Brexit

Wednesday

Steerpike

Chris Bryant brings Blair into the Brexit debate. What will Corbyn say?

Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party has been rather quiet when it comes to fighting for Britain to remain in the EU. Happily, Chris Bryant got the chance to put the pro-EU argument forward at last night’s Great Brexit debate, organised by the University of London Brexit Society. Sitting on a panel alongside SNP MP Stephen Gethins, Bryant did his best to convince the pro-Brexit speakers — who included Jacob Rees Mogg and Peter Lilley — and audience members why they ought to reconsider their position. To highlight the ‘confusion’ surrounding the referendum, Bryant kicked things off with an anecdote about a former Labour leader who has gone out of fashion of late. ‘I’m going to

Tuesday

Theodore Dalrymple

British expats in the EU fear a stronger euro far more than they fear Brexit

Whenever I return to England from my home in France I am struck at once by the number of grossly fat people of beached-whale proportions, by the almost militant vulgarity of much of the population, and by the shabbiness of the infrastructure. This suggests to me that our deeper problems are unrelated to our membership of the EU, and that we have neither the will nor the ability to solve them. This is not to say, however, that our membership serves our national interest. Brexit is possible, though I confess that I’ll believe it when I see it, given the integrity of our political class. Would Brexit affect my position

Tom Goodenough

Brexit won’t mean more expensive flights for Brits. Here’s why.

We’ve been warned that Brexit could spell the end of cheap travel. But is it really true that Britain voting out of Europe would hit holidaymakers in the pocket? Easyjet’s boss Dame Carolyn McCall said before that Brexit ‘wouldn’t be good for Britain’. And in a company prospectus, the airline warned this year that if Britain votes out in the EU referendum in June, then it could have a ‘material adverse effect’ on the budget airline. But does this hold up to scrutiny? Easyjet says that: ‘The outcome of this decision (in the referendum) could have a material adverse effect on easyJet’s financial condition and results of operations.’ Obviously for

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Tom Watson jokes about Labour’s misery

Although the Tories currently find their party divided over Europe, they can at least take heart that the opposition face greater internal conflict. In fact, rather than attack Matthew Hancock in the Commons today over the Cabinet’s Brexit issues, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson opted to make a joke about his own party’s misery: ‘Mr Speaker sadly I am not in the strongest of positions to lecture the poor minister on handling splits in his own party.’ Watson did at least manage to find time to take a small jab at the Conservatives. He asked the minister whether he really believed that Jeremy Heywood’s decision to ban SpAds from providing ministers with material that could be used to support Brexit would really

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Boris on Brexit and Project Fear’s ‘dragons and serpents’

Boris Johnson said he wanted to see ‘total transparency’ ahead of the EU referendum. He referred to this as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to get it right: Owen Paterson laid into ‘Project Fear’ – suggesting that by the time it got to June, ‘dragons coming out of the Thames’ and ‘serpents coming out of our taps’ could be predictions made by those supporting Remain if Britain did vote out: Whilst Matt Hancock didn’t mention dragons or serpents, he did say Brexit could mean ‘pain and problems’: Labour’s Emma Reynolds, speaking on the Daily Politics, insisted she wasn’t an MP who plotted over lunch and was a ‘perfectly straightforward politician’: And Michael

Friday

Michael Howard

Michael Howard: why it’s time to leave the EU

Michael Howard has said he believes Britain should leave the EU. The former Conservative leader said David Cameron’s attempts to renegotiate had ‘met with failure’. Here, in an extract from his article published in the Daily Telegraph, he says Britain is better off out of Europe: Europe’s leaders may spurn the possibility of a new round of negotiations. They – and others – will certainly deny any possibility of this kind between now and our vote. They want us to vote to remain. The Prime Minister says that the possibility of further negotiation is “for the birds”. We shall see. But if he’s right it will just mean that Europe’s

