Brexit

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Who has the better mandate: Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon?

From our UK edition

For the last week, the Unionist opposition at the Scottish parliament has enjoyed observing that the Scottish government is happy to ignore non-binding votes at Holyrood when it suits them to do so but now expects the UK government to be bound by today's vote authorising the Scottish government to seek a Section 30 order that would begin the process by which a lawful second referendum on independence can be held. It is a neat line but an insufficient one, not least since this vote - unlike some of those on which the SNP government has been defeated - actually recommends a particular course of action that the government should follow.

James Forsyth

How Britain and the EU can both benefit from Article 50

From our UK edition

Theresa May doesn’t do drama. She regards order as both a political and personal virtue. And this goes a long way towards explaining why she is Prime Minister. After the Brexit vote last June and David Cameron’s resignation, the Tories had had enough excitement. They turned to the leadership contender who was best able to project a reassuring sense of calm. It is in keeping with May’s approach that she has drained the drama from the triggering of Article 50, the start of the two-year process for leaving the EU. Other prime ministers might have been tempted to do it with a flourish — to feel the hand of history on their shoulder. But May has removed any sense of surprise by having her spokesman blandly declare that she’ll be sending the letter tomorrow.

Charlotte Gill

The last thing Brexit needs is support from an ageing Sex Pistol

From our UK edition

John Lydon - aka Johnny Rotten, the former Sex Pistols front man -  has voiced support for Brexit, and some seem to think this is a good thing. Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, he said: 'Where do I stand on Brexit? Well, here it goes, the working class have spoke and I’m one of them and I’m with them,' before revealing he admires Nigel Farage. Perhaps he should have left it there, but This Morning was only the beginning of Rotten’s slithery journey across the nation’s media. After all, he has a book to promote! (Mr Rotten’s Songbook, if you’re interested - out on 31 March).

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The perks – and pitfalls – of Brexit

From our UK edition

The clock is ticking. At 12.30pm tomorrow, Theresa May will be on her feet in the Commons declaring that Article 50 has been triggered. Finally, nine months after the referendum, Britain will be heading out of the EU. The moment itself is likely to be underwhelming and we’re unlikely to find out much more of the Government’s actual Brexit plan. But already the Daily Telegraph has some suggestions. This is the perfect moment for asking: ‘What type of country do we wish to be at the end of that journey?’, the paper says. Yes, Brexit is about ‘reclaiming sovereignty’.

Monday

William Cook

The reports of Angela Merkel’s political demise have been greatly exaggerated

From our UK edition

Once again, the pollsters got it wrong. Yesterday’s election in Saarland was supposed to be the beginning of the end for Angela Merkel, and the start of the SPD revival under their new leader Martin Schulz. And yet, against the odds, Merkel’s conservative CDU has beaten the left-leaning SPD by more than ten per cent, a result which bodes well for her election campaign this autumn, and her bid to win a record-breaking fourth term as Chancellor. Last week, the signs for Merkel’s CDU seemed pretty bleak. Saarland’s CDU leader, so-called ‘Mini Merkel’ Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, went into this election with just one more seat than the resurgent SPD.

The Spectator

Theresa May’s Brexit speech in Scotland, full transcript

From our UK edition

It is very good to be with you here with you today, and particularly to be able to thank you all for the work you do on behalf of the Government and on behalf of the British people. Vital work that helps millions around the world and speaks strongly to the values that we share as a country. And it is vital work. Not just because the things you do here have a material impact on the lives of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people around the world. But also because the work you do here – in conjunction with your colleagues at the Department for International Development in London – says something important about Britain. It says that we are a kind and generous country.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Are tech companies doing enough to tackle terror?

From our UK edition

Amber Rudd has vowed to ‘call time’ on tech companies who are giving terrorists ‘a place to hide’. The Home Secretary's comments come after it emerged that Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was sending encrypted message on WhatsApp in the lead-up to the attack; Rudd is ‘right to read them the Riot Act’, says the Sun, which ups the criticism of WhatsApp in its editorial this morning. The paper says that if tech companies don’t start behaving then ‘there will be no alternative’ but for the Government to bring in new legislation to force them to co-operate with the security services.

