Uk politics

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Steve Baker savages Theresa May’s Brexit plan

Theresa May's nightmare Monday morning is going from bad to worse. Steve Baker, who followed David Davis out of the exit door at the Brexit department, has savaged the Prime Minister's Chequers plan on the Daily Politics. When asked whether the Brexit blueprint was delivering Brexit in name only, he had this to say: 'The problem with this particular Brexit is that it will not allow us to have proper control over what goes on in the United Kingdom. We need to get out from treaty obligations that automatically oblige parliament to accept any particular rules and instead be in a position where what we do it is a matter for us.' So why didn't Baker speak out sooner?

Katy Balls

Why No 10 made Dominic Raab Brexit Secretary

Dominic Raab has this morning been appointed as David Davis's successor as Brexit Secretary. Raab moves from his role as minister of state for Housing to his first Cabinet post as Secretary of State for Exiting the EU. Well-liked among colleagues, Raab is someone who is seen to have been consistently overlooked for promotion. He was recently asked in a television interview, why he hadn't been promoted given that he was so consistently loyal in defending the government's position. He is also a savvy hire by No 10 thanks to the fact Raab is a Davis ally and a dedicated Leaver. It will help to send the signal that this is still a Brexit Brexiteers can get behind. Also getting a Brexiteer to take on this job shows that the revolt against the Chequers deal is, still, relatively limited.

Stephen Daisley

There’s nothing principled about David Davis’s resignation

David Davis has walked away. It’s what he does best. DDexit was inevitable from the moment he was appointed Brexit secretary. Davis is a quitter, not a fixer; asked to compromise, his preference is always for blowing the whole show up. Reports suggest he was especially irked by the No. 10 briefing about ministers being stuck at Chequers without a working local taxi number. The bloke was in the SAS Reserves and couldn’t figure out how to download the Uber app. It’s no mystery why the Brexit negotiations have been going nowhere.  There isn’t much affection for Davis, even among his fellow Brexit ultras, but some will try to paint this as a principled decision. It is nothing of the sort.

Tom Goodenough

David Davis breaks his silence on his resignation

David Davis has broken his silence on his resignation. Unsurprisingly his comments on the Today programme are devastating for Theresa May’s Brexit strategy. The now-departed Brexit secretary said his position was no longer tenable because he simply didn’t believe in the PM’s approach. In his resignation letter last night, he had said that ‘that the national interest requires a Secretary of State in my Department that is an enthusiastic believer in the approach, and not merely a reluctant conscript’. He went further on the Today programme, calling the PM’s approach a ‘dangerous strategy’.

Sunday

Chris Key

Don’t blame Cameron for the government’s Brexit mess

I listened to the Coffee House podcast about Danny Dyer’s David Cameron rant. Fraser Nelson appears to live in a parallel universe. It is true that Cameron probably expected to be in a coalition with the Lib Dems again in 2015 and to never have to fulfil the promise of an EU referendum. However it is absurd to lay the blame for the government’s disastrous handling of Brexit negotiations at Cameron’s door. After all, was it David Cameron or Theresa May who triggered Article 50 with no clear negotiating plan? Was it David Cameron or Theresa May who called a snap election in a fit of hubris only to lose their majority?

James Forsyth

Why David Davis resigned

The Brexit Secretary David Davis has quit. Davis’s resignation is the biggest political crisis that Theresa May has faced since the loss of her majority in the general election and leaves her facing a battle to save her premiership. Davis has gone because he could not stomach the opening UK negotiating position agreed at Chequers. Davis has long been clear that he wanted a final deal that was, essentially, a souped-up version of the Canada free trade deal. But the position agreed at Chequers envisaged a relationship very different to that, one far more firmly in the EU’s regulatory orbit. As Brexit Secretary Davis was meant to promote the Chequers plan at home and abroad.  He clearly didn’t feel that he could do that. In truth.

Saturday

Robert Peston

How Theresa May trounced the Brexiteers

Tory MPs and ministers have consistently under-estimated their leader. What Theresa May achieved at Chequers yesterday was extraordinary. She persuaded her cabinet to sign up for a Brexit plan that drives a coach and horses through what the Brexiters in her team – especially Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – said Brexit was all about, during that historic referendum campaign. What is more, at Chequers yesterday, Gove was a cheerleader for a plan that would enshrine in treaty what is supposedly anathema to his Brexit cause – that the UK now and forever would be subject to European Union rules and regulations governing the quality and safety of the goods we make and buy and also the food we produce and consume.

