Brexit

Thursday

Steerpike

The Queen backs Brexit

Champers at the ready. After much speculation last year over Her Majesty's feelings towards the EU, the verdict is finally in: the Queen backs Brexit. Her Majesty has given Royal Assent to the government's Brexit Bill -- thereby making it an Act of Parliament. Theresa May now has permission to trigger the UK's exit from the EU at a time of her choosing. The news has been met by celebrations in the Commons: https://twitter.com/BBCParliament/status/842330578078842880 However, over in the Lords it's a more muted affair: https://twitter.com/BBCParliament/status/842331901943808000 Oh well, you can't please them all...

James Forsyth

Double trouble | 16 March 2017

Theresa May is a cautious politician. She has risen to the top by avoiding unnecessary risks; no one survives 18 years on the Tory front bench by being a gambler. But few prime ministers have the luxury of choosing their battles, and she would not have chosen the two that may now define her premiership: successfully negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union while saving the United Kingdom. If she achieves both, she will join the pantheon of great prime ministers. If she fails, she’ll be keeping Lord North company in the history books. Unlike David Cameron, May has been preparing for a new Scottish referendum from the moment she entered Downing Street.

Tuesday

Nick Hilton

The Corbynistas abandon Corbyn

Last night Jeremy Corbyn gathered with thousands of supporters on Parliament Square to protest against the government’s failure to guarantee the rights of EU migrants in the UK. Upon hearing the chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear – all EU migrants welcome here!’ Theresa May performed a sensational U-turn. Britain now has an open doors policy to anyone with a pulse and a dream. Or so might have been the case, had Jeremy Corbyn bothered to turn up to his own rally. Instead, a motley rabble of speakers from such august institutions as Stop the War, the Socialist Workers Party, and the National Union of Students, preached to an assembled crowd of a couple of hundred people in the murky gloom of Westminster.

Monday

Tim Stanley

Another Scottish independence referendum? The Union can win it

Fraser Nelson is joined by Alex Massie and James Forsyth to discuss IndyRef2: When will the politics ever end? Now Nicola Sturgeon says she wants a second Scottish independence referendum, and so we plunge ourselves – wearily but no less determined – into yet another fight to save our country. The nationalists operate on the principle of being a persistent irritant. Demand independence so often and so annoyingly that eventually the country just says: 'Have it, if it will shut you up.' But no. We proud Unionists cannot submit to the SNP’s logic that independence is 'only a matter of time'. We have to fight this. And we can win. First, let me shoot down the Brexit myth.

Fraser Nelson

Finita la commedia: the Brexit bill is (finally) passed

For weeks, politicians on both houses of Parliament have been carrying on a drama where they pretend to get worked up about the Brexit bill while knowing that the Lords was always going to cave and the Bill was always going to be passed. The House of Lords, which last week voted to make Brexit conditional on final parliamentary approval, has tonight dropped its objection. As everyone in Westminster knew they would. It has been a long parliamentary charade, but there was still something wonderful  about it. The referendum was non-binding: parliament could have overturned the result. Just as it could have overturned the result of the 2014 Scottish referendum.

Nick Cohen

Beware the cult of Brexit

In their frequent moments of self-congratulation, conservatives describe themselves as level-headed and practical people. If there were a scintilla of truth in the stories they tell themselves the government would not think of activating Article 50 this week. Unfortunately, for our country, actual conservatives and mythical conservatives have next to nothing in common. Unconstrained by a political opposition and egged on by a Tory press that makes Breitbart seem like a reputable news service, modern Tories resemble no one so much as the right-wing parody of left wingers: utopian, contemptuous of detail and convinced the world owes them a living. No practical government would invoke Article 50 this week, this month or any time before the end of the year.

James Forsyth

How Theresa May can avoid IndyRef2

Fraser Nelson is joined by Alex Massie and James Forsyth to discuss IndyRef2: Nicola Sturgeon has thrown down the gauntlet to Theresa May with her speech today. When the Scottish parliament backs a second independence referendum, as it will in the next few weeks, the UK government will have to decide how to respond. After all, there can be no referendum without Westminster’s consent. A Madrid-style outright refusal to allow a referendum is unlikely. But the real fight will be over the timing. Sturgeon says she wants a referendum in either Autumn 2018 or Spring 2019. But the UK government has privately made clear that any referendum would have to come after Brexit, so Scots would know what the UK’s relationship with the EU was when they voted.

