Uk politics

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

The BBC isn’t much help for navigating through the Tory EU wars

Trying to navigate your way through the internecine wars in the Conservative Party over the referendum? Please allow the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg to help. This was her intro on the BBC website yesterday: Silence abhors a vacuum, and forgive me if you are not a fan of political conspiracy, and on a day like today you don’t have to look very far for huge ideological disputes, even if they’re not quite yet punch-ups. Good, glad that’s clear, then. A sentence which is a string of non-sequiturs kicked off with a remarkable image. Does silence abhor a vacuum? I suppose it might abhor a vacuum cleaner, because they can

Isabel Hardman

Tories are approaching the referendum in the wrong way

David Cameron’s rather pointed digs at Boris Johnson in the Commons yesterday surprised his own MPs, who had thought that they were going to be ordered to be pleasant to one another, not attack senior colleagues who had taken different stances on the European Union. At the party meeting with the Prime Minister last night, MPs including Steve Baker asked Cameron to ‘be nice to Boris’, not because they are particularly worried about the Mayor’s spirit being crushed but because there is some dismay in the party that the referendum debate is already getting so personal. One Outer who likes Cameron observes sadly that ‘he was silly letting his temper

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson cheer up Labour MPs

Jeremy Corbyn was still stuck in the Commons chamber when the Labour Party held its weekly meeting this evening. He had been due to attend after MPs had complained that he was avoiding them, but this has now been moved to another week. Instead, Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson gave brief speeches on the EU referendum that left some centrist Labourites in an unusual state of joy. Both performances were described as ‘sparkling’ by those inside the meeting, with one saying it made them ‘proud to be Labour’, a phrase you don’t hear that often. The proud Labour MP continued: ‘We were at our best tonight – all about the

Rod Liddle

A selfish politician like Boris is better than one who believes he is guided by destiny

Poor Boris. Subjected to both the BBC PM programme’s satire and an evisceration by Nick Cohen right here. I just hope that, in time, he will be able to overcome both of these slights. If Boris was at fault it was in perhaps pretending to have an open mind on the issue of in-out. I have never known him to be anything other than viscerally, and cerebrally, antagonistic to Brussels and the EU. Perhaps he was waiting, like me, to see if Cameron really could bring something off. Something spectacular. It never seemed terribly likely, did it? But it was at least polite to wait. My own view is that

Toby Young

Boris Johnson: A mixture of principle and opportunism, just like every politician

Boris Johnson is a slippery fish, but I don’t think Nick Cohen quite captures him in his blog post earlier today. To accuse him of putting career before country in the EU referendum campaign, as Cohen does, is to fall into the trap of viewing politicians too dichotomously, as if they’re all either men and women of conviction or unprincipled opportunists. Boris, like every front rank politician, is a mixture of conviction and careerism, rather than one or the other. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are both cases in point. Exhibit A in the case for the prosecution is Boris’s decision to join the Leave campaign. Like many divisive political issues,

Isabel Hardman

Cameron takes aim at Boris in pointed Commons statement

The main difference between David Cameron’s statement to MPs on his EU deal and the two statements he has already given on the matter was that this one had added digs at Boris Johnson. Quite a few of them, in fact. The Prime Minister is clearly furious with the Mayor of London for his weekend announcement that he will be campaigning to leave, and inserted a number of extremely pointed lines into his feedback to the Commons that showed what he thought of Johnson’s decision. He ruled out the suggestion – one made by Boris himself – that voting Leave now would teach Europe a lesson and enable a better renegotiation

The Spectator

Cameron fights back: his full statement on the EU deal

I have spent the last nine months setting out the four areas where we need reform and meeting with all 27 other EU Heads of State and government to reach an agreement that delivers concrete reforms in all four areas. Let me take each in turn. First, British jobs and British business depend on being able to trade with Europe on a level playing field. So we wanted new protections for our economy; to safeguard the pound; to promote our industries – including our financial services industries; to protect British taxpayers from the costs of problems in the Eurozone and to ensure we have a full say over the rules of the single market, while remaining outside

Isabel Hardman

Cameron faces tricky day in the House of Commons over EU deal

David Cameron faces MPs today after returning from Brussels with his European Union reform deal. At 3.30 in the Commons, the Prime Minister will give a statement on the outcome of the European Council meeting, and take questions from MPs, including many on his own side who think the deal is a load of tosh. It will be interesting to see how many of them choose to tell him that, and what sort of language they use. There is a risk that this referendum campaign becomes very personal and furious, even while everyone involved is pontificating about the importance of the Tory party getting along well after the vote. Ministers

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Podcast special: Boris backs Brexit

If Boris Johnson had behaved and backed David Cameron’s ‘in’ campaign, he would have been foreign secretary by the summer. Instead, he chose to join Michael Gove in the ‘out’ campaign – informing the Prime Minister by text message at 4.40pm shortly before informing the reporters who gathered around his house shortly afterwards. So what does this mean for the race, and do we now have a Tory leadership contest running in parallel to the EU Referendum campaign? James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss this in our latest podcast:- Listen to more episodes of the Spectator podcast here and click here to subscribe through iTunes.  SPECTATOR EVENT: EU REFERENDUM – THE

James Forsyth

This referendum is now a battle between two visions of the future

George Osborne’s plan for this referendum was to turn it into a question of the future versus the past, for both the country and the Tory party. He wanted the voters to see the Out campaign as a bunch of people who wanted to take Britain back to a bygone era. Inside the Tory party, his aim was to have the talent and the ambition on the IN side with only old war horses and the passed over and bitter on the other side. But the events of the past 36 hours have blown this plan off course. Out now has one of the most popular politicians in the country

Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson supplants Osborne as bookmakers’ favourite for next Tory leader

