Brexit

Tuesday

Ross Clark

British food and drink exporters defy the doom-mongers

From our UK edition

Many farmers, asserted the Earl of Sandwich in a Lords debate last July, were now experiencing ‘regrexit’ – having voted to leave the EU they were now realising that the £3.2 billion worth of subsidies they had received from the EU in 2013 were now under threat. Or were they? Whether any farmers really did suffer from pangs of regret last July, they will since have grasped that whatever happens to agricultural subsidies post-Brexit they might actually do rather well – not from collecting handouts but by growing food and selling it. Today, the Food and Drink Federation published its latest statistics on food exports. In common with so many economic figures published since last June they have defied predictions of doom.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The Lords’ Brexit debate is an unwelcome sideshow

From our UK edition

Peers can continue their Brexit debate in relative peace today without the watchful glare of the Prime Minister gazing over them. Theresa May’s brief appearance at the start of the Lords’ Article 50 debate yesterday was unprecedented but given how long she stayed you’d be forgiven for thinking it was little more than a publicity stunt. For the Sun, however, the PM’s decision to swap chambers in Parliament did send out an important message. Those ‘unelected members still struggling with the concept of a democratic mandate’ should remember that the PM had ‘most of the public and a vast Commons majority behind her’ as she sat on the steps of the throne.

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

The Stop Trump protests are the ultimate virtue signal

From our UK edition

This afternoon, across Britain, the most pro-establishment demo of modern times will take place. Sure, the Stop Trump protesters gathering outside Parliament and elsewhere will look and sound rad. They’ll chant and rage and blow whistles and hold up placards with Trump done up like a tangerine Hitler. But don’t be fooled. These people are the militant wing of the old establishment. They’re radicals for the old status quo, pining for the pre-Brexit, pre-Trump era when their kind ruled and ordinary people knew their place.  The aim of the Stop Trump gatherings is to encourage MPs to deny Trump a state visit. Starting at 4.

Harry Wallop

Could Brexit mean cheaper food? Don’t open the prosecco yet

From our UK edition

'Brexit to chop food bills', said the headline in the Sun on Sunday this weekend. The paper ran some research from the campaign group Leave Means Leave, which claimed food prices could fall by hundreds of pounds a year if tariffs are axed after Brexit. Though nobody knows what deal we will strike with trading partners once we leave the EU, it’s worth exploring the basis of Leave Means Leave’s research. It hopes we will enter into a completely tariff-free world. No more eye-watering taxes slapped on the likes of Tate & Lyle’s imported sugar cane, which caused the company to lose £20 million last year.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Why we’ve ‘had enough’ of Lord Mandelson

From our UK edition

After Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell returned to urge a revolt against Brexit, only one thing was missing: Peter Mandelson, who turned up on Andrew Marr's sofa yesterday. Ever on-message, he repeated Blair's line that the 52 per cent of the country who backed Brexit 'had no idea of the terms on which the government would decide to leave the EU’. So is the ‘prince of darkness’ simply up to his old tricks? Mandelson's intervention certainly hasn't earned him a warm reception in the newspaper editorials this morning. The Sun describes Mandelson as ‘disgraced’ and says the peer’s ‘contempt for democracy’ was the exact reason that ‘led to the demand for Brexit’ in the first place.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Labour has no alternative

From our UK edition

In normal times, by-elections are bad for governing parties and good for oppositions. But it is an indicator of how much trouble Labour is in, as I say in The Sun this morning, that they are the ones who are nervous ahead of Thursday’s by-elections. Some in the Labour machine seem almost resigned to losing Copeland to the Tories and are concentrating on trying to hold off Ukip in Stoke. Given that Labour is polling as low as 24% and Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings are worse than Michael Foot’s were at this point in his leadership, and the epic defeat Foot led Labour to in 1983 paved the way for 14 more years of Tory government, you might think that defeat in either contest would be the end of Corbyn’s leadership. But it won’t be.

