Brexit

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why austerity is ending

The last day of the parliamentary term is usually an occasion for the government to get a whole bunch of bad news out of the way all at once. But this summer’s end-of-term announcements were used as a chance to put out some seemingly good news. Teachers, prison officers and members of the military will all receive pay increases of above 1 per cent for the first time in five years. The lifting of the public sector pay cap is another reminder of how politics and the Tories have moved on from the age of austerity that George Osborne announced in his 2009 conference speech. Much has been written about

Matthew Goodwin

Ukip reborn

The UK Independence Party might be about to make a comeback. Ever since Theresa May’s Chequers deal on Brexit, which went down very badly indeed among grassroots Conservatives and Leavers, the opinion polls have been kind to the Purple Army. The week after the Chequers deal went public, one pollster found support for the party had surged by five points to 8 per cent. It might not sound like much, but it is its best showing since March last year. Furthermore, such numbers are more than enough to tilt the balance at the next general election toward Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. Indeed, it is no coincidence that as Ukip recovered

Laura Freeman

Paris notebook | 26 July 2018

‘Problème est masculin; solution est féminine,’ says Brigitte, the adored French teacher at the British embassy in Paris. Good way to remember your ‘les’ and ‘las’. If only it were true. Theresa May has not — yet — solved Brexit. Angela Merkel has not resolved the migrant crisis. Anne Hidalgo, the city’s mayor, has not flushed out its rats. If she fails at re-election, it will be on pest control and tent cities. A sign on the Square du Temple gates asks picnickers to leave no croissant crumbs behind. It attracts the rats. Below, in black marker: ‘Et les Algériens?’ Not nice. But tempers run high in hot summers.  The

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Theresa May takes back control in Brexit talks

For months it has been claimed that Theresa May has been sidelining her Brexit department in talks with the EU. Now, the Prime Minister has confirmed that is exactly what she is doing. In a dull sounding written statement on the ‘machinery of government’ put out just hours before MPs head off on their summer holidays, the PM said that to ensure things are ‘organised in the most effective way’ as the countdown to Brexit gets closer, she will now ‘lead the negotiations with the European Union’; Dominic Raab, the PM said, will be ‘deputising’ on her behalf. For Brexiteers, this news will go down badly. The Chequers paper –

Monday

James Forsyth

Theresa May must work on her Brexit sales pitch

Regional Cabinets are always a bit gimmicky. The idea that putting ministers on a train to somewhere outside of London would make them take different decisions has always struck me as somewhat absurd. But today’s, as Katy said earlier, has taken on a particular significance because it marked the beginning of Theresa May’s attempt to sell her Brexit plan to the public. This plan needs some selling. Polling for the Sunday Times showed that only 12 per cent of voters think it would be good for Britain, compared to 43 per cent who disagree. May’s appearance today, though, is unlikely to have moved the dial much. There’s no clear top

Steerpike

Ex-Tory MP: Theresa May blocked Brexit ‘no deal’ planning

Theresa May has always said ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, but how much has her government actually prepared for the possibility of walking away from the EU if talks do break down? Not a lot, if the claims made by David Davis’ former chief of staff, Stewart Jackson, are anything to go on. Speaking on the Daily Politics, the former Tory MP said that the Prime Minister had actually blocked attempts to prepare for no deal: “David Davis pushed on producing an early white paper, pushed on getting officials out in Brussels doing granular technical negotiations six months ago, pushed on the Irish protocol putting legal text

Brendan O’Neill

Don’t blame the Tories for a Brexit ‘no deal’ | 23 July 2018

Remember when leftists and liberals were against capitalists throwing their weight around in the political sphere? ‘Just because you’re filthy rich doesn’t mean you should have more clout than the rest of us’, they might say. No longer. Now they love it when the boss class tut-tuts about democracy and wonders out loud if we should just ignore the little people and shape politics so that it suits us, the moneyed and powerful. Consider the glee with which some leftish Remainers have lapped up Amazon’s dire warnings about a no-deal Brexit. According to the Times this morning, on Friday, at a meeting organised by Brexit Secretary Dominic Rabb, the head

Sunday

Stan Labovitch

Brexit is an ideological civil war that will never end

I disagree with Robert Tombs that Brexit has played a greater role in determining English identity and a sense of national self-confidence than sport. The diverse makeup of the English team and its feisty performance in Russia has united people of every political persuasion — at least temporarily — under the same flag. Brexit, for all its claims of gaining back control, has torn this country apart, dividing family and friends in a never-ending and deeply unsavoury ideological civil war which shows no sign of ever being resolved. This letter appears in this week’s Spectator

Matthew Taylor

Sunday Shows Roundup: Dominic Raab – Brexit deal should be agreed ‘in October’

The House of Commons breaks for recess on Tuesday, and accordingly the Sunday shows will be taking a break. For his last show until September, Andrew Marr was joined by the Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, who has taken over the reins after David Davis’ resignation and has already made the headlines by insisting that the UK could tear up the agreed £39 billion ‘divorce bill’ if the two sides do not reach a trade deal. Raab told Marr that he was ‘striving every sinew’ to get the best deal for the United Kingdom, and insisted that his government was on course to agree a deal in the timeframe they expected:

Saturday

James Forsyth

Theresa May should enjoy her summer break, for the autumn will be her toughest time yet

‘She’s safe until September’. That’s the verdict on Theresa May of one of those who knows the Tory parliamentary party best, I write in The Sun this morning. Number 10 want to use the summer to try and turn opinion around on Mrs May’s Chequers plan. Under consideration, is a plan for her to do events at various venues around the country to try and convince voters of the merits of it. Every Cabinet Minister has been told that they must devote one day over the summer to selling Chequers, including doing broadcast interviews on it. Ministers are already watching closely to see how Esther McVey, the Welfare Secretary, and