Sunday

Martin Vander Weyer

The Brexit bellwether will be the health of our car industry

From our UK edition

As I’ve said before, the bellwether of post-Brexit prosperity will be the health of the UK car industry, rather than that of the far larger financial sector. The City is nimble enough to look after itself come what may; it requires little more than plug sockets and clever lawyers to outmanoeuvre barriers to its trade. Car-makers, by contrast, require massive investment in research, robotics and logistics to keep them at the cutting edge of a globalised manufacturing system operating on the tightest of margins. So every indicator is worth tracking. Peugeot-Vauxhall was a mixed signal, and a cloud hangs over the Ford engine plant at Bridgend.

James Forsyth

How both Britain and the EU might claim victory in the Brexit talks

From our UK edition

Theresa May doesn’t do drama. She regards order as both a political and personal virtue. And this goes a long way towards explaining why she is Prime Minister. After the Brexit vote last June and David Cameron’s resignation, the Tories had had enough excitement. They turned to the leadership contender who was best able to project a reassuring sense of calm. It is in keeping with May’s approach that she has drained the drama from the triggering of Article 50, the start of the two-year process for leaving the EU. Other prime ministers might have been tempted to do it with a flourish — to feel the hand of history on their shoulder. But May has removed any sense of surprise by having her spokesman blandly declare that she’ll be sending the letter on Wednesday.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

No, M Juncker, David Cameron did not “destroy” the United Kingdom.

From our UK edition

Jean-Claude Juncker could have been invented by Nigel Farage's spin doctors. He is sneering one-man advert for Brexit, Frexit and any other kind of EU-exit. As Hugo Rifkind argues in this week’s magazine, he is a caricature of the arrogant Eurocrat: “smug, lazy, unelected and utterly impervious to anything.” He is a notorious boozer, and managed ‘head of state’ by running Luxembourg, which a country with a population about the size of Sheffield. His ascension to President of the European Commission embodied everything that was wrong with the EU, a huge signal that it was time to abandon ship.

Hugo Rifkind

Jean-Claude Juncker is the worst thing about being a Remainer

From our UK edition

The best thing about being a Remainer is obviously the dinner parties, where we all sit around being incredibly well-heeled in leafy Islington. Bloody love a good heel, I do. And a leaf. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Eddie Izzard and Nick Clegg crack jokes at each other in French, as Lily Allen and Matthew Parris do impressions of old people from Northumberland, while in the background Bob Geldof and Professor Brian Cox duet on the piano. It’s almost literally how I spend almost all of my time. Whereas Leaver dinner parties, so I’m told, are just IDS and a Scotch egg. The worst thing about being a Remainer, though, is Jean-Claude Juncker. Indeed, I’d go further and say that he’s the worst thing about the European Union altogether.

Sarah Sands

George Osborne’s Evening Standard job is good news for London

From our UK edition

George Osborne has been a good friend to London. He sees the point of infrastructure and I hope he’ll fight hard for Crossrail 2, which has been shunted into the sidings by this government. London business rates are a huge issue, close to Osborne’s heart. He’s a supporter of the arts, with a streak of romanticism missing in David Cameron and Theresa May. It’s good news for Sir Simon Rattle’s concert hall, and Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge. The mayor Sadiq Khan, who is more than a match for Osborne as a political strategist, will understand what they can jointly achieve as champions of an open, liberal city. The Prime Minister is anxious to move attention away from London, so as to re-balance the rest of the country.

Rod Liddle

Why didn’t more MPs complain about BBC bias?