The Mayor has not even filed his Daily Telegraph column yet, but Ladbrokes has announced that he is now the favourite to succeed David Cameron. As the above graph shows, his chances have been steadily increasing as George Osborne overplayed his hand: first, by posing as the heir assumptive, and then by various missteps (like praising Google’s tax deal). The ‘out’ campaign is still seen as likely to lose the EU Referendum, but the next Tory leader will be selected by a Tory Party membership who will be about 70 per cent for ‘out’. Michael Gove, famously, has very little leadership ambition; Liam Fox won’t stand again and Iain Duncan Smith has had enough of all that

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson: I will be advocating Vote Leave… or whatever the team is called

This is not about whether you love Europe or not. Actually, I love Brussels, I used to live in Brussels – fantastic city, wonderful place – and I love European culture and civilisation. I consider it to be the greatest civilisation this planet has ever produced, and we are all products or most of us here are products of that civilisation and it is a fantastic thing but there should be no confusion between the wonders of Europe and holidays in Europe and fantastic food and friendships and whatever else you get from Europe – with a political project that has basically been going on now for decades which Britain

James Forsyth

Blow to Cameron as Boris backs Brexit

David Cameron used to always remind people who asked him about what Boris would do in the referendum that the London Mayor had never advocated Britain leaving the European Union. But tonight, Boris will do exactly that. He will become the highest profile politician to back Brexit. Boris’s decision shakes up this referendum campaign. The IN campaign have long seen a swing to IN among Tory voters as the key to them securing a decisive victory. They believed that Cameron and pretty much all the Tory party endorsing the deal would provide that. But they cautioned that if Boris went the other way, the Cameron effect would be pretty much

Douglas Murray

The EU ‘deal’ is a political stitch-up

Almost everything about the EU debate so far has been a fraud.  The ‘Remain’ campaign has lied to the public about what David Cameron achieved in his ‘renegotiation’.  They have lied about the consequences of leaving the EU, in the hope of terrifying us into staying.  And now they are rushing us towards a referendum because the later they leave it the less likely it is that they will get the answer they want.  An innocent might rub their eyes in disbelief that a Conservative Prime Minister with the connivance of nearly the entire political class could be trying to bounce us into such a decision. But there it is. 

Isabel Hardman

Cameron makes last-minute appeal to Boris to campaign for Remain

David Cameron rehearsed many of his arguments about his deal on the Marr Show this morning, but he also made a fresh appeal to Boris Johnson to back the In side. He said: ‘To Boris, I would say to Boris what I say to everybody else which is we would be safer, we will be stronger, we will be better off inside the EU. I think the prospect of linking arms with Nigel Farage and George Galloway and taking a leap into the dark is the wrong step for our country and if Boris and others really care about being able to get things done in our world then the

Isabel Hardman

Pro-Brexit ministers unpick Cameron’s EU deal

Cabinet ministers are now free to campaign in the EU referendum, and inevitably the pro-Brexit bunch have all given interviews or penned pieces in the press about why they want to leave the European Union. Chris Grayling today tells the Sunday Times that David Cameron’s renegotiation ‘doesn’t go far enough’ and can be overturned by the European Parliament, and points out that for all the fuss about the emergency brake on migrant benefits, the introduction of the living wage will ‘boost the attraction of Britain as a place to come and work’. He also dismisses the assurances that Cameron is planning to set out on the sovereignty of Parliament, saying

James Forsyth

Contrary to what Cameron and Osborne say, Gove hasn’t been an Outer for 30 years

David Cameron and George Osborne have responded to Michael Gove’s decision to campaign for Out by saying that he has wanted to leave the EU for thirty years. But as Vote Leave are pointing out, Gove has not been an Outer for that long. When he was a journalist, Gove was actually arguing that Britain should, ultimately, stay in the EU. In 1996, he wrote in The Times that ‘It is still in Britain’s interest to stay in the EU.’ So, why are Cameron and Osborne saying that Gove has been an Outer for thirty years? I suspect it is because they want to paint Gove’s belief that Britain should

Saturday

James Forsyth

What was said at the EU referendum Cabinet

At Cabinet this morning, every minister spoke in strict order of Cabinet seniority. This meant that Michael Gove was the first person to make the case for Out. I’m told that his argument to Cabinet was essentially the same as the hugely powerful statement he put out afterwards, which you can read in full here. The theme of the Cabinet discussion was, broadly, the trade-off between sovereignty and access to the free market. According to one of those present, where you fell on that question determined your position in the debate. One IN supporting Cabinet minister tells me that Oliver Letwin was the most persuasive speaker for that side of

Isabel Hardman

And we’re off! David Cameron announces EU referendum on 23 June

As expected, David Cameron has just confirmed that the EU referendum will be on Thursday 23 June. The Prime Minister confirmed – again – in his statement in Downing Street that he will be recommending an ‘In’ vote. The Prime Minister’s statement was largely a reprise of his key themes from last night. He said that ‘the choice goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be’ and argued that ‘this is about how we trade with neighbouring countries to create jobs, prosperity and security for our families’. He also repeated his line from his Brussels statement about those who want to leave being unable to set

Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson not invited to David Cameron’s EU Cabinet meeting

As ministers roll into No10 in front of the cameras, reporters have noticed the absence of one Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. It turns out that the Prime Minister has convened a meeting of the normal Cabinet, rather than a ‘political Cabinet.’ A minor distinction, but it does mean no Boris Johnson – who is a member of the latter organisation, but not the former. Now, of course, you can argue that it takes a normal Cabinet to approve the deal on behalf of the government. But friends of Boris had been hoping for a political Cabinet, at which everyone would say their piece, followed by a rubber stamp at the Cabinet. And that