Brexit

The Tory party is the party of Brexit, whether it likes it or not. The referendum was called by a Tory prime minister, Tory politicians led Vote Leave and it is a Tory government that is taking Britain out of the European Union. Theresa May might equivocate when asked if she’d vote Leave in another referendum, but to the average voter, Brexit is a Tory policy. Mrs May’s reluctance to say she’d back Brexit in another vote is revealing of a broader Conservative desire to avoid being too closely associated with the project. A classic example is Philip Hammond’s view that the £350 million a week supposedly promised to the

After PMQs today, Theresa May will rush back to Downing Street to chair a meeting of the Brexit inner Cabinet. This meeting will take place against a backdrop of heightened Tory infighting over Europe. This isn’t being caused by the Cabinet, who have been fairly well behaved in recent days, but the backbenches. May’s problem is that both wings of the Tory party think that her policy is, to a certain extent, equidistant between them. So, whenever one side ratchets up the rhetoric, the other feels obliged to follow suit. Since Jacob Rees-Mogg took over as chair of the European Research Group, the main Brexiteer group in the Tory party,

Amber Rudd: ‘I have complete confidence’ in the civil service The Home Secretary has defended the civil service after recent comments made by members of her party. Brexit minister Steve Baker and backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg – now the chair of the influential European Research Group – have both criticised the institution. Baker apologised to the House of Commons on Friday for suggesting that there was significant internal pressure from civil servants to stay in the EU customs union, while Rees-Mogg accused officials who drew up a post-Brexit economic analysis of ‘fiddling the figures’. Rudd told Andrew Marr that the British civil service is the envy of the world: AM: [Do]

At political Cabinet this week, the chief whip warned ministers how difficult it was to hold the Tory party together, I write in The Sun this morning. Julian Smith warned them that noises off from the Cabinet made it even more of a struggle to maintain unity. Smith is right. The Tory party is dangerously divided, a split is a real possibility. He’s also right that ministers sounding off over Brexit heighten these tensions. But what he didn’t mention is the most important thing, the need for leadership. Ministers are putting forward their views on Brexit so publicly because there isn’t a clear government position. They think everything is still

The management principle that in static organisations, people are promoted to their level of incompetence reveals the government’s two most inept politicians to be the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Appearing at Davos last week, Philip Hammond pitched the government into its current – conceivably terminal – Brexit crisis. Thanks to his intervention, the Chancellor’s game plan is now obvious: the softest possible Brexit. Getting away with it involves a softly, softly approach. The politics of being outside the EU but ruled by the EU as a de facto Brussels protectorate require copious doses of political Temazepam. This, one would have thought, would have come naturally to

Julian Smith has his work cut out as Chief Whip. As well as trying to stop Tory MPs firing off letters to 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady, Smith must try and keep both Tory Remainers and Tory Brexiteers in line. In a bid to do this, Smith met with the European Research Group – the all-powerful Brexit wing of the Conservative party – this week to try and ease concerns that the government is about to water down the version of Brexit it is seeking. Now Jacob Rees-Mogg is chair of the ERG, the group is seen to have greater potential for trouble. So, what was his strategy? Serving cake.

The good news is that the latest civil service analysis of the most likely impact of Brexit is more optimistic than previous civil service estimates of Brexit’s consequences for the British economy. The bad news is that they’re still pretty gloomy. The best case scenario, modelled for officials at the Department for Exiting the EU, envisages a two per cent hit to GDP by the 2030s. The worst, trading in a ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ environment, suggests an economy eight per cent smaller than would otherwise be the case.  As Brexit bonuses go this seems on the thin side. No wonder the reaction to Buzzfeed’s scoop