Brexit

Westminster might it be on its Christmas holidays, but the question that is still on everyone in government’s mind is can Theresa May find a way to get the DUP to back her Brexit deal. As I write in The Sun this morning, key Cabinet Ministers believe that her only chance of winning the meaningful vote comes from getting the DUP on side. One Secretary of State who has kept open lines of communication with them, tells me that ‘by grim necessity, they will need something more than cosmetic concessions to vote for the deal’. This minister explains that ‘the DUP want a bankable reassurance that the backstop won’t be permanent and that there won’t be progressive divergence between Great Britain and Northern Ireland’.

Here we go again. The New York Times has a habit these days of publishing pieces which take a rather dim view of Brexit Britain. The paper has published a questionable report on 'austerity Britain' complete with a slew of glaring omissions, news of Brits allegedly stockpiling food, an article on British cuisine with glaring inaccuracies and most recently asked UK citizens to get in touch with their accounts of experiencing petty crime in the capital. Now the paper has turned its ire on the UK franchise Bluebird London. The restaurant has opened shop in New York. The reviewer wasn't impressed by the dishes on offer and so has naturally compared the restaurant to...

When Boris Johnson was foreign secretary, he was admonished for accusing the EU of wanting to administer ‘punishment beatings’ to Britain for its temerity in wanting to leave the EU. In the months since it has become clear just how apt his description was. At every turn, the EU has acted with one aim in mind: to try to ensure that Britain suffers from exiting the EU, in order to deter other member states from contemplating leaving the bloc. Today’s memo from the EU, laying out the plans for what would happen in the event of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit is a case in point. It is hard, reading this document, to reconcile it with the EU’s claim to be an organisation which promotes free trade and free movement of people and goods.

A few months ago, the People’s Vote campaign was on the fringe of the national conversation. Today, we are seen by an ever-growing number of MPs as the best – perhaps only – way forward to break out of the current political impasse. As it becomes more likely that the British people will be given the right to have the final say about whether they wish to proceed with a Brexit that can never fulfil the promises made in the referendum of 2016 – or offer terms as good as the deal we’ve already got in the EU – we accept that the media will subject our every statement to increased scrutiny. And, like any campaign, we will make mistakes from time to time. Ross Clark pointed one of these out on Coffee House.

Several cabinet ministers have publicly backed a series of indicative votes in the Commons on the various Brexit options. I understand why, but they're wrong: this approach is both messy and misguided. The best thing for MPs is to spend their Christmas break thinking carefully. Those who have criticised Theresa May's Brexit deal should carefully think through their opposition. It's my view that reports of the death of May's deal are greatly exaggerated. It's obvious there are only now three real options when it comes to Brexit: Leave with no deal; Leave with May's deal; or, don't Leave. Every possible path falls into one of these three boxes. Managed no deal (whatever that is or isn't) is a way of dressing up no deal with a nice bow.

Liam Fox - Parliament could have a free vote on Brexit The International Trade Secretary joined Andrew Marr this morning to discuss Brexit's next steps following a turbulent week which saw the Prime Minister win a vote of confidence by 200 votes to 117. With the date for Parliament's 'meaningful vote' on the Brexit deal now pushed back until mid-January, Liam Fox entertained a potential course of action still open to the government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OuCktv1INE AM: Shouldn’t Tory MPs... be allowed a free vote? LF: Well that’s not something that we have considered.

The stakes could not be higher now. We face the biggest political crisis for at least a couple of generations. The risks are now both a democratic crisis and an economic one. We just cannot go on as we have been: evading and obfuscating choices – indeed frequently denying, against all evidence, that there are unavoidable choices. And the public will understandably not, for a very long time, forgive a political class which on all sides of the divide fails to level with it on the choices being made. This feels a rather unseasonal theme but as we are approaching Christmas I thought I would therefore talk about nine lessons we need to draw from the last two and a half years, if the next two and a half – indeed the next decade – are not to be even more painful.