Brexit

Friday

James Kirkup

You can thank Remainers for the hardness of this Brexit

The first chapter of Britain’s Brexit story ends tonight. For some, that’s something to celebrate. For others it means sadness. For most of us, I suspect, emotions are mixed: a bit of relief at the sense of clarity that underpins politics; a bit of optimism that we might all learn from the psychodrama/culture war of 2016-2019; a bit of foreboding about the Brexit dramas still to come. I voted Remain. I believed that despite its flaws (and I know them well: I covered more than 50 EU summits as a reporter, and projects including birth of the euro, the stability and growth pact and the European Constitution) Britain’s long-term interests

Thursday

Steerpike

The five stages of Brexit grief

It’s been more than three years since the Brexit referendum, and we’re only a day away from actually leaving the EU, but it appears that some of the UK’s residents are still struggling to come to terms with the country’s exit from the European Union. Today, the pollster YouGov released a survey of Remain voters in the UK, in which it asked which of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) closest described how they feel about the EU referendum result. The options ranged from the rather sanguine, ‘I have come to terms with the fact that the UK will leave the EU’, to full-throated denial,

Fiona Mountford

Will ‘performative Europeanness’ end on Brexit day?

The Rubicon has almost been crossed, the die has almost been cast and whatever other choice phrases from European history spring to mind. As we leave the European Union, to the cheers of the 52 per cent and the tears of the 48, what most interests me as a reluctant Remainer is how, or indeed whether, it will affect our collective national sense of Europeanness. In certain – London, metropolitan – quarters, this somewhat elusive quality has been getting an exhaustive airing and we may well need to brace ourselves for a further mass outbreak of EU flag waving in the coming weeks. One of the most fascinating aspects of

Tuesday

Charles Day

The Brexit wrangle shows exactly why we needed to leave in the first place

Last Friday marked the signing of the Withdrawal Agreement. I know that some people in our country are still a bit upset. But what happened last week matters. We all know that we’ve just had three and a half difficult years. But we had them together – we shared them. Three and a half years of parliament being gloriously frustrating, entertaining and overall a bit odd. Three and a half years of our courts and our beloved institutions forcing us to try very hard to recall why we love them. Three and a half years of democracy. After these three and a half years, our parliament, the body of 650

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

The deranged rage against the Brexit 50p coin

Remoaners are having the mother of all meltdowns. What’s rankled them this time? The Brexit 50p, of course. Yes, they’re now raging against a coin. I’m genuinely starting to worry about these people. To clarify, I’m not talking about Remain voters. There were 16.1m of those and the vast majority of them are perfectly normal people who understand how democracy works. They aren’t having sleepless nights about the new 50p, released to mark the UK’s departure from the EU. No, I mean hardcore Remainers, the FBPE people, the folks who think Brexit is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to Blightly. I mean the kind of people who think

Thursday

Ross Clark

Will house prices rise after Brexit?

A headline in the Times this week appeared to speak of a boom in house prices since the general election: “Housing Market Enjoys Boris Boost as Prices Rise at Record Rate”. Given Britain’s history of house price booms and busts that sounded dramatic indeed, so what did it really mean? The ‘record’ which turned out to have been broken turned out to be the change in asking prices – as measured by property website Rightmove – between December and January. This month, the average asking price for a property in Britain is £306,810, £6785 or 2.3 percent higher than it was in December. The previous highest uplift that Rightmove has

Wednesday

Alexander Downer

The free trade deal Britain must sign up to after Brexit

Now the UK is leaving the EU, Boris Johnson’s government can start planning a serious trade strategy for life after Brexit. So far the focus has been on a UK/US free trade agreement. But before that, the initial challenge for Britain will be to establish a rational set of priorities. First, the government must ask what resources is it prepared to commit to trade policy? Second, it needs to establish what trade agreements would be most beneficial to the UK economy. After all, there’s no point in giving priority to a laborious trade negotiation with, say, Burkina Faso, if the benefits of that agreement would be very limited. And third,