From our UK edition

There’s one thing that bothers me a lot about the letter sent by ‘more than 70’ MPs to the director-general of the BBC complaining about bias in its coverage of the Brexit debate. There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons, of whom 330 are Conservative. So does this mean that more than 570 of our elected representatives, including the vast majority of Tories, think the BBC is doing a bloody good job and is an exemplar of impartial reporting? If so, I suspect they have been secretly lobotomised — perhaps by members of the BBC’s impeccably fair and impartial editorial board. In the dead of night. Silently, without remorse. Chloroform, a hacksaw, a scalpel.

Toby Young

Should conservatives fear new working-class support? Some clearly do

From our UK edition

In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about this debate is that the defenders of Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, left--wingers, like the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who spent five years chronicling a depressed blue-collar community in Louisiana, while those who disparage them as ‘in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles’ are conservatives.

Thursday

Toby Young

The liberals and the deplorables

From our UK edition

In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about this debate is that the defenders of Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, left--wingers, like the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who spent five years chronicling a depressed blue-collar community in Louisiana, while those who disparage them as ‘in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles’ are conservatives.

Peter Jones

Theresa May at the Rubicon

From our UK edition

Last week many commentators drew on the Ides (15th) of March, the anniversary of Julius Caesar’s death in 44 BC, to reflect on the signing of Article 50 and Julius Caesar’s famous cry ‘The die is cast’ (iacta alea est) in 49 BC, when he crossed the River Rubicon into Italy and started the civil war against Pompey. But they got it wrong: it does not mean ‘no turning back’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Caesar-Pompey power struggle, Caesar knew the consequences of this moment. Our sources describe the build-up. Caesar is camped with his troops in Ravenna. Messages are flying back and forth between him and Pompey in Rome.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 March 2017

From our UK edition

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said that on 29 March she would send a letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, triggering the process of the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. A summit of EU leaders was convened for 29 April, with the aim of briefing its negotiator, Michel Barnier. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, elicited the support of the Scottish Parliament for her policy of seeking a second referendum on Scottish independence ‘within a short time of’ Brexit. Mrs May had dismissed her request, saying: ‘Now is not the time.’ Ms Sturgeon said an independent Scotland would seek membership of the EU and use sterling as a ‘starting point’.

James Forsyth

A way for both sides to claim Brexit victory

From our UK edition

Theresa May doesn’t do drama. She regards order as both a political and personal virtue. And this goes a long way towards explaining why she is Prime Minister. After the Brexit vote last June and David Cameron’s resignation, the Tories had had enough excitement. They turned to the leadership contender who was best able to project a reassuring sense of calm. It is in keeping with May’s approach that she has drained the drama from the triggering of Article 50, the start of the two-year process for leaving the EU. Other prime ministers might have been tempted to do it with a flourish — to feel the hand of history on their shoulder. But May has removed any sense of surprise by having her spokesman blandly declare that she’ll be sending the letter on Wednesday.

Rod Liddle

The real BBC shocker: occasionally it isn’t biased

From our UK edition

There’s one thing that bothers me a lot about the letter sent by ‘more than 70’ MPs to the director-general of the BBC complaining about bias in its coverage of the Brexit debate. There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons, of whom 330 are Conservative. So does this mean that more than 570 of our elected representatives, including the vast majority of Tories, think the BBC is doing a bloody good job and is an exemplar of impartial reporting? If so, I suspect they have been secretly lobotomised — perhaps by members of the BBC’s impeccably fair and impartial editorial board. In the dead of night. Silently, without remorse. Chloroform, a hacksaw, a scalpel.

Lloyd Evans

Royal prerogative

From our UK edition

No one should complain that My Country; a work in progress is a grim night out. It’s rare for a good play to be written by royal command. The co-authors are the Queen’s personal minstrel, Carol Ann Duffy, and the director of her Royal National Theatre, Rufus Norris. These inspiring artistes have sent their vassals beyond the security of London to annotate ‘the words of people across the UK’ in the hope of understanding a humanitarian disaster: Brexit. The show makes its prejudices clear by dedicating the script to a Remain voter, Jo Cox, who was murdered by a Leave supporter. And it promotes the view, common among Remainers, that Brexit is a crisis caused by thick proles.