Sunday

Joanna Trollope

What were the Welsh thinking when they voted for Brexit?

Goodness, Wales is gorgeous to look at. The landscape is sublime. I woke in Abergavenny to snow on the Black Mountains, interspersed with emerald green valleys — all that rain is not for nothing. The natural beauty only heightens a troubling question. Wales voted for Brexit, but every road, university and waterfront improvement scheme — and they are everywhere — is EU-funded. Excuse me? What were all those warmly welcoming people I met thinking of exactly?

Friday

Tom Goodenough

Guy Verhofstadt is playing politics with his ‘special arrangement’ offer to Brits

Guy Verhofstadt thinks Brexit is a 'disaster', a 'tragedy' and a 'catastrophe'. That verdict, from the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, won't surprise many. But Verhofstadt has a solution to what he sees as a looming crisis for despairing Remain voters. During his interview on the Today programme this morning, he brought up the prospect of British citizens being allowed to keep their EU benefits as part of a ‘special arrangement’. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this pitch from Verhofstadt. Back in November, the Belgian touted the idea that Brits could pay a fee to retain free movement and a vote in EU elections. 'Many say 'we don't want to cut our links’, he told the Times.

Tom Goodenough

The newspapers dump on Hammond’s National Insurance hike – again

Theresa May and Philip Hammond were in a laughing mood in the Commons on Wednesday. After a second day of dreadful headlines in the newspapers, they certainly won’t be now. The Government’s honeymoon period in the media is over - and the Chancellor’s National Insurance hike for the self-employed is entirely to blame. So far, the Prime Minister has stuck to her guns by insisting the policy will go through (even if the PM did kick it back to the Autumn). If she really is to go through with the controversial policy - and the number of Tory rebels is growing - she’ll have to resist a mounting barrage of criticism in the media.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 9 March 2017

On Scottish independence Sir: Alex Massie writes of the order permitting a second Scottish independence referendum: ‘Having granted such an order in 2014, it will be difficult to refuse Mrs Sturgeon’s demand for another’ (‘Back into battle’, 4 March). Surely that is precisely why Mrs May should refuse another? It was the SNP who described the 2014 vote as a chance in a lifetime. The only thing way in which Brexit could have changed matters is if it had been a fundamental and unforeseeable upset. Alex Massie, from this and his previous writings, clearly believes it was. But the Conservatives, at the time of the Scottish vote, had promised to hold a Brexit referendum if they won the 2015 general election, so Brexit was certainly on the cards.

Taki

High life | 9 March 2017

A lousy fortnight if ever there was one. Two great friends, Lord Belhaven and Stenton and Aleko Goulandris, had their 90th birthday celebrations, and I missed both shindigs because of this damn bug. Lord Belhaven’s was in London, at the Polish Club, but flying there was verboten. Robin Belhaven is an old Etonian, served as an officer in Northern Ireland, farmed in Scotland, and has four children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He spent 35 years in the House of Lords when that institution was a responsible arm of the government and not a cesspool full of smarmy lawyers.

The Spectator

Ambition deficit

Some Budgets are historic, most are boring and a small number can be remembered as a disaster. After just a few months, Philip Hammond has managed a budget - his first - that can be placed in this last category. Economically, it made very little difference. Politically, it is shaping up to be a disaster. His Budget was supposed to have been conducted under the pledge, issued no fewer than four times in the 2015 Conservative manifesto, that his party not raise taxes. ‘Instead, we will ease the burden of taxation,’ the Tories promised. It seems plausible enough, and the Conservatives were returned with an absolute majority.

Joanna Trollope

Diary – 9 March 2017

Oh dear. Usually writers who contribute to these diaries start with something like, ‘To Paris. To launch my novel at Shakespeare and Company.’ Well, I went instead to Penarth, which is a charming seaside suburb of Cardiff, and got a right royal welcome. I told the customers of Griffin Books (and Book-ish in Crickhowell and Cover to Cover in Mumbles) that I forbade them to buy books from Amazon. If they didn’t support their independent bookshops, they would lose them. And bookshops are vital for community health. Think what Daunt’s did for Marylebone High Street; started its transformation from a non-street to a destination street, no less. Speaking of Daunt’s, do you realise that their business rates are about to double?

