Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Why did Theresa May bother giving a statement in Downing Street tonight?

Theresa May has just given a statement in Downing Street in which she apparently said absolutely nothing. The Prime Minister walked out to the lectern outside No.10 and offered the sort of update on her diary that is normally sent out by email from the Downing Street press office. She said that she had held talks this evening ‘with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and the Westminster leaders of the SNP and Plaid Cymru’, adding that ‘I am disappointed that the leader of the Labour Party has not so far chosen to take part’. After a day of complaining that the Prime Minister hadn’t yet picked up the phone

Steerpike

Watch: ‘Shame on you’: Labour MPs shout down Michael Gove

Michael Gove ended the no confidence debate in the Commons by denouncing Jeremy Corbyn. But perhaps unsurprisingly his criticism of the Labour leader did not go down well with those on the opposite benches. His comments about Corbyn were shouted down by Labour MPs, who yelled ‘shame on you’. Here’s what Gove said to rile them up: ‘If the leader of the opposition won’t stand up against Putin when he attacks people in this country…if he will not stand up for this country when the critical national security questions are being asked, how can we possibly expect him to stand up for us in European negotiations?’ Mr S thinks Gove

Robert Peston

The impossible choice Theresa May now faces to get her Brexit deal through

What can we expect from the prime minister’s decision to speak with senior parliamentarians to gauge the kind of Brexit deal, if any, that might get through the Commons? I have been talking with members of the cabinet and those close to her – and they are divided on whether this is a genuine attempt to find a workable consensus or simply more Micawberish delay in the hope that unknown events will bail her and her government out. First things first. In the motion the PM will lay before the House, probably on Monday as she is obliged to do under the Grieve Amendment, don’t hold your breath for a

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn’s incompetence remains a reassuring certainty

It looked exciting on paper. A massive defeat for the government. Their flagship policy not just sunk but blown to smithereens. And a Prime Minister facing a no-confidence motion for the first time since Sunny Jim Callaghan was unseated in 1979 by Margaret Thatcher. And yet PMQs lacked sparkle. The mood was footsore, hungover, whimpering with fatigue. A historic day felt entirely unhistoric. Everyone wanted a break. May, her throat hoarse, looked knackered and bored, like Mick Jagger at the fag-end of a world tour. She gasped out some of her answers without grammatical ornaments. When Robert Goodwill sought her congratulations for a Scarborough firm that flogs fertiliser to China, she managed

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn gives May an easy ride at Prime Minister’s Questions

Jeremy Corbyn decided to re-release his greatest hits at Prime Minister’s Questions today, starting with Brexit but then moving on to poverty, education, police cuts and ‘burning i justices’. We’ve heard these questions many times before, and often in the same sequence, but today the Labour leader was using them once again to try to underline that Theresa May’s government is failing not just on Brexit but on everything else too. This didn’t work, though, because Corbyn only tried to tie the topics together in his very last question, and that question was particularly rambling. Last night the Labour leader’s spokesman delivered a crisp line about the government being unable

Alex Massie

Who can spare us from this Brexit disaster? | 16 January 2019

God help us all, because no-one else can or will in these present circumstances. If you wished to apportion some blame for the shambolic state of British politics these days you will not be short of candidates to bear some measure of the opprobrium they all, to one degree or another, deserve.  Spare us from Theresa May whose definition of Brexit hemmed her in from the very beginning. Spare us from a Prime Minister who learnt nothing from David Cameron’s failures and continued to prize Tory unity above almost everything else and continued to do so long past the point at which it became obvious to everyone else that Tory

Tom Goodenough

How the world’s papers reacted to May’s Brexit vote defeat

Theresa May appears as a dodo on the front page of today’s Sun. Unfortunately for the beleaguered Prime Minister, the verdict isn’t much better in the foreign press. Last night’s disastrous night in the Commons makes the front pages of newspapers around the world. The New York Times describes the Prime Minister’s defeat as ‘bruising’ and the paper says last night’s result ‘underscores how comprehensively Mrs. May has failed to hold consensus behind any single vision of how to exit the European Union’. For the Times, the PM largely has herself to blame for making history by notching up the largest defeat for a government in modern British political history:

