Brexit

Thursday

Ross Clark

Immigration figures show that ‘Brexodus’ is still a myth

Government figures today show a sharp fall in net migration – 230,000 over the year to June, compared with 336,000 in the previous 12 months. If it keeps falling at that rate for another 18 months, Theresa May will have fulfilled David Cameron’s rash promise to reduce net migration to tens of thousands – if that, indeed, is an achievement worth trumpeting. For many it isn’t. The fall has reignited claims that the NHS, business and other employers are suffering a Brexit-induced drought of qualified staff, as EU workers desert ‘xenophobic’ Britain and are not replaced. Certainly, the bulk of the reduction in net migration – 80,000 of it –

William Cook

British Europhiles should welcome Brexit. Here’s why

In the historic heart of Luxembourg, around the corner from the Grand Ducal Palace, there is a site which demonstrates why Britons will never be good Europeans. The Maison de l’Union Européenne houses the information centre for the various European institutions here in Luxembourg, and even British Remainers will find its attitudes entirely different from their own. The vision it presents is pan European, an entire continent without borders. These are the ‘citizens of nowhere’ that Mrs May warned us about. Since the referendum, British attitudes towards the EU have polarised. Either it’s a great force for good, and leaving will be a disaster (say some Remainers) or it’s a

James Delingpole

If you voted Remain, you’ll never ‘get’ Trump

How do you defend Donald Trump without coming across like a rabid lunatic? This was my challenge as the only ‘out’ Trumpophile on a panel at the Dublin Festival of Politics last weekend. What made me especially trepidatious is that Ireland is even more painfully right-on than we are these days. It has ditched most of that Roman Catholicism and Cúchulainn and Yeats malarkey and become just another compliant satrapy of the ahistorical, cultureless, communitarian Brussels empire. Happily there are still one or two Irish who feel just as strongly as I do about what has been done to their wonderful country. There were about a dozen of them in

James Forsyth

The Tories’ fate is in their hands

How will the Tory party remember 2017? Will it be the year it lost its majority, alienated key sections of the electorate and paved the way for a Jeremy Corbyn premiership? Or the year when uncertainty about Britain’s future relationship with the European Union peaked, when debt finally began to fall and the Tory party resisted the temptation of a Corn Laws-style split? We won’t know for several years. What we can say with confidence is that Brexit will prove key to determining which view of 2017 wins out. On Monday, Theresa May heads to Brussels for a meeting with the European Commission. Over lunch, she will set out what

David Trimble

Crossing the line

When I negotiated the Good Friday Agreement nearly 20 years ago, no one foresaw a day when the -United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union. It was impossible to imagine how the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, from which the barriers were removed as part of the agreement, would again become an issue of such political importance. We have the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, threatening to veto the Brexit negotiations unless Theresa May gives a formal written guarantee that there will be no hard -border, and we keep hearing the argument that a departure of the UK from the single market and the customs

Lionel Shriver

This EU ‘divorce bill’ is more like a ransom

A  ‘bill’ is not commonly subject to negotiation. It arrives after a customer has contracted for the purchase of goods or services, whose price — with the unique exception of American health care bills, which are more like muggings by gangs on mopeds — has been established in advance. For the average upstanding Briton, a bill is not a starting point, subject to haggling. It is something you pay. The Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 makes no mention of paying financial liabilities in order to leave the EU. Once the post–referendum conversation turned immediately to the ‘divorce bill’, the May government’s big mistake from the off was bickering about its size.

Wednesday

Lionel Shriver

This EU ‘divorce bill’ is more like a ransom | 29 November 2017

A ‘bill’ is not commonly subject to negotiation. It arrives after a customer has contracted for the purchase of goods or services, whose price — with the unique exception of American health care bills, which are more like muggings by gangs on mopeds — has been established in advance. For the average upstanding Briton, a bill is not a starting point, subject to haggling. It is something you pay. The Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 makes no mention of paying financial liabilities in order to leave the EU. Once the post-­referendum conversation turned immediately to the ‘divorce bill’, the May government’s big mistake from the off was bickering about its size.

