Brexit

Sunday

Ed West

Has the term ‘British’ lost all meaning?

From our UK edition

We've been filling in our son's school application form this week. Below his name, date of birth and gender - which I'm horrified to see only has two options, despite the form clearly stating that it is indeed 2017 - is 'ethnicity'. I suppose I'm meant to put 'White British' although I dislike the phrase. Nine-times out of ten when I see the W-word used in the media it's as an insult or gripe, usually followed by 'privilege' or - shudder -'feminist'. Of course, there's another term we could use instead: English. According to the Guardian: 'English patriotism is on the rise at the expense of a sense of British identity, with voters in England increasingly likely to describe themselves as solely English, according to research.

Saturday

James Forsyth

A US / UK free trade deal is the big prize for Theresa May

From our UK edition

Theresa May’s team will be basking this morning in the write-ups of her successful visit to Washington. As I say in The Sun this morning, the big prize for her is a US / UK free trade deal. Government ministers think that, given the political will on both sides, the deal could be negotiated in just eight months. There is also confidence in Whitehall that the US will be prepared to grant an exemption for public services which would ‘protect’ the NHS. This should do much to reduce the intensity of the opposition to the deal. Trump’s protectionist rhetoric is often cited as a reason why a US / UK deal won’t happen, or will be very limited.

Thursday

Taki

High life | 26 January 2017

From our UK edition

 Gstaad The snows came tumbling down just as the camel-drivers headed back to the Gulf. In fact, they never saw the white outdoor stuff. And a good thing it was, too. The outdoor stuff makes everything look so pretty that the glitzy types might have been tempted to return. God forbid. Let them stick to the indoor white stuff. The problem with Gstaad is the local council. They remind me of the EU: they’re intransigent, short-sighted and stick to a losing game. In Brussels they keep passing more and more laws and regulations. In Gstaad, they keep putting up their prices and building more and more apartments. As a gentleman with a close association to The Spectator told me, ‘My son doesn’t come here because there are no young women around.

The Spectator

Trading places | 26 January 2017

From our UK edition

After any other US election it would cause little comment that the new president had chosen the British Prime Minister for his first meeting with a foreign leader. Yet this time, Theresa May’s trip to Washington feels quite a coup. She has fallen out of favour with her fellow EU leaders, sent home from December’s summit in Brussels without any supper as they tried to portray her as internationally isolated. Yet here she is being invited to the White House, lured with the promise of a trade deal. How long ago it seems that Barack Obama was threatening to send Britain to the ‘back of the queue’ if the country voted for Brexit.

Ross Clark

Don’t listen to the ‘alternative facts’ being spewed out about Britain’s economy

From our UK edition

I don’t know about Donald Trump’s press conferences, but there are certainly enough ‘alternative facts’ being spewed out by the Remain lobby. This morning the Office of National Statistics (ONS) produced its first estimate for economic growth in the last quarter of 2016. It came out at 0.6 per cent, a notch up from the 0.5 per cent which analysts had been expecting and putting annual growth at 2 per cent. We can no longer claim to be the fastest-growing economy in the G7 as annualised growth in a booming US has accelerated to 3.5 per cent. Moreover, the ONS’s figures are provisional.

Nick Hilton

The Spectator podcast: Holland’s hurricane

From our UK edition

On this week’s episode, we discuss the hurricane that’s headed for Holland, the state of parliamentary sovereignty here at home, and whether taxing horses is really the way to go. First up: with elections in the Netherlands less than two months away, the eyes of Europe’s political pundits are being drawn to the clash between the incumbent People’s Party and the insurgent Party for Freedom, led by the charismatic controversialist, Geert Wilders. Will the Dutch be the next domino to fall to right-wing populism? And what exactly is the deal with Wilders, a man who was banned from travelling to Britain due to his vociferous criticism of Islam?

James Forsyth

A wake-up call for Parliament

From our UK edition

Parliament is the cockpit of the nation, but MPs have been on autopilot rather a lot in the past 40-odd years. Ever since the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community, more and more powers have been passed away from Parliament to Brussels and its institutions. Brexit will see these powers come flowing back to Westminster. So it was appropriate that the Supreme Court has decided that Parliament must legislate for the triggering of Article 50, the two-year process by which this country will leave the EU. For MPs to vote against Article 50 would be to vote against the referendum result itself; it says nothing about the terms on which Britain will leave the EU.