Thursday

Toby Young

Vote ‘leave’ and stop the blurring of Britain

I don’t remember the last European referendum being nearly as dramatic as the current one. In 1975, we were being asked about our membership of the Common Market, not the -European Union, so there was less at stake — at any rate, that’s what the inners -wanted us to believe. The battle was also much more one-sided. Then as now, the pro-European side included the Prime Minister and the leaders of the other two main parties, but there were fewer cabinet ministers on the other side and it was easier to -caricature the antis (Tony Benn, Enoch Powell) as extremists. In 1975, the national press was overwhelmingly in favour of

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Brexit, the BBC and Corbyn’s dress sense

David Owen said it was time for Britain to leave the EU. Speaking this morning, the SDP founder said Brexit was a way of restructuring Europe in the way it needed to be. Owen went on to say there was no need for Britain leaving behind the EU to be a damaging process: Dame Janet Smith published her review into Jimmy Savile at the BBC. She said the management structure of the BBC was deeply referential. Janet Smith – whose report was criticised as an ‘expensive whitewash’ – said staff didn’t speak out ‘because they felt it was not their place’: The BBC’s Lord Hall said it was a ‘grim

Theo Hobson

Are there any useful parallels between the EU referendum and religious history?

Niall Ferguson got me thinking about this in his Sunday Times piece, in which he rejected the allure of Brexit and declared himself an ‘Anglosceptic’. He concluded: ‘In the days before empire, Henry VIII’s version of Brexit was to renounce Roman Catholicism and divorce Catherine of Aragon. A true sceptic in those days would have advised him to Bremain — and unite against the Turk.’ It’s an odd choice of illustration, because in that case Brexit did work, it paved the way for a stronger braver England, then Britain. It was the making of us. Tudor history is surely a precedent in the Brexiters’ favour. So can Boris dress up

David Owen

Lord Owen: ‘Now is the time to vote to leave the EU’

The vision of a European Common Market was a good one when in 1962 membership was first envisaged for the UK. Nevertheless, we were rightly warned even then by the leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell, that a federal Europe lurked in the background. As far back as 1971 Edward Heath’s White Paper on entry misleadingly promised ‘no erosion of essential sovereignty’. That was untrue then and is much more so today. European law does override British law and David Cameron has failed to achieve any Treaty amendment to change this. What we have contrived in the EU is the pretension that you can be partly a country and

James Forsyth

The Tory dogfight

  [audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/insidethetorieseudogfight/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss the Tory dogfight over Europe”] Listen [/audioplayer] Many Tories had doubts about David Cameron’s EU renegotiation, but only Boris Johnson was promised a piece of legislation to assuage his particular concerns. It was quite a compliment. The so-called Sovereignty Bill was, in effect, the Get Boris Onside Act. It was designed to deal with the Mayor of London’s fears about the relationship between the British parliament and courts and the EU. It was also mooted that Boris would be offered a top cabinet job — perhaps Foreign Secretary. The Prime Minister was convinced that this combined offer would be

Nigel Farndale

Out on the farm

If the Church of England was once the Tory party at prayer, then the nation’s shotgun-owning farmers were the party’s armed wing. I grew up on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales and must have been about 18 before I met someone who didn’t identify as TBC (True Blue Conservative). Ours was one of the safest Tory seats in the country, with the local MP being Leon Brittan and then William Hague. And Margaret Thatcher was considered a hero in our ‘community’ not because of the Falklands war or her defeat of Arthur Scargill but because she liked to greet the dawn by listening to Farming Today on Radio 4

Tuesday

Steerpike

Eurosceptic ministers’ SpAds on a sticky wicket over Brexit

Although David Cameron insists that he wishes to remain on good terms with his Brexit-supporting Cabinet members, he’s not planning to make life easy for them. Today Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, has issued new guidance relating to the referendum that means SpAds and civil servants are banned from assisting Eurosceptic ministers with any material that could be used to back Brexit during office hours. While they will have to work in their spare time if they wish to help their Eurosceptic bosses, civil servants and SpAds are allowed to help ministers in the Remain camp during office hours: ‘It will not be permissible for the civil service to support ministers who oppose the government’s official position by providing briefing

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Philip Davies and David Cameron’s ‘loving hug’