James Forsyth

How tonight’s no confidence vote could help Theresa May

Another day, another big vote in the Commons. But as with yesterday, there is a sense in Westminster that tonight’s vote is a foregone conclusion. Theresa May is expected to win it as the DUP are still backing her, as are the ERG and no Tory second referendum types have come out against her. Now, it might seem odd that the Commons can inflict the biggest defeat on a government of the modern era, on the defining issue of the parliament on Tuesday and then affirm its confidence in that government on the Wednesday. But that is British politics right now. If this no confidence vote goes as expected, it

Steerpike

Watch: Richard Burgon turns nasty

When he first came to power, Jeremy Corbyn promised a ‘kinder’ politics and told Labour supporters to ‘treat people with respect’. But did Richard Burgon get the message? Mr S. only asks because he suspects the Labour MP and arch Corbynite won’t have won many new fans when he popped up on Channel 4 News yesterday evening in the aftermath of May’s thumping defeat in the Commons. Burgon told Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson that she would be ‘judged by history’ as a result of her party’s past coalition with the Tories: ‘The real enemies are the Conservatives. And you have aided and abetted them. to hurt working class communities

Tuesday

Steerpike

Watch: Matt Hancock’s disastrous attempt to defend Theresa May

Theresa May made history tonight by notching up the largest defeat for a sitting government in British political history. But despite 118 Tory MPs rebelling against the Government, May can still count on some of her colleagues to try and defend her. Step forward, Matt Hancock. The health secretary popped up on the BBC to trot out the PM’s Brexit plan B: go back to the Commons and listen to MPs on what they do want. Unfortunately for Hancock, his attempt to explain what happens next didn’t inspire Mr S with much confidence: Andrew Neil: They’re ruling out reopening the agreement. What do you do now? Matt Hancock: There are two

Robert Peston

May’s disastrous defeat makes a Brexit delay inevitable

There is no coming back for the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal from the scale of a defeat by 432 to 202, the worst defeat by a Government for more than a century. In all normal circumstances a Prime Minister would resign when suffering such a humiliation on their central policy – and a policy Theresa May herself said today would “set the future of this country for generation”. But these are not normal times and Theresa May is not a normal prime minister. She said tonight she would fight on – subject of course to the Commons not in effect turfing her out if it backs Jeremy Corbyn’s motion of

Tom Goodenough

Theresa May’s Brexit deal rejected by MPs by 432 to 202 votes

Theresa May’s Brexit deal has been decisively rejected by MPs who voted 432 to 202 against the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement. The Prime Minister had told MPs to back her deal or risk “letting the British people down” but politicians voted down her deal in the biggest government defeat in the Commons in British history. The previous record was by a margin of 166 votes in 1924, when the Labour minority government lost a vote by 364 votes to 198. A total of 118 Tory MPs rebelled against the Government in the crunch vote tonight. Jeremy Corbyn responded to the PM by confirming that he would table a vote of no

Isabel Hardman

Has Theresa May just revealed her Brexit plan B?

Theresa May has just finished a speech in which she made clear – without using those words – that the Government is going to lose tonight’s meaningful vote and that she is now planning for the next Commons confrontation on Brexit.  She managed to get one MP, Sir Edward Leigh, to withdraw his amendment on the basis that she was happy to work with him on ‘creative solutions’ to the backstop. She also promised that ‘the government will work harder at taking Parliament with us’ on Brexit.  But this harder work doesn’t seem to include any moves towards working with Labour on some kind of national unity movement to stop

Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs threaten to push Corbyn into supporting a second referendum

