Brexit

Saturday

James Forsyth

The two sides of the Tory leadership contest

The way to think about the Tory leadership contest is—I say in The Sun, this morning—that it is like a tournament with two sides of the draw, with each side sending one candidate into the final, membership round. One side of the draw is for full-on Brexiteers. Here Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom, Steve Baker and Esther McVey will duke it out. The other side of the draw features the Cabinet candidates: Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Michael Gove, Matt Hancock and Rory Stewart. Whoever comes out of the full-on Brexit side of the draw will go into the final round as the strong favourite given Tory members’ views on the subject. I understand that Boris Johnson has edged ahead of Dominic Raab on this side of the draw.

Friday

Katy Balls

The timetable for the Tory leadership contest

After Theresa May announced that she will step down on Friday 7 June as the leader of the Conservative party, the race to find her successor is due to officially commence the following Monday. Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis, along with the vice-chairs of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers,  have issued a joint statement laying out the process for this contest. Notably 1922 chair Graham Brady's name is missing from the statement – leading to speculation he has recused himself on the grounds that the Tory backbencher may run himself. Under the new timetable, nominations will close in the week commencing 10 June. Then there will be 'successive rounds of voting' which will keep going until a final choice of two candidates remain.

Robert Peston

The leadership contest solves nothing

Theresa May has been forced from office by her own MPs because they concluded there would be no progress on delivering Brexit, or on anything important, while she remained their leader. But if they thought her government was characterised by factionalism and chaos, they ain’t seen nothing yet. Because the big facts of her failed government – no majority in parliament, religious divisions on how to leave the EU – cannot be wished away. The Buddha would struggle to pacify and unite her fractious party. And the Buddha is unusual in not running to be Tory leader. The coming weeks of battle for the Tory crown, which officially starts 10 June but is already happening in guerrilla skirmishes, will make Game of Thrones seem as tame as Teletubbies.

Thursday

Toby Young

The paranoid style in British politics

From our US edition

The politics professor Matthew Goodwin made an interesting comment on Twitter earlier this week. He pointed out that many of the elements of the ‘paranoid style’ in politics – a phrase coined by Richard Hofstadter in a famous essay to describe right-wing populist movements – are now as common on the Left as they are on the Right. Goodwin mentioned ‘Remainia’ as being particularly susceptible to the paranoid style, which is characterized by ‘heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy’, according to Hofstadter. That struck me as an astute observation and I’ve tried to flesh out the idea in my Spectator column today.

paranoid
The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 May 2019

Home The country went to the polls to elect Members of the European Parliament and express its loathing for the two main political parties. On the eve of polling, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, appealed for MPs’ support for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to be introduced shortly, saying that it would contain a provision for a vote on another referendum. In response, those she meant to woo reacted with hostility. The 1922 Committee had promised to have another little word with her about resigning after the bill’s fortunes became clear. Lord Heseltine had the Tory whip removed after saying he would vote for the Lib Dems in the EU elections.

Stephen Daisley

Brexit and the great liberal crack-up

Brexit may yet kill the Conservative party but it is exacting a cruel psychological torture on liberalism. Liberals are supposed to be the measured voice of reason – earnest, insufferable but reliably level-headed. Not anymore. Liberals – or at least some of them – have gone quite mad over Brexit. There is almost no intrigue they will not seize on if it might explain away the last three years. TV historian Dan Snow tweeted a photograph of his postal ballot and the Brexit Party leaflet he claimed had been delivered inside the same envelope. When celebrity Twitter flicks on its blue-tick sirens, craven officialdom comes running but they brought bad news.

James Forsyth

What will happen if Theresa May tries to cling on?

On Friday, Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, will go and see Theresa May. It is expected that she’ll tell him and then the country the date of her departure as Tory leader. If May tries to hang on, Brady will have to open the sealed envelopes which reveal whether the '22 executive has voted to change the rules and allow an immediate no confidence vote in May—even those on the executive who oppose a rule change accept that there is a majority for one. Number 10 know this too, which is why I don’t think there’ll be any attempt by May to argue that she’s not going anywhere. But May will not resign immediately. Rather she’ll name a date in the next few weeks.

Katy Balls

Keeping up with Farage

‘Labour are in so much trouble here you can’t even believe it,’ says Nigel Farage as we sit in a parked blue bus in Dudley in the pouring rain. Outside, a group of campaigners in anoraks wave Brexit party banners and sing ‘Bye bye EU’ to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. A mix of locals and supporters from out of town have assembled to hear Farage. A Japanese camera crew rush to film the circus around him. Reporters from New York are following the pack. Keeping up with Farage is exhausting. When Farage was last in Dudley, the town went on to vote overwhelmingly to Leave, by 67 per cent. Back then, he tells those assembled, the sun was shining. The change in weather, he says, reflects the change in our politics.

James Forsyth

May’s grave mistake

The European elections were a gift for Britain’s two new political parties, Change UK and the Brexit party. But only the latter seized the opportunity. Change UK have had myriad problems. They have been unable to settle on a name and a logo. Their MPs, exiles from the two main parties, have struggled to understand how minor parties get noticed. But the biggest problem seems to be that their strategy almost assumes Brexit has happened: how else to explain their failure to propose some kind of Remain alliance for this contest? In order to get lift-off, Change UK need Labour to have ‘betrayed’ Remain voters. But the Labour leadership has consistently tacked towards a second referendum to avoid a full-on breach with its Remain base.

Matthew Parris

Boris is just the man to bury Brexit

Sit down, my swivel-eyed Brexiter friend, and pour yourself a stiff whisky. I’ve something to tell you that’s going to be a bit difficult for both of us. Sitting comfortably? Your swivel-eyed Remainer columnist has discerned just the tiniest glint of a silver lining to the dark cloud of a possible Boris Johnson premiership. And the reason? It’s this. The most important ability the next Tory leader must possess is the ability to break bad news. To get away with this and bring the voters with you, real leadership is required: not just eloquence, not just empathy, but the command, the confidence and the sheer guts to face the inevitable, grab the bull by the horns, and spit it out.