Charles Moore

There is no such thing as a Brexit ‘no deal’

The collapse of Mrs May’s Chequers plan, followed by Tuesday’s failure of the Tory Remainers to defeat the government, creates a new situation. Mrs May greatly underestimated the threat to her from the ‘betrayal’ narrative which her plan invites. Two years of getting nowhere have made people long for decision and furious at Brussels dogmatism. There is a new appetite for no delay and for no deal. ‘No deal’ however, is not the right phrase. There is a deal — and we and the member states of the EU are already signed up to it. It is called World Trade Organisation terms. The clue to its nature is in the name: it

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

On the offensive

‘I’m an amateur,’ Barry Humphries tells me. The Australian polymath uses the word in its older sense of ‘enthusiast’ rather than ‘bungler’ and he feels no need to point out the distinction. He’s in London to perform a three-week residency at the Barbican — Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret — with his fellow Australian Melissa Madden Gray, who uses the stage name Meow Meow. The show was inspired by Humphries’ fascination with Germany’s culture during the interwar years. ‘It was the last song before the nation slid into moral squalor. And I have a long-standing interest — I won’t say “passion” because one gets “passionate” about deodorants — but I have

The Spectator

Letters | 19 July 2018

Remainers are to blame Sir: I was intrigued by the parallel drawn by an ally of Michael Gove’s in James Forsyth’s piece on Brexit (‘Brexit in a spin’, 14 July), comparing Mr Gove to the Irish Independence leader Michael Collins. I think this misses the fundamental point that Collins and the Sinn Fein ultras led by De Valera were agreed on the destination: independence from Britain. It was just the timing and context on which they differed. There was no organised political body within the Irish Free State seeking to remain in the UK. In contrast, to ‘leave’ the EU under Mrs May’s plan, Mr Gove is supporting a platform

The Spectator

The road not taken | 19 July 2018

Handling Brexit was never going to be easy for Theresa May, given that the Tories have been fighting a civil war over Europe for at least a quarter of a century. But the past ten days have been so calamitous that there is a real possibility that her Chequers gambit — threatening a general election unless MPs support her watered-down version of Brexit — could lead to the fall of the government and the ceding of power to the most left-wing Labour administration in history. The mood in Parliament is now as anarchic as it was during the last days of the Callaghan government in 1979: the Maastricht crisis in

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 July 2018

The collapse of Mrs May’s Chequers plan, followed by Tuesday’s failure of the Tory Remainers to defeat the government, creates a new situation. Mrs May greatly underestimated the threat to her from the ‘betrayal’ narrative which her plan invites. Two years of getting nowhere have made people long for decision and furious at Brussels dogmatism. There is a new appetite for no delay and for no deal. ‘No deal’ however, is not the right phrase. There is a deal — and we and the member states of the EU are already signed up to it. It is called World Trade Organisation terms. The clue to its nature is in the

Taki

High life | 19 July 2018

New York I am seriously thinking of moving back to London. The family insists on it. New York, they say, is much too far away and much too shabby. Basically, the Bagel’s attractions are the karate, the occasional judo session, and the weekly Brooklyn parties chez Michael Mailer. The women are better in London, but the real draw are the friends. I have many in London, very few in New York. The past fortnight in London was magical. Then the scene went sour, as parasites and social-justice warriors such as Bianca Jagger and Ed Miliband jumped in to hog the headlines, joining protesters in calling Trumpa racist, a sexist, an

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: Trump’s peace plan

Earlier this week, Trump met Putin. But beneath the outcry against Trump’s press conference, a peace plan for Syria was slipped out. Is America withdrawing its troops and leaving Assad in place? We also ask – should we push back the March 2019 deadline for Brexit negotiations? And last, why is communism still chic? While the Twittersphere obsesses over Trump’s Helsinki press conference, a peace plan for Syria was designed, one that would see President Assad stay in place after years of civil war. Middle East expert John R Bradley explains the complex regional relations in this week’s cover – Israel and the US both want Iran out of Syria,

Steerpike

Olly Robbins’ Brexit bonus

Theresa May’s Brexit plan is going down badly and the EU is telling members states to step up preparations for ‘no deal’. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Brexit isn’t going entirely to plan. But this mess didn’t stop the Prime Minister’s Brexit guru Olly Robbins getting a bonus last year. Robbins was rewarded with a payment of between £15,000 and £20,000, according to figures released by the Department for Exiting the EU. As if that wasn’t enough, Robbins also earned a salary of at least £80,000 before his transfer from the Brexit department to No.10. Whatever happens with Brexit, Robbins, at least, has plenty to smile about…

Theresa May’s Brexit fear is selling Britain short

The EU is afraid of us, but we’ve got a prime minister who is afraid of the EU. The declaration by the European Commission that member states should prepare for ‘no deal’ is a powerful reminder that EU oligarchs are petrified that we will make a success of independence and expose the flaws in their dream of domination. They fear that we will reform our taxes and update our regulations to raise productivity and take market share from them. Their reaction is not to start improving their own competitiveness but to try to suppress our ability to compete, unfortunately with the willing compliance of the Chequers agreement and its anti-competitive

Matthew Parris

We can delay Brexit – and we must

Omissions can be as instructive as inclusions. I noted a curious example in a column Nick Timothy wrote last month for the Daily Telegraph: ‘Why Dominic Grieve’s push for a “meaningful vote” really would mean stopping Brexit.’ Until he left Downing Street, Mr Timothy was jointly principal adviser to Theresa May. He wrote the following: ‘According to ministers, the choice Parliament will face is to leave on the terms negotiated by the government, or leave with no deal. And they are right: the European treaties assert that the withdrawal process can last no longer than two years…’ This is not the case. Mr Timothy seems to have overlooked a key