Uk politics

Thursday

James Forsyth

MPs have dealt May’s Brexit negotiating strategy a big blow

From our UK edition

The government has been defeated by 45 votes tonight. This loss doesn’t force a change in policy on Theresa May, but it is a significant blow to her negotiating strategy. She has been saying to the EU that with legally binding changes to the backstop, she could get the withdrawal agreement through parliament. The EU will argue that this result shows that even with changes to the backstop, May couldn’t get a deal through. They’ll therefore become more forceful in their attempt to urge her to come to an arrangement with Jeremy Corbyn on a customs union. The ERG have, ironically, made it less likely that May will get anything significant on the backstop and increased the chances of the UK ending up in a customs union with the EU.

Isabel Hardman

Defeat looms for government as Brexiteers decide to abstain in key vote

From our UK edition

The European Research Group has decided it will abstain on the government's Brexit motion, which MPs will be voting on in the next hour. An ERG source said that there was a 'collective decision' at a meeting this afternoon to abstain on the motion if no other amendments to it were passed. Voting has begun, but Anna Soubry has suggested that she won't be pushing her motion calling for the government's no-deal assessments to be published, after ministers said they would do so. This means that there will definitely be a vote on the main motion, and with the ERG abstaining, the government looks as though it is heading for a defeat. There was a split in this afternoon's meeting between a majority of MPs who wanted to abstain, and those who wanted to vote against the motion.

Steerpike

Chris Williamson: Churchill was in the ‘right place at the right time’

From our UK edition

Winston Churchill is a war hero who saved Britain from the Nazis. At least, that is what many think of a man consistently hailed as one of the greatest ever Brits. Not so Chris Williamson. Instead, the Labour MP agrees with the shadow chancellor John McDonnell that Churchill was a 'villain'. Speaking on the BBC's Politics Live, Williamson also said Churchill was in the 'right place at the right time' when the war was won and whatever Churchill's achievements in stopping Adolf Hitler, 'some of the things he said' meant he was no hero. Mr S thinks it's a shame that Williamson doesn't take the same rigorous assessment of character when it comes to making his mind up about Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro...

Melanie McDonagh

Isis bride Shamima Begum should be allowed home

From our UK edition

So, what do you reckon then about the jihadi bride, Shamima Begum, unearthed by the Times’ Anthony Loyd in a refugee camp in Syria? Should she be brought back home for an NHS delivery for her imminent baby – with the cops hovering backstage – or left to stew in a Syrian refugee camp, to give birth in the same conditions as other mothers-to-be? I may be misjudging my readers here, but I fancy I can discern which way most of us would want to go. But the first thing to say about all this is that this wretched 19-year old is about the least important aspect of the Isis situation.

Wednesday

Rupert Harrison

The moral of the Olly Robbins row? Don’t base policy on a lie

From our UK edition

Olly Robbins will be trying to avoid the Prime Minister today after his hurricane strength gaffe was splashed all over the newspaper front pages. He deserves a fair share of the criticism that has come his way, but I'm sure most of us have mouthed off a little too loudly in the pub after a stressful day in the office. The PM will be especially frustrated because he has undermined one of Theresa May's central claims – that the choice facing Parliament is a binary one between her deal and no deal. But she can't blame Robbins for the fragility of her position. In fact this is just a specific example of a wider truth: it's almost never a good idea to build a governing strategy around saying something that isn't true. Government is too big and the truth will out somehow.

Isabel Hardman

Brexiteer Tories threaten Valentine’s Day defeat

From our UK edition

Tomorrow's Brexit vote has gone from being billed the 'Valentine's Day massacre' to threatening a desperately dull anti-climax, and then back again to being quite interesting. This latest development comes courtesy of the European Research Group, which has said it could vote against the government on the motion that has been tabled because they object to its wording. This is another one of those neutral motions expressing government policy, which allows MPs to table motions expressing their own views.

Isabel Hardman

Chris Grayling gives Jeremy Corbyn a helping hand at PMQs

From our UK edition

How do you put people off thinking that a no-deal Brexit might be alright? Jeremy Corbyn clearly thinks the best way to do this is to talk about Chris Grayling and the mess over the contract for ferry services. The Labour leader made this the focus of his stint grilling Theresa May at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, asking how on Earth she could have confidence in her transport secretary when the awarding of the contract has been such an embarrassment. May defended Grayling, pointing to government spending on the railways as a reason for backing him. She also attacked Corbyn for choosing the ferries as a line of attack, arguing that this was just his attempt to disguise his own lack of answers on Brexit.

