Uk politics

Theresa May's time at Parliament's despatch box is up. The Prime Minister has just faced her final session of PMQs, finishing off by telling MPs the 'duty' to 'serve my constituents will remain my greatest motivation'. Here is the video of the moment she said goodbye: Most MPs stood up and applauded the PM as she left the chamber. But Labour's frontbench stayed firmly in their seats. This marks something of a change from the norm. After all, when Tony Blair said goodbye, Tory MPs joined in the standing ovation... [caption id="attachment_10351572" align="alignnone" width="750"] Tory MPs join in standing ovation for Tony Blair[/caption] And when David Cameron stepped down, Labour MPs still managed a round of applause.

The penny has finally dropped here in Berlin. After the Brexit party's success in the European elections – and several missed Brexit deadlines later – most Germans are slowly realising that Brexit will happen. There are some who still hope that the offer of a new Brexit extension – as Ursula von der Leyen has indicated might be on offer – could mean a second referendum, or revocation of Article 50. But fewer now believe either of those remain realistic possibilities. And with Boris Johnson likely to be in Downing Street by tomorrow, these options become harder still to imagine.

Jo Swinson has been elected as the new leader of the Liberal Democrats. Succeeding Sir Vince Cable in the role, Swinson, the first woman to hold the position, beat her rival Ed Davey – winning 47,997 votes against 28,02 with 63 per cent of the vote. In her victory speech, Swinson said that on joining the party at 17, she had 'never imagined that I would one day have the honour of leading our great party'. So, how will she lead it? Swinson – who served as a business minister in the coalition – used her speech to cast the Liberal Democrats as the party of liberalism. She tried to paint Boris Johnson – in anticipation of him winning the Tory leadership contest – and Jeremy Corbyn as the products of nationalism and populism.

Tom Watson has had more reinventions than Kylie Minogue has had mid-performance outfit changes. His performances over the years have ranged from baronial backroom fixer loathed by Blairites to scourge of Fleet Street when he took on Rupert Murdoch. There was a brief counter-culture period when he went around wearing a beret, a foray into hunting down alleged paedophiles, and a mysterious vanishing act when he realised that Jeremy Corbyn's fans were out to get him. In the magazine this week, I look at where Watson's latest incarnation is taking him: he's the key figure in the latest attempt to save the Labour Party from Jeremy Corbyn and his hard left allies. As I say in that piece, Watson these days is a kindly man who many MPs - to their own great surprise - look to for help and support.

Interviewing Boris Johnson is like staring long and hard into an expressionist painting: there are pyrotechnics, the shape of commitments and policies, but it might all be mirage. After I spoke with him on Wednesday for my show, my abiding sense was that he would dearly love a root-and-branch renegotiation of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, but that his famous optimism is not the same as naïveté. He knows replacing the Withdrawal Agreement at this late juncture is a million-to-one chance – and so leaving without a deal may be the only way to meet his deadline of Brexit by 31 October.

Leo Varadkar certainly talks tough when it comes to Brexit, but is the Irish PM preparing to back down? Mr S. only asks because the Taoiseach conceded this morning that he is 'willing to compromise' over Brexit. This marks something of a change from his earlier comments in which he has repeatedly dismissed alternatives to the backstop, or regulatory alignment across the Irish border. Here is what Varadkar said on RTE today:  'The objective is to avoid the emergence of a hard border between north and south as a result of Brexit. What I care about is achieving those objectives and I am willing to compromise providing those objectives are achieved. And those objectives are that Brexit should not lead to the emergence of a hard border between north and south.