Bernard Hogan-Howe was up in front of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee today where Keith Vaz did his best to soften up the Met Police commissioner at the start of the hearing by asking him for his views on the EU referendum. But Hogan-Howe said he wasn’t getting involved: Whilst on the subject of Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan, Hogan-Howe resolutely maintained his position. He told MPs that the apology he gave to Lady Brittan ‘was certainly a full apology’ for not having told her early enough that her husband was not being prosecuted: On the subject of the EU, David Cameron said he was ‘great friends’ with Boris

Brendan O’Neill

From Trumpmania to Euroscepticism: Revenge of the Plebs

The Third Wayists are quaking in their boots. The middle-class, middle-of-the-road technocrats who have dominated politics for the best part of three decades are freaking out. These people who bristle at anything ideological, are disdainful of heated debate, and have bizarrely turned the word ‘moderate’ into a compliment feel under siege. And no wonder they do, for on both sides of the Atlantic their very worst nightmare — a revenge of the plebs — is becoming flesh. You can see this sometimes clumsy but nonetheless forceful reassertion of pleb power in everything from Trumpmania to the staggering back to life of Euroscepticism — or what snooty moderates call ‘Europhobia’, because

Rod Liddle

The BBC isn’t much help for navigating through the Tory EU wars

Trying to navigate your way through the internecine wars in the Conservative Party over the referendum? Please allow the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg to help. This was her intro on the BBC website yesterday: Silence abhors a vacuum, and forgive me if you are not a fan of political conspiracy, and on a day like today you don’t have to look very far for huge ideological disputes, even if they’re not quite yet punch-ups. Good, glad that’s clear, then. A sentence which is a string of non-sequiturs kicked off with a remarkable image. Does silence abhor a vacuum? I suppose it might abhor a vacuum cleaner, because they can

Tom Goodenough

David Cameron on Boris: He’s a ‘great friend’ but he’s wrong

David Cameron must be getting fed up with questions about Boris by now but unfortunately for the Prime Minister they’re not going to go away anytime soon. That much was clear in his public press conference this morning. The PM managed to avoid making direct reference to Boris during his speech, in which he again played up the fact he has no vested interests involved with needing to fight another election, unlike his old friend. But after being asked directly whether he was referring to Boris in his speech in Parliament, Cameron could ignore the thorn in his side no longer. Here’s what he said about Boris: ‘I have huge

Steerpike

Breaking: David Icke backs Brexit

Although the Out campaign has gained momentum since Michael Gove and Boris Johnson backed Brexit, there are still concerns that the campaign is yet to find a leader. However, could their prayers be about to be answered? Step forward David Icke. Yes, the Corbyn-loving purple-tracksuit-wearing-lizard-conspiracist has plumped for Out, with a series of eye-catching pieces of clip art: June 23 – NO to EU dark suits running your life (and they have hardly begun if we stay in): https://t.co/1KQCrXfyzj pic.twitter.com/aLOf6GUb11 — David Icke (@davidicke) February 21, 2016 Key figures choose sides as Cameron sets EU referendum date: https://t.co/bLNdP1bdn9 pic.twitter.com/F3CLVvAEVS — David Icke (@davidicke) February 21, 2016 The So-called German-Turkish Secret Pact

Ed West

Why are so few big business leaders for remain?

How come so few big business leaders signed up to David Cameron’s letter in favour of remain? As the Daily Mail reported this morning: High street shops including Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Next and banks such as Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland did not put their names to the letter published today. It had been suggested that bosses of 80 of the FTSE 100 firms would sign the pro-Brussels letter, but in fact only 36 have done so. One would have thought big business leaders to be largely in favour of staying, since membership suits big best; it is not just that they are most likely to be involved in exports,

Tom Goodenough

Bromley has spoken: South London council backs Brexit – but why?

First, it was Michael Gove. Next, it was Boris Johnson. Now, a slightly smaller political beast in the form of Bromley council has come out and backed Brexit. The South London council voted last night to say it believed Britain was better off out of Europe. It passed a motion saying: This council agrees that the negative impacts that the European Union has upon the efficiency and costs of Bromley Council activities mean Bromley Council would be better off if Britain was out of the European Union Bromley isn’t the first council to back Brexit, with Havering having done the same at the end of January. But what’s different about Bromley