Katy Balls

How many Tory MPs would vote against giving the EU a £45bn divorce settlement?

The most important thing coming from No 10 this morning is not anything they have said – but instead what they haven’t said. Following a report yesterday that the UK’s Brexit divorce bill has been agreed as being somewhere in the region of £45bn, the government have not tried to deny it nor pour cold water on the sum. Sensing an opportunity, the Opposition today tried to capitalise on the news. Labour have tabled an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill that would commit the government to giving MPs a vote on the Brexit financial settlement. It would also require the sum to be assessed by the OBR and the

Liam Halligan

The Brexit divorce bill is ghastly but we can still make it work to our advantage

There is much outrage, among both Leave and Remain voters, at the size of the ‘divorce bill’ ministers have reportedly agreed to pay the EU. Figures of €60-65bn (£53-58bn) – more than one and a half times’ the UK’s annual defence budget – are being presented as fact. I share much of this outrage. The sheer range of numbers floated – not least the notorious €100bn figure reportedly demanded by Brussels – show that the cash-strapped EU is simply chancing its arm. The amount the UK will pay clearly has little to do with our provable liabilities. It is all about how much Brussels thinks it can extract. The strict legal

Matthew Lynn

Here’s what we should get from Brussels for our £40 billion

A high speed rail line from Manchester to Glasgow. Three of the shiny new Elizabeth lines crossing London. Thirty or forty hospitals, almost sixty Manchester City squads, and perhaps a dozen Bitcoins (although it might be only eleven by the time you are reading this). There is still a lot you can get for 40 to 50 billion euros. In the Brexit negotiations, the UK now seems to have increased its offer to the European Union to that range. If that is indeed the final settlement, we can expect to hear lots about all the other things we could have done with the money. Remainers will gloat over the cost,

David Trimble

David Trimble: the Taoiseach should stop trying to out-Sinn Fein Sinn Fein

When I negotiated the Good Friday Agreement nearly 20 years ago, no one foresaw a day when the United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union. It was impossible to imagine how the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, from which the barriers were removed as part of the agreement, would again become an issue of such political importance. We have the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, threatening to veto the Brexit negotiations unless Theresa May gives a formal written guarantee that there will be no hard border, and we keep hearing the argument that a departure of the UK from the single market and the customs

Tom Goodenough

Labour’s Brexit strategy remains as confused as ever

All eyes this morning are on Britain’s Brexit divorce bill, but meanwhile Labour’s Brexit strategy remains as confused as ever. Diane Abbott is the latest figure from the party’s frontbench to hint at the possibility of a second referendum, despite this being ruled out by Jeremy Corbyn in the run-up to June’s snap election. In a letter to two constituents this month, the shadow home secretary wrote: ‘I will argue for the right of the electorate to vote on any deal that is finally agreed.’ Abbott is now suggesting those remarks were ‘poorly worded’. This seems hard to believe; indeed, that sentence couldn’t have been much clearer: voters should get

The Spectator

Even at £50 billion, the ‘divorce’ bill from the EU is a price well worth paying

There will be howls of outrage in some quarters if it is confirmed that the government has offered the EU a ‘divorce’ bill of £50 billion or so. Some on the leave side of the debate have insisted that the bill should be zero. They ask: does the EU not owe us some money for our share of all the bridges we have helped build in Spain and railway lines in Poland. But it was never realistic to think that we could leave the EU and maintain good relations with the bloc without paying a penny – even if a House of Lords report did seem to suggest that that would