Liam Halligan

Keynes’s grandchild

From our UK edition

‘Did you really deserve the Nobel prize?’ I ask Amartya Sen. ‘Why do you think you won?’ When you’re sitting opposite the world’s most respected living economist, at a time when the dismal science is under intense scrutiny, an opening question should be punchy. Thankfully, Sen, an 83-year-old Harvard professor, has a sense of humour. ‘You can’t ask me that,’ he says with a grin. ‘I have absolutely no idea why I won.’ He then composes himself. ‘Like any researcher, I’m happy if my work interests others,’ he says carefully. ‘But it would be a pretty bad way to conduct one’s life, thinking about how to win prizes, rather than being listened to.’ Sen has achieved both.

Freddy Gray

Washington Notebook | 26 January 2017

From our UK edition

On Wednesday afternoon I went to the British embassy in Washington for ‘a tea and champagne reception’ to mark the inauguration of President Trump. Like most institutions, the embassy has struggled to come to terms with the Donald. We all know (thanks to Twitter) that Trump wants Nigel Farage to be the UK representative in DC, which must leave the current ambassador, Sir Kim Darroch, feeling a bit tense. Still, Sir Kim managed to draw some big Republican beasts to his party: Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Rand Paul and Newt Gingrich to name but four. Everybody said the special relationship was very special — they would, wouldn’t they? — and that, thanks to the Trump-Brexit phenomenon, it would get even better. But they looked spooked.

Rod Liddle

Brexit’s biggest political victims: Ukip

From our UK edition

Perversity is a much undervalued British trait, much more redolent of our real psyche than queuing, drinking tea or being tolerant of foreigners and homosexuals — all things for which we are better renowned. Seeing Dunkirk as a victory was magnificently perverse. So, too, was electing a Labour government in 2005 shortly after we had invaded a sovereign country and created a civil war. For ‘perversity’ I suppose you could read ‘complexity’, although the two often amount to the same thing. Our reactions to stuff are never as straightforward as they should be — they are complex and therefore can seem perverse. And so it is right now.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Should the government publish a Brexit White Paper?

From our UK edition

Just a year ago, the phrase ‘Brexit rebels’ denoted Tory MPs like Peter Bone who had a distinguished pedigree of pushing the government to be as Eurosceptic as possible, with the odd eccentric comment along the way. Today, it means former Cabinet ministers such as Nicky Morgan, who are trying to push the government away from a ‘Hard Brexit’ - also with the odd eccentric comment about trousers. Those new Brexit rebels are now demanding that the government publish a White Paper on Brexit. Morgan, Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry want the government to ‘formalise the government strategy in a “reasoned fashion”’, as Grieve put it. This really isn’t the most difficult demand that the government has faced on Brexit.

Tuesday

Richard Ekins

What the Supreme Court got right and wrong in today’s judgment

From our UK edition

The Supreme Court has today rejected the Government’s appeal from the High Court judgment by a majority of eight justices to three.  The decision means that a new Act of Parliament will now be required before the Government may lawfully trigger Article 50.  However, the Court has also unanimously dismissed the devolution challenges, which argued that the consent of the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was a constitutional precondition to Brexit. The judgment is obviously important, but perhaps less important than once assumed.  The litigation was launched immediately after the referendum.

Tom Bill

Don’t blame Brexit: the vote to leave the EU has had little effect on the housing market

From our UK edition

As a former property journalist I understand why the media uses Brexit to explain the performance of the UK housing market. Or even, at a stretch, Donald Trump. House prices are a national obsession, but a Brexit headline gives the story an extra dimension. Coverage of all three subjects is likely to intensify in 2017, as this morning’s Article 50 verdict reminded us, so it seems like an appropriate moment to examine how close the links are between house prices, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union and the new US President. First, let’s look at prime central London (PCL), where you would expect the biggest impact to be felt. Knight Frank’s PCL index recorded a -6.