Labour MPs who want a second referendum are threatening to table their own motion calling for one next week if their frontbench fails to do so. Jeremy Corbyn is expected to call for a vote of no confidence in the government once Theresa May’s deal is defeated in the Commons this evening. The Labour leadership has refused to do this until now because it doesn’t want to hold a vote it is certain to lose, but the pressure has now grown so great for a vote that it will be extremely difficult for Corbyn to dodge it, even though the DUP have said they will stop the government from falling

Katy Balls

Bercow vs Government, Part VIII: Speaker rejects Murrison amendment

Relations between the Speaker and the government have taken yet another turn for the worse this afternoon. Ahead of tonight’s vote on Theresa May’s doomed Brexit deal, ministers had hoped that an amendment tabled by Andrew Murrison – calling for an end date on the backstop – could win backbench support and save the Prime Minister from humiliation this evening. However, John Bercow had other ideas – and did not select the amendment for the vote. Instead, Bercow selected four amendments from Labour, SNP, Edward Leigh and John Barron. This means three seemingly government friendly amendments – from Murrison, Hugo Swire and a group of Labour MPs – have been

James Kirkup

The question that Leavers and Remainers still can’t answer

Why did Britain vote for Brexit? As Parliament gazes into the abyss, the question seems worth asking, even if I don’t pretend to be able to offer a simple answer. And that’s the point, really. Britain is teetering on the brink of a grand failure of policy and politics because, insofar as anyone involved has even wondered why a majority of voters rejected Britain’s political-economic settlement in June 2016, they have generally come up with simple, shallow answers. Among No Deal Leavers, most explanations for the referendum result these days refer to “control” (especially over immigration policy) or “sovereignty” or some nebulous idea of the economic opportunities that lie in

Ross Clark

Brexiteers owe Dominic Grieve and Gina Miller a debt of gratitude

If, as seems inevitable, the Commons votes to reject Theresa May’s Brexit deal later today – thereby sparing Britain from the humiliation of being trapped in the backstop, forced to accept EU rules without having a say in them – the hero of the hour will be Dominic Grieve. Him and Anna Soubry, Nicky Morgan, Kenneth Clarke, Sarah Woolaston and a gaggle of other Remain MPs. Why? Because it was only thanks to them that the Commons is getting its meaningful vote on the Brexit deal. It was they who rebelled against the government in December 2017 to make sure that such a vote would be held. Remarkably, not a

Steerpike

John Bercow only has eyes for Labour

While much remains uncertain when it comes to how Brexit will play out in the coming days and weeks, it is clear that John Bercow will play a pivotal role. To the dismay of government figures, the Speaker has of late refused to follow parliamentary norms – choosing to ignore precedent just last week when he accepted a Dominic Grieve amendment even though clerks had advised him not to. On Monday, Conservative MP Matt Warman asked the Speaker whether there were any more precedents he planned to change on the coming days. Bercow did not take the question kindly and chastised the executive for questioning his authority – and impartiality. Only

Robert Peston

Theresa May will lose tonight but she will still cling to her Brexit deal

Theresa May will lose the vote tonight on her Brexit plan, widely seen as the most important vote in Parliament since the early years of the Second World War, and yet nothing of importance may change – or at least not immediately, at least. How can that possibly be – especially since she could well lose by a record-busting and humiliating margin of more than 100 votes? It is because she is very unlikely to acknowledge that her deal is dead, and will instead announce shortly after the defeat that she will have another go at negotiating with EU leaders to amend it so as to make it acceptable to

Monday

Tom Goodenough

Theresa May survives no confidence vote in the Commons

Theresa May has survived a vote of confidence in the Commons by 325 votes to 306. Tory MPs – as well as the DUP’s members – backed the Prime Minister in tonight’s crunch vote. The decisive support from the Conservative party meant that the votes of Labour, SNP and Lib Dem MPs were not enough to oust the PM. Theresa May responded to winning the vote by inviting Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street for Brexit talks. But the Labour leader – who earlier said May was leading a ‘zombie government’ – said he would only enter into discussions if the PM ruled out a no deal Brexit.