Nick Lezard

Grave meditations

In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition. Between 2012 and his death, aged 84, in 2016, Hill wrote another 271 poems, and here they are — although, given his productivity since the mid-1990s, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were plenty more. But the poems in The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin look as though they are part of a deliberate and ordered sequence, all of them using the same form, of irregular lines, occasional internal rhymes and Hill’s characteristic style, hopping over centuries with semi-cryptic allusions, barks of rage and mordant humour. I say ‘semi-cryptic’ because sometimes it is hard to follow his trains of thought.

Wednesday

Dominic Walsh

The Tories angry about May’s deal are missing the point

The Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, in which she announced a 'ten-point offer' to parliament for a 'new Brexit deal' has gone down like the proverbial cold cup of sick with many Conservative MPs. The rage isn’t just confined to the 28 Brexiteer hold-outs who voted against the deal on 29 March either – so far, another 40 MPs who previously voted for the deal have indicated they will not vote for the proposed Withdrawal Agreement Bill. Overall, with little sign of movement towards the deal from Labour, it seems the Prime Minister is going backwards.

James Forsyth

Will Theresa May resign rather than be pushed?

The upshot of today’s drama is that Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, will go and see Theresa May on Friday. Now this might not seem like much. But I understand that the ‘22 Executive will meet again if necessary on Friday. In other words, this meeting is Theresa May’s chance to resign rather than be pushed. Cabinet and ministerial support for May is draining away at a rapid rate. It is a sign of the end when No. 10 is having to refuse requests for meetings. If May doesn’t go, then it is almost certain that there’ll be a move against her as soon as parliament returns from recess. As one of those involved in today’s discussions tells me, this is now a question of precise timings.

James Forsyth

Theresa May’s time is almost up

Things are moving fast in Westminster. Theresa May’s position is now more precarious than it has been at any point in her premiership and that’s saying something. Three things have changed. First, it is clear that May’s last roll of the dice hasn’t worked—the Withdrawal Agreement Bill isn’t going to pass second reading. As a consequence of that, Tories who want a deal – as well as those who favour no deal – are now moving towards the belief that May should go. The third thing that has happened is that cabinet ministers, who up to now have thought that a delay to a leadership contest was in their interests, are now realising that association with this package is toxic in party terms.

Ross Clark

The EU’s role in the demise of British Steel

How ironic that British Steel goes into administration on the day before the European elections, putting 4,200 jobs at risk in a leave-voting constituency. And how utterly fatuous to blame Britain’s vote to leave the EU for the failure of the Scunthorpe plant. There is a link with Brexit, but it is not the one mentioned in passing on BBC news bulletins this morning – that our leaving the EU has frightened off European customers. If anything, the fall in the pound since 2016 should have helped British Steel, making its exports to the rest of the EU cheaper. But that has not been enough to counter the mass of cheap steel that is coming out of China. The Scunthorpe plant very nearly closed in 2016, when its then owner Tata Steel, decided to jettison it.

Robert Peston

The utter irrelevance of the Tories and Labour

Call me old fashioned, but I find it impossible to see how any Tory leader could survive crashing to fifth place in a national election and picking up just 7 per cent of the vote - which is what YouGov predicts in the Times. Of course it's only one survey. The real vote tomorrow may yield a better outcome. And Labour is also set for a humiliating night, with just 13 per cent of votes cast, say the pollsters. But 7 per cent for the supposed natural party of government, for just the past couple of centuries, is the kind of humiliation that few institutions would shrug off. May should count herself very fortunate she isn't a football manager, because she'd have been back managing Port Vale some time ago.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Theresa May’s latest Brexit pitch goes down badly with Tory MPs

Theresa May has made her latest Brexit deal pitch – and it isn't going down well with Tory MPs. The Prime Minister used a speech this afternoon to say Parliament will get a vote on whether to hold a second referendum if it backs the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill. But Simon Clarke – a Tory MP who supported the PM's deal the last time around – has changed his mind and vowed to vote the deal down. Here is what he said: And Simon Clarke wasn't the only Tory MP to vent his fury at the PM in the aftermath of her speech. Owen Paterson said the offer is a 'direct insult to 17.

James Kirkup

Can Brexiteers trust Boris Johnson to deliver a ‘real’ Brexit?

The current Westminster consensus that Boris Johnson is the next Tory leader and prime minister raises all sorts of thoughts. Among them is to speculate about the sheer terror this consensus should strike in the man himself, given that Westminster consensus has been wrong about basically everything in the last three years.  For what it’s worth, I also think Johnson is the favourite to replace Theresa May, but I also thought Remain would win the referendum, that May could never be PM, and that she would win her general election with an increased majority. I suspect most of the people now sagely tipping Johnson as a dead cert made similar predictions.   But we are where we are, and so all the chat around the Commons is about prime minister Boris Johnson.

Katy Balls

Theresa May is on course for an even worse defeat on her Brexit deal

By what margin will Theresa May's Brexit deal be defeated when it returns to the Commons after recess? The expectation in government is that it will be voted down for a fourth time – and the loss will be greater than on the third vote. The hope in Downing Street is that a bad result for both the Tories and Labour in the European elections will incentivise MPs to take what could be their last shot at passing the Withdrawal Agreement – ahead of a new Tory leader coming in and shaking things up. May is also set to unveil a host of changes – what you could call concessions – to the Withdrawal Agreement on workers' rights and Parliament's role in the negotiations in a bid to win more votes from across the House.