Fraser Nelson

Nicola Sturgeon’s Brexit charade continues

From our UK edition

With the predictability of an atomic clock, Nicola Sturgeon has come out today condemning the Supreme Court which has reminded her that foreign affairs are not devolved, so Brexit is handled by the UK government on behalf of everyone in the UK. She concludes that 'Scotland’s voice is not being heard and not being listened to within the UK'. She started wanting to find a compromise about Brexit, she said, trying to be reasonable. But she – or, rather Scotland because they are of course the same thing – faces 'hard-right Brexit opinion'. Nicola Sturgeon on the UK Government not having to consult the Scottish Government before triggering Article 50. https://t.co/pfqV2e3r2F pic.twitter.

Isabel Hardman

How ‘straightforward’ can the Government’s Brexit bill actually be?

From our UK edition

The Government may be accepting its defeat in the Supreme Court graciously overall, but David Davis was in a rather dismissive mood when he responded to Labour’s questions about the ruling in the House of Commons this afternoon. The Brexit Secretary gave a statement to the House explaining that ministers would publish ‘within days’ a bill that would give the Government the legal power to trigger Article 50. Both in the statement and in his responses to questions about it, he repeatedly told the Chamber that it would be a 'straightforward’ bill. Meanwhile the Government had already offered MPs plenty of scrutiny of the Brexit negotiations, and the Prime Minister had given the clearest speech on her negotiating position that Davis could think of.

Isabel Hardman

The mental gymnastics of the Brexit debate

From our UK edition

What a lot of contortions we are seeing this morning from so many quarters about the Article 50 ruling. Brexiteers such as Iain Duncan Smith are cross with the Supreme Court for ruling that Parliament must have a say on triggering the process for Brexit, with the former Tory leader telling the BBC this morning that the judgement raised ‘real constitutional issues’: ‘They have stepped into new territory here, where they have actually told parliament not just that they should do something, but actually what they should do. I think that leads further down the road to real constitutional issues about who is supreme in this role.

Saturday

James Forsyth

What does President Trump do to Brexit?

From our UK edition

With Theresa May expected to head to Washington next week to see President Trump, I have a look at what the Trump presidency might mean for Brexit in my Sun column this morning. Despite his protectionist rhetoric, on full show again yesterday, Donald Trump is keen on a US / UK trade agreement. He has told people that he would like to get personally involved in negotiating the deal. I understand that his transition team has done more work on it than they have for any other agreement. Squaring the circle between Trump’s protectionist rhetoric and his enthusiasm for a US / UK deal isn’t as hard as it first looks. The UK is not one of the low wage economies that Trump rails against the US doing deals with.

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Emily Thornberry’s opposition blues on Question Time

From our UK edition

On Thursday, Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet found themselves in disarray after the Labour leader suggested he would issue a three-line whip for MPs to vote to trigger Article 50. This upset many in his party as they had hoped he would make Labour’s consent -- at the very least -- conditional upon certain details being revealed or caveats regarding Britain's possible future as a tax haven. So, with that in mind, brains at Labour decided the best plan of action was to send Emily Thornberry on Question Time to field questions on the matter.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 19 January 2017

From our UK edition

Particle of faith Sir: Fraser Nelson draws our attention to the most worrying aspect of economists getting it wrong, which is their reluctance to recognise it (‘Don’t ask the experts’, 14 January). Some economists, seduced by sophisticated mathematical models, aspire to the status of, say, particle physicists, who can tell us they have found something called the Higgs boson. The fact that we tend to believe the particle physicists despite being more familiar with prices, jobs and buying and selling than with quantum equations comes down to physicists having a long track record of heeding the biologist E.O. Wilson’s advice: ‘Keep in mind that new ideas are commonplace, and almost always wrong.

The Spectator

Doing Brexit right

From our UK edition

From the start of the European Union referendum campaign, competing visions of Brexit have been advocated. To Nigel Farage, the case for leaving the European Union was all about what we did not like (the diktats, the immigration, etc). This played into the caricature cleverly presented by the Remain campaign: the shaking fist of Little England, a country that had had enough of foreigners and the tolerance that the European project represented. Then came the vision put to Britain by the Vote Leave campaign, articulated by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was of a globally minded Britain, fed up with the EU’s parochialism. A country itching to go out and into the world. Theresa May has now firmly endorsed the Boris Johnson vision.