Tuesday

Gavin Barwell

How to run Number 10: An insider’s guide

Gavin Barwell was Theresa May’s chief of staff between 2017 and 2019. He was the MP for Croydon Central between 2010 and 2017 and served May as secretary of state for housing. He was made a life peer last year. This is a transcript of a speech he gave to the Institute for Government last night. I became chief of staff to the prime minister in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 election. I had lost my seat, the result was declared in the early hours of Friday morning. I went back to bed because I’d been up for about 30 hours at that point. And then I did a media

Sunday

Robert Tombs

Britain after Brexit: it’s time to decide on our place in the world | 12 January 2020

‘Global Britain’: a phrase that provokes mockery and even indignation. As an alternative to EU membership many consider it impossible and worse, undesirable. Are we capable of true independence, or is this an illusion? Does ‘global Britain’, as its bitterest critics accuse, draw on imperial nostalgia and nationalistic arrogance? Or is it a rational response to a changing world? It is certainly not a new response. Britain has been a global player since the 1730s. Since the early 1800s we have had to be: with a population of 14 million we were no longer able to feed ourselves, and Britain’s enemies looked forward to the day when it would starve.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The Brexit drama to come

This week has shown how much the election has changed. The withdrawal agreement has sailed through the Commons and in Northern Ireland, there has been an agreement to get the assembly and the executive back up and running. As I say in The Sun this morning, ministers were struck by how Brexit got only the briefest of mentions at Cabinet this week despite the legislation being before the House. Pre-election, the whole conversation would have been about whether the government had the votes and what it should do if it did not. Boris Johnson is very keen that this year isn’t dominated by Brexit. Sat Cabinet this week, he again

Brendan O’Neill

Why people who hate Brexit love Megxit

It is actually fitting that Harry and Meghan’s decision to leave the UK is being referred to as Megxit. Because this royal temper tantrum, this flouncing out of the UK by the most painfully PC couple in monarchical history, has much in common with Brexit. Like Brexit, it has exposed the vast moral divide that now separates the new elite, of which H&M are key figureheads, from ordinary people. Like Brexit, it has confirmed that this nation is now split, in David Goodhart’s words, between ‘Anywhere’ people and ‘Somewhere’ people. ‘Anywheres’ are post-national, geographically mobile and often sniffy about those old, apparently outdated values of community life and familial loyalty.

Thursday

The Spectator

A big Tory majority. So where are the Conservative policies?

What is the point of a Conservative majority? The answer might once have been to implement Conservative policies. But now it’s not so clear. Budgets are normally the way to judge a government, but we didn’t have one last year. On 11 March, we will learn how Sajid Javid intends to govern the public finances and just how far the Tory government is able to take advantage of the unprecedented political opportunity. It will become clear whether the government sees this moment as a time for boldness, or caution. Leaving the European Union is a radical act, but its effect is mainly political. It will remove a constraint, but will

James Forsyth

Revealed: Boris’s blueprint for Brexit

For the first time since the referendum, the United Kingdom has a strong government that knows what it wants from Brexit. This will make the second round of the negotiations with the EU very different from the first. Theresa May famously declared, and repeated, that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. This was a soundbite designed to conceal fundamental differences within her cabinet about what it did actually mean. They were never resolved. Many in her cabinet, and especially the Brexiteers, thought that Brexit must mean fully leaving the customs union and the single market. But Philip Hammond, her Chancellor, and Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, thought that it was essential to avoid

Robert Tombs

Britain after Brexit: it’s time to decide on our place in the world

‘Global Britain’: a phrase that provokes mockery and even indignation. As an alternative to EU membership many consider it impossible and worse, undesirable. Are we capable of true independence, or is this an illusion? Does ‘global Britain’, as its bitterest critics accuse, draw on imperial nostalgia and nationalistic arrogance? Or is it a rational response to a changing world? It is certainly not a new response. Britain has been a global player since the 1730s. Since the early 1800s we have had to be: with a population of 14 million we were no longer able to feed ourselves, and Britain’s enemies looked forward to the day when it would starve.

