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When Jonathan Swift wanted to mock the immeasurable superficiality of British politics, he imagined it as a contest between the Big--Endians and the Little-Endians. That is, between those who believed fervently that the only way to open a boiled egg is at the pointier end; and those certain that the only proper way to attack it was from the larger, more rounded end. But that was in the 1720s and Swift was joking.
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‘Brexit means Brexit’ has been Theresa May’s message since she started running for the Tory leadership. But Brexit could mean a whole variety of things. For example, a Norwegian-style deal with the EU would, technically, be ‘Brexit’. But now, Theresa May has shown real intent. She has demonstrated that she really is serious about this. She has appointed three leavers to the key Brexit-related jobs in government. David Davis will be Secretary of State for exiting the EU, Liam Fox gets the International Trade job and Boris Johnson the Foreign Office. The David Davis appointment is particularly striking. He resigned, unexpectedly, from David Cameron’s shadow Cabinet.
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Signing a petition calling for a referendum re-run might seem rather futile after the Brexit vote was done and dusted. But it seems that the four million people who did just that and put pen to paper haven't completely wasted their time after all. The petition, which said that the Government should hold a re-run if 'the remain or leave vote is less than 60 per cent based on a turnout less than 75 per cent', has jumped its first hurdle. Putting aside who decided that this precise percentage was the exact bar which needed to be reached, Parliament will now discuss the petition in Westminster Hall on September 5th. In a statement, the Petitions Committee had this to say: 'The Petitions Committee has decided to schedule a House of Commons debate on this petition.
From our UK edition
Jacob Rees-Mogg and Mark Carney’s clash at this morning’s Treasury Committee was a masterclass in passive aggressiveness veiled in pleases and thankyous. From the words being said, it wasn’t clear there was any enmity in the room. But Carney’s expressions couldn’t have made things clearer: there is certainly no love lost between these two. Before the referendum, Rees-Mogg said Carney had come under 'undue influence' during the referendum campaign from the Treasury. Today, the Tory MP went on the attack in the politest way possible as he tried his trump card question once again about whether Carney would have conducted himself in the same way during a general election. Last time, Carney batted away the question deftly.
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'I am deeply concerned. I am usually quite the optimist but this is probably the first time that I have ever been pessimistic about the future of the European Union. Brexit will feed populism across Europe. And we can hardly expect to bounce back with the heads of State and government that we have today in Europe.' Françoise Grossetête is a veteran at the European Parliament. The French 69-year-old MEP first took office in Brussels in 1994. For the last two years, she has been the deputy leader of the EPP group, the europhile conservative group in the European Parliament. Grossetete is not her usual chirpy self, as she gives an account of what it is like being a Member of the European Parliament in the new post-EU referendum era.
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Junior elitists Sir: In response to Andrew Peters’s reminder that in many cultures it is the older and more experienced whose views are respected, I am stunned by the social media tsunami of self-regard shown by so many apparently well-educated young people in the wake of what they see as an adverse referendum result (Letters, 2 July). I have heard many of them vehemently expressing a sense of betrayal by their elders and, not a few times, by those less educated than themselves. Do they not realise that they are already sounding like junior members of the self-serving, self-appointed elite, the very people whose blinkered arrogance led directly to Brexit’s triumph?
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Before she was murdered, Jo Cox MP had written most of a report. She worked on it jointly it with the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat for the Britain in the World project at the think-tank Policy Exchange. Its publication had been intended to coincide with that of the Chilcot report this week. Because of her shocking death, it is now delayed. But the project wants to continue her work, and the report’s bipartisanship. The essential point on which Mrs Cox (who opposed the Iraq war) and Mr Tugendhat (who served in it) agreed is that total non-intervention is not a foreign policy strategy. If Iraq shows the horrors of ill-planned intervention, Syria shows how non-intervention can cause worse suffering and instability.
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In my novel Three Daughters of Eve, a well educated housewife with kids looks at her motherland, Turkey, and thinks: ‘They are not that different. My own life and this land of unfulfilled potentials.’ I wrote this novel in English first. It was then translated into Turkish by a professional translator, after which I rewrote it with my own rhythm and vocabulary. It’s a bit crazy, this constant commute between English and Turkish. There are things I find much easier to express in English — e.g. humour, irony, satire — and others I find easier to say in Turkish — melancholy, loss. The book is published in Turkey this summer before being published in the UK in winter. So I fly from London, where I live, to Turkey for a week long book tour.
From our UK edition
I enjoyed the Daily Mail’s lambasting of the Financial Times as ‘panic-monger-in-chief’ for its doom-laden post-Brexit tone: ‘Is it determined to provoke a downturn in a bid to justify its lurid predictions?’ And I’m happy to let ‘Britain’s most self-important business newspaper’ take some flak, my own rather downbeat column last week having been so at odds with our ‘optimist’s guide’ on other pages. Panic-mongering used to be the Mail’s own stock-in-trade back in the Gordon Brown era, when it regularly invited me to wax apocalyptic on ‘the death of the middle classes’ in response to stock-market wobbles and stealth taxes.
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Early on the morning of Friday 24 June, Darren Gratton went into his butcher’s shop in Barnstaple and changed his wall signs, which at this time of year are mostly about barbecue packs. Emboldened in the Brexit dawn, he deleted all references to ‘kg’ and replaced each one with ‘lb’. Tempted to do the same to the labels inside the display cabinets, he decided not to, for fear of a threatening call from Trading Standards. But that small act of wall-chart insurrection was enough to spark an article in the local paper, which triggered a deluge of emails from other shopkeepers across the country in support of his brave action with the squeaky pen.