Friday

Alex Massie

Tony Blair is right about Brexit

From our UK edition

I don't know about you but if I were to make a speech arguing that democracy should be abandoned, I probably wouldn't begin by saying 'I want to be explicit. Yes, the British people voted to leave Europe. And I agree the will of the people should prevail.' That's just me, however. When Tony Blair says this, he apparently means to encourage an anti-democratic insurrection. Which, I suppose, makes sense if you still suffer from an acute case of Blair Derangement Syndrome. Plenty of people evidently do. If Blair is really as toxic and irrelevant as his critics aver, there'd be no need for all this fury. Blood vessels could remain unburst and eyes unpopped. The reaction to Blair's speech suggests something else. It suggests that he must have a point.

Brendan O’Neill

Brexit was a revolt against snobs like Tony Blair

From our UK edition

The brass neck of Tony Blair. The Brexit vote was ‘based on imperfect knowledge’, says the man who unleashed barbarism across the Middle East on the basis of a student dissertation he printed off the internet. Who marched thousands into unimaginable horror on the basis of myth and spin. That NHS claim on the side of the Leave bus is small fry, infinitesimally small fry, in comparison with the guff this bloke came out with. It didn’t cause anyone to die, for one. For Blair to lecture the British people about truth is an affront to memory and decency and reason. No self-respecting citizen should put up with it.

Tony Blair

Tony Blair’s Brexit speech, full transcript

From our UK edition

I want to be explicit. Yes, the British people voted to leave Europe. And I agree the will of the people should prevail. I accept right now there is no widespread appetite to re-think. But the people voted without knowledge of the terms of Brexit. As these terms become clear, it is their right to change their mind. Our mission is to persuade them to do so. What was unfortunately only dim in our sight before the referendum is now in plain sight. The road we're going down is not simply Hard Brexit. It is Brexit At Any Cost.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The ‘enemies of the people’ row rumbles on

From our UK edition

The Article 50 court cases sparked an angry backlash in the newspapers, with the judges involved famously labelled ‘enemies of the people’. Yesterday was the day the Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger hit back: Neuberger criticised politicians for being slow to defend judges and said the attacks on the justice system risked undermining the rule of law. One of his (unspoken) targets was the Daily Mail, which rallied against the ‘out of touch’ judges involved. Was the coverage too much? The Mail says not. In its editorial this morning, the paper offers a rare compliment to Neuberger, saying that his ‘outstanding intellect and integrity’ is not in question.

Thursday

The Spectator

Labour’s love lost

From our UK edition

Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage to find a new low. The latest nationwide poll puts them at 24 per cent, trailing the Tories by 16 points. No wonder Labour MPs look so boot-faced around Parliament, and an increasing number are hunting for jobs elsewhere. If a general election were called now, the Conservatives would win a huge majority. Labour would be further than ever from power, arguably even finished as a major parliamentary force. Polls are not rock-solid indicators of future electoral success or failure, but Labour’s ratings are so abysmal as to suggest a party facing an existential crisis.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The good and bad news about Britain’s booming jobs market

From our UK edition

More Brits then ever are now in work, with the proportion of the working age population in jobs hitting 74.6 per cent at the end of 2016. Good news such as this about Britain’s job market has become ‘almost mundane’, says the Daily Telegraph. But even in this climate of healthy jobs figures, these latest numbers are worthy of attention. For the Telegraph, this is a 'vivid reminder that Britain’s flexible labour market has weathered all the recent storms’. Talk about joblessness and unemployment used to dominate the headlines. But no more; ‘the conversation’ now is more ‘about the nature of those jobs’. Talk of the ‘gig economy’ in particular is much discussed.

Mark Nayler

Can Brexit inspire Catalan independence?

From our UK edition

The increasingly radical Catalonian independence project has been dealt its latest blow this week: on Tuesday, Spain's constitutional court ruled that a projected September referendum on secession would be illegal. This means any plebiscite is effectively banned. But whether Catalonia's pro-independence president Carles Puigdemont goes ahead anyway remains to be seen. A similarly defiant course of action was pursued by his predecessor Artur Mas, who held a vote in 2014 (in which eighty per cent of people backed independence), and is currently on trial. The latest setback in the quest for Catalonian secessionism is particularly ill-timed.

Matthew Parris

In (conditional) defence of John Bercow

From our UK edition

James Duddridge is not wrong. The Tory MP for Rochford and Southend East, who has put down a ‘no confidence’ motion in Mr Speaker Bercow, says John Bercow has abused ‘his employment contract’ by his openly political remarks. The last straw was telling students at the University of Reading that he voted Remain in last year’s European referendum. Duddridge is a fiercely outspoken Leaver, but his complaint is that the Speaker should not have revealed any preference at all. Few should contest this. Anger over the Reading revelation builds on a history of complaint: the most recent example is still fresh.