Ed West

Why do so many French youngsters support Marine Le Pen?

I'm very sceptical of the idea that the younger generation are more conservative than their elders, and that this makes conservatism somehow cool, which it isn't. There have been times where the kids are more reactionary than their parents but generally only as a result of religious movements - and Britain is as atheistic as can be. Young Brits are very liberal and cosmopolitan, even compared to their peers in other European countries. In polls they express low levels of pride in their country and an unwillingness to fight in any theoretical war. The Brexit vote, and the big gap between old and young, showed just how liberal the young are.

Martin Vander Weyer

New European giants? Standard-Aberdeen looks a better bet than Peugeot-Vauxhall

Budget week also turned out to be a week of notable deals. PSA, French owner of Peugeot and Citroën, went ahead with its €2.2 billion takeover of Vauxhall and Opel from General Motors, creating ‘a new European giant to challenge Volkswagen’, according to the spin, and new fears for those who foresee post-Brexit attrition of the British motor industry. By way of reassurance, PSA boss Carlos Tavares said a hard Brexit is an ‘opportunity’ — to beef up the domestic supply chain while reducing component imports from the EU — and that ‘I trust Vauxhall workers’ to improve their productivity. That last bit sounded to me more like a threat to their jobs.

Wednesday

Ross Clark

Biggest loser from this Budget? The credibility of Tory tax promises

There is a very big winner from today’s budget. Not adults in social care, not schools, but Ukip. Philip Hammond has handed a huge political opportunity: to position itself as the party of the self-employed: the taxi driver, the brickie, the plumber, the small shop-owner. These used to be natural Tories. From today, with Hammond imposing a two per cent extra tax on their income, and breaking a manifesto commitment in the process, they will be looking for a new political home. No wonder Suzanne Evans was tweeting about the change within seconds of it being made. The Treasury’s argument for raising National Insurance Contributions on the self-employed is that the current arrangements are unfair to the employed, who pay a higher rate of NIC.

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit breakfast blunder

We all know that Brexit means Brexit - but not if you're Jeremy Corbyn, it seems. During his response to Philip Hammond's Budget announcement, the leader of the opposition made a blunder which Mr S suspects he's not going to be allowed to forget any time soon. 'Our economy is not prepared for breakfast,' Corbyn told the Commons - before quickly correcting himself. Mr S does have some sympathy with Corbyn. After all, the Labour leader isn't the first politician to fall into the trap of equating Brexit with breakfast. Welsh Tory leader Andrew Davies did just that at the Conservative party conference last year when he told delegates: ‘Mark my words, we will make breakfast..

Tom Goodenough

What’s in Philip Hammond’s Budget box?

Philip Hammond doesn’t do box office. Unlike his predecessor George Osborne, he doesn’t do burgers either, with his austere pre-budget picture showing the Chancellor looking characteristically gloomy as, we’re told, he prepares Britain to be ‘match fit’ for the future. So what do we know about Hammond’s first - and last - spring Budget? For those who have accused Hammond of being too downbeat, there’ll be some glimmers of hope. It’s expected that the Chancellor’s ‘upbeat assessment’ of Britain’s economic outlook which he will deliver at the despatch box will mean the country’s growth forecast will be revised upwards - giving the Chancellor an extra £12bn to play with over the coming year.

Tuesday

Nick Cohen

The opposition-shaped hole in British politics

If you want to judge the extent of the crisis that is paralysing the left, look at this morning’s Guardian. On the one hand you have an article from Abi Wilkinson, who tellingly doesn’t even mention the Labour leader’s name. Convincingly to my mind, Wilkinson argues that the May government ought to be in all kinds of trouble. May herself is an evasive and awkward politician. She is presiding over an NHS that has had more austerity than it can stand. The British Red Cross may have been guilty of hyperbole when it said the UK faced a 'humanitarian crisis' across the whole of its health service. But individual patients are finding that, as far as they and their families are concerned, a humanitarian crisis is exactly what they must endure.