Matthew Lynn

Mark Carney is finally right about Brexit | 13 February 2019

From our UK edition

Cripes. At this rate the CBI will be putting out reports on Brexit's potential benefits, George Osborne will be reminding us he could always see its upside, and even the FT will be running leaders saying Brexit doesn’t quite mean the end of the world. There have been plenty of twists and turns in our tortured departure from the European Union but few quite so unexpected as the apparent conversion of the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney to the cause. In a speech yesterday, Carney didn't opt for any of the apocalyptic stuff – no food on the shelves at Tesco, pensioners dying in hospitals because of a shortage of medicines, slight delays at the Tuscany airports – but instead he took a more measured, reasonable approach.

Robert Peston

Why Brexiteers are getting worried

From our UK edition

The world has become a very strange and unsettling place. Exhibit one is that a senior Tory Brexiter just now pulled out of being on my show tonight, because we didn’t have enough proper Leave-voting Brexiters on the programme. “The programme was startlingly unbalanced! Every guest but me having voted or campaigned for Remain,” the Brexiter said. “I hope you can understand my concern at the lack of balance for one of the country’s top political programmes”. Well actually I could not. Because this senior politician would have been interviewed at the start of the programme, in an impartial way, and with the space to express important arguments.

Theo Hobson

Victoria Bateman’s naked Brexit stunt isn’t feminist

From our UK edition

Dr Victoria Bateman’s naked Brexit stunt should not be seen in terms of modern feminism but in terms of early modern religious performance art, especially that of the Ranters and Quakers. The trauma of the seventeenth century English civil war caused some strange religious groups to emerge, and some of them went in for shocking little stunts, or ‘happenings’, in the hippy-sixties term. Cromwell’s frail Commonwealth got rid of the old established church, and deciding what to put in its place was a bit like Brexit. Lots of Puritans wanted their new orthodoxy set up, but plenty of liberals wanted a more open-ended free for all, a ‘no-deal’ scenario perhaps. The Ranters were religious punks; they mixed religion with sex, drugs and swearing.

Tuesday

Henry Newman

What is the naked Brexit academic trying to achieve?

From our UK edition

Earlier this morning, I pitched up at Good Morning Britain’s studios for what was billed as a Brexit debate with Dr Victoria Bateman A.K.A. the naked academic. I’d been warned in advance that she would be naked. And when I was shown into the studio, she was – totally. We hadn’t met backstage in the green room, as Dr Bateman was in her own dressing room. Presumably she was busy writing her slogan across her torso (she kindly offered later to allow ITV to film this process). So, we were only introduced under the studio lights. We had a brief chat during the commercial break, as Dr Bateman handed her shoes to one of the crew. She seemed a perfectly nice person – just naked. https://twitter.com/HenryNewman/status/1095273776537878528?

John Keiger

A no-deal Brexit spells trouble for Emmanuel Macron | 12 February 2019

From our UK edition

In 1919, a 31-year-old Tommy from Bristol, named George Robertson – fresh from fighting alongside French troops on the Somme – married Suzanne Leblond in Abbeville, northern France. In 2017, George Robertson’s great grandson, Emmanuel Macron, became French president. Macron embarked on a policy that, while acknowledging Franco-British friendship, sought to ensure that Britain did not prosper from Brexit. Yet Macron’s stance appears increasingly counter-intuitive. Of all the European leaders, Macron is noted for being the most intransigent in his public utterances on Britain’s Brexit negotiations.

Steerpike

Watch: Steve Barclay’s Jean-Paul Juncker blunder

From our UK edition

Given that there have been three Brexit secretaries, those from the EU side could be forgiven for forgetting the name of the latest British minister in town. Unfortunately Steve Barclay has no such excuse for getting Jean-Claude Juncker's name wrong. Asked by the BBC what he was up to in Brussels, he responded by saying: 'It’s to build on the engagement the Prime Minister had last week with Jean-Paul Juncker…' Oh dear. Mr S hopes that Barclay's memory for names is no reflection of his grasp of detail on the backstop...