James Forsyth

The reason May’s third way won approval? Cabinet Brexiteers have no alternative plan

Theresa May is through Chequers with a plan that proposes having the UK follow EU rules on goods and agri-foods. This isn’t what the Cabinet’s Brexiteers would have expected two years ago, or even nine months ago. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the biggest single reason they are putting up with this is that they don’t have an alternative plan. When Boris Johnson invited the Cabinet’s Brexiteers plus Gavin Williamson and Sajid Javid, who were pivotal to the Brexiter inner Cabinet’s rejection of Theresa May’s new customs partnership plan, to his office for a meeting on Wednesday morning it only highlighted the group’s problems. First, Javid declined the invitation, as he didn’t want to get factional.

Friday

Katy Balls

Cabinet back Theresa May’s soft Brexit plan. How will Brussels respond?

Theresa May's Cabinet away day is finally over and the Prime Minister can go to sleep safe in the knowledge that there have been no resignations... yet. In a No 10 statement this evening, May said the Cabinet had agreed its collective position for the Brexit negotiations – for a common rule book on industrial goods and agricultural products. This means the UK would have to in effect follow EU rules in these sectors: ‘Our proposal will create a U.K. - EU free trade area which establishes a common rule book for industrial goods and agricultural products. This maintains high standards in these areas, but we will also ensure that no new changes in the future take place without the approval of our Parliament.

Ross Clark

The tragedy of the Brexit Chequers summit

Today has been so bigged-up as a day of destiny for Britain that it can only deliver disappointment. Even if we do have white smoke rising from the chimneys of Chequers by the end of the day, together with a photo full of strained smiles as the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary apparently agree on a blueprint for Brexit full of delicate compromises and trade-offs, why does anyone think that Michel Barnier and his team will give the nod to what is agreed? It is remarkable how little this matter has been raised over the last few days. We have had endless speculation on the internal politics of the cabinet. We have had rumours of resignations, a last minute summit at which David Cameron is said to have talked Boris out of a threat to resign.

Brendan O’Neill

Theresa May’s Brexit plan is Remain by another name

Stop it. Stop saying we can’t be sure why people voted for Brexit. Stop saying it was just a screech of rage against politicians and so must now be tempered and made into sensible policy. Stop saying it’s fine for Theresa May in her Chequers showdown to ‘soften’ Brexit and keep us entangled in a customs union, and even in the European Court of Justice, because we don’t know if people really want to leave these institutions. This is all untrue. We know very well why people voted for Brexit, and we know that what May is offering is a betrayal of what they voted for. It is testament to the chutzpah of the anti-Brexit lobby that they can say, ‘No one knows what Brexit means or what those 17.4m voters were really asking for’.

Stephen Daisley

Why is Sturgeon rolling out the red carpet for Catalonia’s president?

Pity the flunky at Bute House, official residence of Nicola Sturgeon, whose job it is to get the red carpet ready for formal visits. The poor lad mustn’t know whether he’s coming or going. Two weeks ago, the First Minister said it wasn’t ‘appropriate at this time for the red carpet to be rolled out’ for Donald Trump. ‘Meetings are one thing, perhaps, but red carpet treatment is another,’ she added. McJeeves shouldn’t store away the crimson runner just yet though. Next Wednesday, Sturgeon will welcome to Bute House, Joaquim 'Quim' Torra, the publisher turned politician who was sworn in as Catalan president in May.  The Scottish Nationalists are dabblers in international solidarity. Palestine: free. Ireland: don’t bring that up.

Steerpike

Nigel Farage offers May a Brexit incentive

Theresa May has come under some pressure these last few weeks over her plan for Britain's post Brexit trade relationship. Both wings of her party have aggressively pitched their preferred version. Today it's crunch time as the Cabinet head to Chequers to thrash out a position. But has the most convincing argument for the Brexiteer side only just aired? With rumours circling that May is to pitch a soft Brexit, Nigel Farage has threatened a comeback. The former Ukip leader has warned that he will have 'no choice' but to return to frontline politics if Brexit is delayed past March 2019. https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1014591285926166528 Will the threat of a Brexit betrayal party be enough to sway Theresa May against a soft Brexit?