Tuesday

Ed Power

Ireland’s domestic problems are overshadowed by Brexit

The Irish government has just survived a precarious wobble which would have plunged Britain and Ireland into further chaos over a future Northern Ireland border. Until the resignation of Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Frances Fitzgerald earlier today, there was a clear and present danger of Leo Varadkar’s minority administration falling apart – all because of a police corruption imbroglio nobody in mainstream Irish politics seems prepared to grasp with both hands. Hours ahead of a no-confidence motion Varadkar looked certain to lose, Fitzgerald declared she would be stepping aside ‘in the national interest’. Since May last year, the Fine Gael coalition, led by Varadkar, has been propped up by long-standing foe

Katy Balls

Brexit means… a £40bn divorce bill

Ahead of the crunch EU council meeting next month, the government is doing everything it can to try and ensure the UK is given the green light from Brussels to move the negotiations on to trade. As part of this, talk has been rife that Theresa May is ready to considerably up her financial offer for the so-called Brexit bill. This afternoon, Peter Foster, the Telegraph’s Europe Editor, reports that British and EU negotiators have reached a deal over the bill in good time for Theresa May’s lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday. British and EU negotiators have reportedly agreed that the final figure, deliberately left vague, will be somewhere

Isabel Hardman

Ministers have created their own mess in the Brexit impact assessments row

Nobody said Brexit was going to be easy, did they? It turns out that even talking about how difficult Brexit is going to be is pretty tricky, and the person feeling that most keenly is David Davis. Today the Brexit Secretary came under fire from all parts of the House of Commons for the heavy editing of some impact assessments on Brexit which it wasn’t entirely clear had ever actually been written in a form long enough for them to be edited down. Last year, Davis told MPs that ‘we’ve carried out or are in the midst of carrying out about 57, I think, sectoral analyses, each of which has

Alex Massie

The government’s deeply cunning Brexit plan comes unstuck

So, Frances Fitzgerald, the Tánaiste, has resigned. It now looks as though Leo Varadkar’s minority Irish government will not face a vote of no-confidence that it would likely have lost and, consequently, there will be no Irish election before Christmas. That’s a matter of considerable relief in Dublin but also in London.  Irish political scandals are often esoteric but this, frankly, was no time for an election and that recognition, above all else, compelled Fitzgerald’s departure. In other circumstances she – and Fine Gael – might have fought this to the final furlong. But these are not ordinary times in Dublin. It seems entirely probable, as matters stand, that relations between

Nick Cohen

Brexit is the new low point of British democracy

As faith wanes in democracy, arguments against it have more power than arguments for the status quo. People still quote Churchill’s line about democracy being the worst system of government apart from all the others as if it settles the matter. For what it is worth, I think it is true. But as memories of the cataclysms of the 20th century fade, it sounds exhausted. ‘Our system is better than the Nazis’ has lost its purchase. Soon we will be living in a world where no one alive can remember the Nazis in power. The law of diminishing returns applies equally to the argument that at least our system is

Steerpike

Will Labour practise what they preach on commercial confidentiality?

Today MPs are working themselves into a bother over the government’s Brexit impact reports. Although David Davis has handed them to the Brexit select committee – as ordered by the Speaker – MPs have been left disappointed given that the document in question is rather sparse on details as it does not include anything the government has deemed market sensitive or damaging to the UK’s negotiations with the EU27. With Keir Starmer to ask an Urgent Question on the issue, Labour is expected to criticise the government for keeping out relevant information. However, Mr S suspects the Labour party ought to tread with caution before going on the offensive. When Hilary Benn,

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

No, the Kremlin is not behind Legatum – or Brexit

Given that most think tanks and universities are heavily against Brexit, the recent arrival of the Legatum Institute into the arena of trade policy mattered. It was filling a a gap in the market: proper research into potential trade relationships, on the basis that Brexit might not be a disaster. It has also acquired the services of Shanker Singham, an experienced trade lawyer. Both he and Legatum have come under the microscope today with a Mail on Sunday splash suggesting that the Kremlin might be behind it all. Its headline: ‘Putin link to Boris and Gove Brexit “coup”’. Did this relationship go too far, and did Singham end up advising Michael