Lionel Shriver

For cod’s sake, don’t sacrifice the fish

One of the more dispiriting experiences of the British supermarket is a visit to the fish counter. On a  historically seagoing island, the selection is often abysmal, frequently imported, and always expensive: farmed Norwegian salmon, farmed Vietnamese basa (blech), cod gone a suspicious taupe and priced like its weight in saffron (83 per cent of the cod consumed in the UK is also imported; why?) and maybe a few locally sourced mackerel or sardines, depending on the day. Otherwise, vinegary cockles, leathery kippers and smoked haddock the garish colour of a child’s toy substitute for a fresh catch from British waters. Worse, at my nearest Tesco, as of two months

Matthew Parris

My fellow Remainers should not aim for a ‘soft Brexit’

‘I like to write when I’m feeling spiteful,’ remarked D.H. Lawrence. ‘It’s like having a good sneeze.’ A perennial challenge for a Fleet Street columnist is how to walk the fine line between writing as though your opinion mattered, and writing as though it were just an entertaining sneeze. My fellow Spectator columnist, Rod Liddle, has developed a very marketable pitch in the columnar sneeze. I perhaps err on the other side: writing with the implicit suggestion that the nation waits upon my verdict. I know, of course, that nobody does, but have to pretend to myself (and inhabit the pretence) that I’m a kind of prime minister-in-waiting, and my

Wednesday

Matthew Lynn

Three ways Britain should refuse to stick to the EU’s rules in trade talks

It is hard to imagine there will be much of a meeting of minds. As the new president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen meets with the newly re-elected British Prime Minister Boris Johnson today the pleasantries will quickly give way to a strong clash of views. With our departure from the EU set for the end of the month, trade talks are about to open. Brussels is desperate to lock the UK into its regulatory system. But quite rightly, the government is resisting that. After all, there was no point in leaving only to accept all the EU rules and regulations, except this time with no say

Friday

Patrick O’Flynn

Give Nigel Farage a peerage

Almost half of Tory supporters think that Nigel Farage deserves a peerage, according to a new poll. And while some 53 per cent of the overall public are said to oppose the elevation of Farage to the Lords, if anyone does deserve to become a peer the Brexit party leader should certainly make the shortlist. Elevation to the Lords is meant to be an exceptional honour for exceptional people. This, of course, isn’t always the case. Over recent decades it has all too often been a reward for reliable placemen who have done a party leader’s bidding with such obsequiousness that not sending them down the corridor to wallow in

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Don’t worry, Frans, Britain loves Europe back

As a lifelong Europhile, I rather liked the love letter to Britain from Frans Timmermans, vice president of the new European Commission. We in this country do love Europe, its people, its culture, its quirks, its diversity. Never has Britain been integrated more closely with the rest of Europe, never have we done more trade, never have more Brits lived in Europe and vice versa. The links between our peoples have never been stronger – and, after Brexit, will become stronger still. The idea of a union of governments, however, was not a model that worked for the UK: that much was decided in a referendum and reinforced in two

Tuesday

Matthew Goodwin

Nine lessons from the election: Boris was lucky – but he also played his hand right

The 2019 general election will be remembered as one of the most consequential elections in Britain’s recent history. Aside from rejecting a more economically radical Labour Party, the British people used the election to provide what their elected representatives had been unable to provide: an answer to Brexit. For Boris Johnson and the Conservative party, the election was a triumph. They won their largest majority since 1987 and the largest majority for any party since New Labour’s second landslide in 2001. Remarkably, and despite older arguments about the ‘costs of ruling’, a Conservative Party that had been in power for nearly a decade attracted nearly 44 per cent of the vote; this was not