close its southern border—blocking migrant rescue ships from landing—and open its northern border, encouraging illegal migrants and asylum seekers to head north to Germany and Sweden. So worried is the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that he is hosting a mini-summit this Sunday to try and come up with some policies that can ease Merkel’s domestic political troubles.

The 30th March 2019 is the date in every Leave-backing MP’s mind. It is the first day Britain will be legally outside of the EU. But as I say in the magazine this week, Cabinet Brexiteers are concerned that this date may slip. One tells me that the UK is ‘likely to face at some point soon a huge amount of pressure to extend Article 50’. At first, this seems surprising: why would the EU want to do that? After all, the ticking clock favours them in this negotiation. But this minister explains that the EU’s aim would be to extend Article 50 further without guaranteeing the UK the transition phase the government so desperately wants. Brussels would then use this period to extract more concessions. What’s certain is that the Brexit talks are behind schedule.

One of the laws of Brexit is that every Commons division and Cabinet meeting billed as being a 'crunch vote' or 'crunch talks' ends up postponing the crunching again, and again and again. This afternoon, Dominic Grieve announced that he would 'accept the government's difficulty' on the matter of a meaningful vote and 'support it'. He was speaking in the Commons shortly before a division was supposed to be called on this matter, and not long after the government had offered a compromise. That compromise involved David Davis issuing a Written Ministerial Statement which clarifies that the Speaker can decide whether or not a motion issued by the government using the EU Withdrawal Bill is amendable. Last week, the government had said that it would not be, but now it will.