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In France, Brexit has provoked resentment and shock. For many years-Britain has been seen in both Paris and-Brussels as the European ‘bad boy’, out for what it can get and intending to give as little as possible in return. The first news was greeted with headlines such as ‘Can Europe-survive?’ but there was also a note of relief: ‘End of 40 years of love-hate’. Even before the referendum, Emmanuel Macron, the finance minister, had denounced the British record in Europe, claiming that the-United Kingdom had hijacked the great project and diverted the Union from its political destiny in order to reduce it to a single market.
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The Tory leadership hopefuls all appeared before a packed out 1922 hustings tonight. First up was Michael Gove. His pitch was that he had the conviction, the experience and the vision to lead the party and the country. He argued that the Tories’ aim should be to help those on £24,000 a year. Surprisingly, Gove wasn’t asked any questions about what had happened between him and Boris Johnson last week. However, he was asked twice about his former adviser Dominic Cummings. Gove said that Cummings would have no formal role in his Number 10. Gove was typically fluent, answering nine questions in the fifteen minutes allotted to him. He was listened to respectfully, which was by no means certain given the events of Thursday morning.
From our UK edition
So when can the UK start negotiating its own trade agreements? Throughout the campaign and thereafter, Brexiters have made passionate pleas for liberating the UK from the EU so it can pursue trade deals of its own. Daniel Hannan, a senior campaigner for Leave, quipped that every continent was growing except Europe and Antarctica, and that Britain after Brexit should strike deals with emerging economies quickly. Boris Johnson suggested that countries like Australia and India were already lined up to begin talks. But before the UK can enter this glorious new era of bilateral trade deals, the new Prime Minister must negotiate the divorce terms with the EU. He or she must also avoid damaging Britain’s existing trade relations with Europe. Welcome to the Great British trade-off.
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I'm aware that not everybody in this country is happy. Indeed, a lot of young people have been wound up by scare stories and are actually very angry and very scared about their future. It's an irony really, that it's the youth of a country that appear to be worried right across the whole of the European Union. It is the under-30s that are protesting in the streets against undemocratic centralised control and indeed against the Euro and virtually everything that emanates from Brussels. In time, I hope that some of these sharp divisions can be healed when people start to realise that actually life outside the European Union is really very exciting and we've got a much better, brighter future in charge of our own lives.
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Today Nigel Farage has announced that he will be standing down as Ukip leader. Farage has pledged not to 'unresign' this time around, stating that now he has achieved his goal in the referendum, it's time he 'stood aside' as leader of the party. This means that the search is on to find Farage's successor. With Farage known to have a fractious relationship with some members of Ukip, his departure could mark a new more harmonious chapter for party relations. Steven Woolfe: Woolfe is the one to watch in the race. Loyal to Farage and with experience as an MEP, he has been being talked up as a future leader in Ukip circles for some time.
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Der Speigel has published a fascinating write-up giving last week’s extraordinary events from Angela Merkel’s perspective. Specifically, it seems, she’s had enough of Jean-Claude Juncker, the egregious president of the European Commission, and has told him to bow out from future negotiations with the UK. She’s fed up of him insisting that Britain rushes to invoke Article 50. Indeed, her “utmost concern,” says the magazine, is “giving Britain as much time as possible” for an orderly transition. Here’s an extract:- At 1 p.m. on the Friday after the Brexit referendum, Merkel makes a statement to Berlin journalists in which -- in contrast to Schulz -- she does not demand a rapid British withdrawal.
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Well I might as well say publicly what I’ve been saying to everyone who will listen privately for the last week. It seems to me that our country will regret the distraction and levity we have shown this past week. For those who campaigned to leave the EU, June 24th was not an opportunity to take a break but the start of the real work. Of course it remains astonishing that having lost the vote the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer chose to go into hiding and abandon the country they were in place to serve. But it is also unforgiveable that having won the campaign those who campaigned to leave have not dedicated themselves solely to putting the country right.
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Stephen Crabb made a passionate plea this morning for Tories to stop thinking in terms of Remain and Leave when it comes to picking a leader. He warned that if people carry on doing this, it will lead to the party splitting. But all things being equal, I do think it would be best for the next Prime Minister to be a Leaver. After all, David Cameron resigned because he had campaigned for Remain and the country had voted to leave and he thought that made it impossible for him to chart the country on the new course it must now follow. There are two main reasons for thinking a Leave PM preferable. First of all, this would provide some accountability for what Vote Leave promised in the referendum.
From our UK edition
Auf wiedersehen, Boris. He’ll be back, like a blond, bloated Voldemort inhabiting another life form – Top Gear host? Archbishop of York? Or endless BBC camping tours of Britain on a bike, the Portillo of the Portacabin? As Boris’ agent collects the offers – and his publishers are still owed a Shakespeare biography by the end of this anniversary year - he leaves behind him a Conservative Party scarred but resilient. There’ll be recriminations this week. Yet there’ll also be enduring relief, as one of Britain’s oldest institutions finds itself finally free of wrangling Etonians, chaps whose Brobdingnagian entitlement so undermined the gospel of One Nation inclusivity that both presumed to preach.
From our UK edition
At times this week it has seemed as though Sarah Vine will soon be running the country -- that is, if she isn't secretly already. As well as informing readers, through her Daily Mail column, that she -- along with her husband Michael Gove -- has been ‘charged with implementing the instructions of 17 million people’ following the Leave vote, Vine is reported to have played a pivotal role in the Justice Secretary's decision to turn his back on Boris Johnson and run for leader. In fact, the first sign that all was not well between the Johnson and Gove camps came when Vine seemingly accidentally sent an email on the topic to a member of the public.