Wednesday

Brendan O’Neill

The truth behind the Brexit hate crime ‘spike’

From our UK edition

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. New figures, compiled by the Press Association, suggest that hate crimes soared to 'record levels' in the three months following the EU referendum. Only four police forces around the country recorded a decrease in hate crimes; the others saw a spike. And in the case of three forces - the Metropolitan, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire - the spike was significant: these forces recorded more than 1,000 hate crimes each post-referendum.  This is being held up as evidence that prejudices and madness were unleashed by Brexit. In truth, the hate-crime spike looks more like a classic crime panic, a constructed 'crisis'.

Nick Cohen

The left are the Tories’ best friends

From our UK edition

Modern British history is largely a history of Tory rule and misrule. The Tories governed Britain from 1886 until 1905 with only the Gladstone/Rosebery minority administration of 1892 to 1895 breaking their dominance. They were in power every year from 1916 until 1945, either on their own or in coalition, except for 11 months in 1924 and from 1929 to 1931, when minority Labour governments clung to office. The Tories governed on their own from 1951 to 1964, and from 1979 to 1997. They governed first in coalition and then on their own from 2010 until…Well, think of a number then double it. Opponents who know that the Conservatives are not only a party of privilege but are perfectly capable of betraying the best interests of every class in the nation ought to fear them.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Wanted: Brexiteers for Wife Swap

From our UK edition

Just in case tensions between Brexiteers and Remain-ers were beginning to die down now that MPs have voted for Article 50, television producers are at the ready to whip up more drama between the two camps. Channel 4 is bringing back Wife Swap for a Brexit special. While it has been touted as a one-off special, Mr S has been passed the casting call which suggests they are looking for more than one pair of families to take part. So, are you a Brexiteer who is ready and willing to convince a family of Remain-ers that Brexit Britain isn't such a bad thing? If so, details on how to apply can be found above.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Britain’s soaring EU budget bill shows Brexit can’t happen soon enough

From our UK edition

We’ve heard that Brexit could cost Britain billions in the form of a divorce bill from Brussels. But what is the price of staying in? That question is answered by the Daily Mail this morning which reveals Treasury estimates slipped out last week that the UK’s contribution to the EU will jump to £10.2bn in 2019 - up from £7.9bn this year. The numbers also show that if Britain is still in the EU by 2021-22, taxpayers will have to pay out £10.9bn to Brussels. For the Daily Mail this is proof that Brexit is the best course of action. ‘Doesn't this revelation, slipped out by the Treasury, show precisely why we're leaving in the nick of time?,’ the paper asks.

Monday

Stephen Daisley

John Bercow must be saved from the paroxysms of Parliament’s angry men

From our UK edition

John Bercow is a curious little poppet. He's come a long way since his spotty days of undergraduate hangem'n'floggery in the Federation of Conservative Students, an organisation banned by Norman Tebbit for being too right-wing. Today he's more likely to be found welcoming one acronym or another to Parliament or accosting the word 'progressive' and roughing it up.  Bercow, now handsomely perched in the gods of the liberal establishment, has defied the axiom that we become more conservative as we grow older. (Then again, if you start out in the Monday Club and keep going right, you'll end up in Rhodesia by Friday.)  We need to understand this change of heart to appreciate the splenetic fury he inspires in the worst, most tribal brand of Tory.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The John Bercow row rumbles on

From our UK edition

John Bercow has insisted that admitting he backed ‘Remain’ in the EU referendum doesn’t compromise his politically neutrality. Some MPs, like Tom Watson - who hailed Bercow as one of the ‘great Speakers’ - have stepped in to defend him. But after his intervention on Trump and his willingness to air his thoughts on Brexit, the Speaker is under mounting pressure. He faces a vote of no confidence tabled by Conservative MP James Duddridge. And the newspapers continue to voice their anger at Bercow in today’s editorials. ‘What an embarrassment’ Bercow has become, says the Daily Mail. The paper suggests the boast he made to students about backing 'Remain' is the final straw.