Brexit

‘A Global Britain’ promised the slogan behind Theresa May as she delivered her big Brexit speech. It was robust and well-judged, very much in the tone of The Spectator‘s leading article endorsing Brexit – she even used the same ‘Out, and into the world’ language we put on our cover. The referendum, she said, was ‘a vote to restore, as we see it, our parliamentary democracy, national self-determination and to and become even more global and internationalist in action and in spirit.’ She spoke so persuasively about the case for Brexit that you almost forgot that she campaigned (or, at least, voted) against it. But after a decent period of reflection, her conversion to Brexistism is

The British people, whose good nature is so frequently abused, could have done with hearing today’s argument from Daniel Hannan during the referendum campaign, could they not?  Before he and his band of zealots received authorisation to manage our economic and political future it would have been good manners if they had told us how far they wanted to go. All the way, seems to be the answer now.  In the bluff language of a drunk roaring on friends in a barroom brawl, Hannan tells us on the Spectator website not to be ‘wusses’. So what if, and contrary to what they told us last year, Brexit now means crashing

The trouble with plebiscites is that they leave the plebs stranded. A complicated issue is reduced to one question: should we leave the EU, yes or no. Nowhere on the ballot does it ask whether we should leave the single market or currency union, crash into the WTO without trade agreements with the rest of the world, or tear up employment protections. There is just the deceptively simple question. It provides no guidance to which of the thousands of possible futures we could chose when it is answered. The Leavers might have interpreted the referendum result as meaning Britain should embrace the Norway model; and pay the price for staying

Boris Johnson returned from the US this week boasting that the UK was now ‘first in line’ for a trade deal with the US. He said that the Trump team and the new Congress ‘want to do it fast’. But as I write in The Sun this morning, the situation is even more advanced than this. I understand that the Trump team is already working on the outlines of a US / UK trade deal. Interestingly, they want the deal to be pencilled in before the UK leaves the EU, though the UK could not formally sign it until it has left the bloc. The US’s keenness for a trade

The Guardian has a very significant story on its front page tomorrow. It has obtained notes of a meeting that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, had with senior MEPs this week. These notes show that Barnier told them that he wanted a ‘special’ deal that would guarantee access for the EU firms and countries to the City of London’s financial markets. Interestingly, Barnier also said—according to The Guardian’s account—that ‘There will need to be work outside of the negotiation box … in order to avoid financial instability.” This suggests that Barnier shares Mark Carney’s view that there are financial stability risks for Europe if the EU cuts itself off