Uk politics

Despite all the fighting over which faction is working with who that’s taken place over the past few days, MP members of the Vote Leave campaign are actually rather upbeat. In private conversations that I’ve had over the past few days, a number of MPs who had been worried about the campaign have told me that they think it has turned a corner with the restructure that was announced earlier last week. The Vote Leave bunch do not want to merge with Leave.EU for a number of reasons, but one is simply that it would be difficult with such a small amount of time left before the referendum. But there’s nothing to stop the groups working together, and co-ordinating their activities, rather than the current situation of a lot of friendly fire between Leave.EU and Vote Leave.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Vote Leave's Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm"] Margaret Thatcher would have voted to stay in the European Union, her former foreign policy adviser Lord Powell writes in the Sunday Times today. Here, in an extract from his Spectator's Notes, Charles Moore, Lady Thatcher's official biographer, says she would have voted to Leave: On Tuesday night, at a Spectator readers’ evening, Andrew Neil interviewed me about my biography of Margaret Thatcher. He asked me if, after leaving office, Lady Thatcher had come to the view that Britain should leave the European Union.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Vote Leave's Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm"] The Leave campaigns continue to bicker with each other in increasingly absurd fashion, but it would be wrong to think that everything is going the In campaign’s way. Number 10, as I write in The Sun today, have been taken aback by the sheer scale of the hostility to the deal. There have been some very tense meetings in Downing Street this week. Cameron himself is, I understand, acutely aware of how volatile the situation is and how quickly the referendum could turn. But those around him are more confident.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Vote Leave's Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm"] This might seem impossible, but the row between Vote Leave and Labour leave has become even more complicated. This afternoon, Labour donor John Mills, who remains on the Vote Leave campaign, has put out this statement: 'I am the founder and co-owner of Labour Leave. A statement has been put out by someone called Richard Hillgrove purporting to be from Brendan Chilton, General Secretary of Labour Leave. That statement is fraudulent. Richard Hillgrove has no position in Labour Leave. Labour Leave is an independent campaign but corporately it supports Vote Leave.

The Welfare Reform and Work Bill has its third reading in the House of Lords on Monday before returning to the Commons for consideration of amendments. Jeremy Corbyn raised one of the controversial aspects of this bill, which is to cut the amount of money paid to people who are judged too ill to work currently but with the potential to return to the workplace in the future, at Prime Minister’s Questions this week. Peers have defeated this measure, but the government intends to reverse it. But there are Tory MPs who are worried about the cut to employment and support allowance, too.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Vote Leave's Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm"] The Monty Python-esque scrapping in the ‘Leave’ camps may calm down a little after the Vote Leave campaign this evening announced a number of changes that will satisfy some of its rather agitated MP members. As well as appointing Lord Lawson as the chairman of the board, Vote Leave is changing the members of that board, with Matthew Elliott, Dominic Cummings and Victoria Woodcock stepping down.

Theresa May’s decision to say that the draft settlement for Britain’s relationship with the EU forms ‘a basis for a deal’ has made David Cameron’s rather difficult day - which has involved the Prime Minister trying to insist that he has got the deal he was after, even though his demands on benefits in particular have been watered down - a little easier. It is the strongest indication yet that the Home Secretary will campaign to stay in the EU after all. This is the statement she released this evening: ‘EU free movement rules have been abused for too long and EU law has stopped us deporting dangerous foreign criminals.