Thursday

James Forsyth

Number 10: We’ll do a free trade deal with the US

Earlier I wrote about how a paper circulated to ministers before Chequers makes clear that the UK’s plan to follow a ‘common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’ with the EU ‘would not allow the UK to accommodate a likely ask from the US in a future trade deal’ as the UK would be unable to recognise the US’s ‘array of standards’. But Number 10 are absolutely insistent that this doesn’t mean there won’t be a trade deal with the US; they also say that senior figures in government and trade experts are confident that a deal could still be done and that Theresa May wouldn’t be talking to Donald Trump about a trade deal next week if one wasn’t possible.

Steerpike

Naz Shah gets another NHS payday

'Happy 70th Birthday to our wonderful NHS,' the Labour MP Naz Shah tweeted earlier today. Shah isn't the only one marking the anniversary, but it would seem that the Labour MP has more to celebrate about our health service than most. The latest register of MPs' interests reveals that last month Shah received £1,800 for providing ‘leadership training’ for the NHS. The payment, for twelve hours’ work, means that Shah earned a healthy £150 an hour. This isn’t the first time that Shah has received a payday from the NHS. Last year, the Labour MP took home £1,200 from the NHS for delivering two leadership training sessions at the NHS Leadership Academy. It’s good to know that the health service's limited resources are being well spent...

Katy Balls

How many kamikaze Tory MPs even are there?

It's the night before the Chequers summit and it's all starting to kick off. After James revealed on Coffee House that the key Brexit customs paper passed by No 10 to Cabinet Ministers ahead of tomorrow's meeting could be perceived as effectively ruling out a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, Brexiteers have been quick to see red. Right on cue, Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that if May's proposal is as reported it spells vassal state. The Brexit Secretary has written a letter to the Prime Minister outlining his problems with the government approach. Meanwhile, 46 Tory MPs – including 11 former cabinet ministers – have written to Theresa May, urging her to listen to business ahead of her crucial Chequers meeting on Friday.

James Forsyth

Theresa May’s Brexit paper could mean no US trade deal

Earlier this afternoon, Cabinet Ministers received key papers ahead of the Chequers meeting tomorrow. The paper states that ‘The UK should maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’. It goes on that the UK will make ‘an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods’. As I say in the magazine this week, one of the key questions is how this will be done. If, as Downing Street currently wants, parliament is in charge of this process then the Brexiteers might be able to stomach it. But if the EU insist on this process being automatic then I expect that several Cabinet Brexiteers would find this unacceptable.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Government to hold emergency talks after second Novichok poisoning

After counter-terror police confirmed that two people who had collapsed in Amesbury, Wiltshire over the weekend had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, Home Secretary Sajid Javid has announced that he will chair a meeting of the government's emergency committee, Cobr. In a statement released a few minutes ago, Javid said: 'The Amesbury investigation is ongoing and the police must be given the space they need to continue establishing the full facts. 'My thoughts at this time are with the two individuals affected. The Government’s first priority is for the safety of the residents in the local area but as Public Health England has made clear, the risk to the general public is low.

Douglas Murray

Why I won’t appear on the Guardian’s anti-Trump panel

Should I help the Guardian to make money? The question arises because the paper’s emissaries have been badgering me to agree to appear on their platform later this month. In itself this is a strange thing. I’m all for ecumenicalism, but the Guardian would seem to be the worst possible platform. My own experience of the paper is not only that it has the most flagrant bias of any UK publication, but that when it is caught in an error it is the most reluctant to publish corrections, apologies or retractions. Indeed, experience shows that the paper is more unwilling than President Trump to admit it has ever got anything wrong. As it happens the Guardian have been asking me to come to speak on a panel to discuss that same US President and his forthcoming visit to the UK.

Lloyd Evans

Theresa May plays the blame game at PMQs

The Speaker continues to use PMQs as a sort of rolling news platform where his millions of fans can catch up on all his latest activities. As a devoted Berc-oholic, I was delighted to learn this afternoon that my hero has made a new friend. Two friends in fact. He delivered the announcement early in the session when he stood up and addressed the chamber with all the solemnity of an archbishop opening a youth detention centre: ‘May I remind the house that we are today visited by an American state senator whom I had the great privilege of meeting earlier with his wife.’ He urged MPs to entertain these important guests with a bravura display of parliamentary repartee. Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn asked six questions about buses. Buses are in crisis, he grumbled.