Tom Goodenough

Team Juncker shows it has learned nothing from Selmayr-gate

From our UK edition

Martin Selmayr is no stranger to using Twitter to offer his insight and call out those he thinks have got it wrong. But this morning, on the big news in Brussels, the so-called ‘Monster’ is keeping quiet. While Selmayr has today shared messages about ‘clean vehicles’, ‘TeamJuncker’ and (of course) Brexit, he has had nothing to say on the story relating to the controversial circumstances of his appointment as secretary general of the EU Commission. This morning, the European Ombudsman closed its inquiry into Selmayr’s elevation to the top job; its findings are damning. The Ombudsman says that ‘Mr Selmayr’s appointment did not follow EU law, in letter or spirit, and did not follow the Commission's own rules.

Ross Clark

David Cameron has helped Theresa May – even if he didn’t mean to

From our UK edition

David Cameron has been widely blamed for the Conservatives’ current predicament, but in one sense he has saved the party – if inadvertently. It is thanks to his drive for younger candidates that Theresa May’s government has avoided succumbing to a no-confidence vote. May does not have a majority, and relied on DUP votes to help her survive a no-confidence vote last month. Yet even DUP votes would not be enough to save her were she losing her own MPs at the rate John Major did in the mid 1990s. In 1992, Major was elected with a seemingly healthy majority of 21. Yet over the course of the following five years he lost that majority entirely. Why?

Monday

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn: the EU must be defeated

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Jeremy Corbyn was caught out last week after a video emerged of him claiming that the European Union was creating a ‘military Frankenstein’. It now seems as if that criticism of EU wasn’t a one off. Here is Corbyn making a speech at a rally in 2010 in which he says the EU must be ‘defeated’: https://twitter.com/rosskempsell/status/1095002665061412865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw He told the crowd: 'They – the worlds bankers – the international Monetary Fund, the European Union, are utterly united in what they want. Utterly united in deflation, suppressing the economy and creating unemployment.

Isabel Hardman

Amber Rudd changes the Tory tune on food banks

From our UK edition

What's behind the rise in demand for food banks? Over the past few years, the default Conservative line has been that the reasons people need emergency help are 'complex'. This is certainly true: the figures released by the Trussell Trust, which runs the largest network of food banks in the country, show that there is no one factor in food bank use. But those figures also show quite clearly that problems with the payments of benefits, or cuts to benefits, are a major driver: the top four reasons cited for referring someone to a food bank in 2017-18 were low income (28.49 per cent), benefit delays (23.74 per cent), benefit change (17.72 per cent) and debt (8.53 per cent).

Ross Clark

What is the student ‘strike’ against climate change trying to achieve?

From our UK edition

Forty years ago, I occasionally succeeded in skipping school for climate-related reasons – namely because my village was under deep snow and the school bus couldn’t get through. But too often the snowploughs proved surprisingly effective. It never occurred to me, though, to skip school on a point of principle. That is, however, what pupils are threatening to do – or are being implored to do – on Friday. A “Youth for Climate” movement circulating on Twitter has declared a ‘strike’ for the day – the idea being that children will walk out of lessons in order to protest at the lack of progress on tackling climate change.

Robert Peston

Are May and Corbyn’s Brexit visions coming together?

From our UK edition

No matter how many times Theresa May reminds us, it is easy to forget that Labour’s manifesto committed it to delivering Brexit. Equally it is hard to remember that the notorious motion passed by the last Labour conference that opened the door to the party’s possible support for a Brexit referendum – as a last resort – was also a restatement of the party’s pledge to deliver its own vision of how to leave the EU. So it was rational for the Prime Minister to respond in good faith to Jeremy Corbyn’s written offer to negotiate Brexit terms that he and his party could support.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Corbyn has complicated May’s Brexit strategy

From our UK edition

Number 10 had hoped that if it could hold off the Cooper amendment again next week, then it could eke out a concession from the EU on the backstop. But as I say in The Sun this weekend, this approach has been complicated by Jeremy Corbyn’s soft Brexit plan. This scheme, obviously, appeals to the EU: it would keep Britain in the customs union and following many of the rules of the single market. ‘The Labour party and the EU are operating in tandem to some extent, which is worrying for us’ frets one Cabinet Minister. So, May needs to persuade Brussels that such a deal couldn’t get through because her government would collapse as soon as she proposed it.