Uk politics

Tuesday

James Forsyth

The Cabinet steps-up planning for no deal

From our UK edition

A predictably lively Cabinet meeting today as ministers discussed no-deal planning. Jeremy Hunt said that EU attitudes were hardening because they could see a second referendum coming into view, in part, because of the speculation that people around the Cabinet table were indulging in it. The Foreign Secretary warned that a failure to deliver Brexit would be as devastating for the Tories as the Lib Dems’s failure on tuition fees was to them. Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, railed against the Treasury approvals process. He complained that because of it, the government had missed the boat and not booked as much ferry capacity as it wanted. Michael Gove complained about the inefficiency of the borders delivery group.

Steerpike

Clive Lewis fails to get into the Christmas spirit

From our UK edition

Christmas – the time for peace on earth and goodwill to all men. It's also the time of year for giving. Except that is if you're Clive Lewis. The Labour MP – and sometime Corbynista – has managed to raise eyebrows in Parliament over his attempt at a Christmas bash. While the bulk of Christmas drinks events in Parliament come with warm wine, crisps and the odd G n T, Lewis's Christmas bash could be described as less generous on the catering front. Mr S understands that guests invited to his drinks this week were asked to bring... their own refreshments and snacks. Still, it's merrier than anything the Leader's Office are planning. Jeremy Corbyn is yet to send out an invite for Christmas drinks for hacks.

Monday

Henry Newman

For all its faults, May’s Brexit deal might be the best option Leave MPs have

From our UK edition

Several cabinet ministers have publicly backed a series of indicative votes in the Commons on the various Brexit options. I understand why, but they're wrong: this approach is both messy and misguided. The best thing for MPs is to spend their Christmas break thinking carefully. Those who have criticised Theresa May's Brexit deal should carefully think through their opposition. It's my view that reports of the death of May's deal are greatly exaggerated. It's obvious there are only now three real options when it comes to Brexit: Leave with no deal; Leave with May's deal; or, don't Leave. Every possible path falls into one of these three boxes. Managed no deal (whatever that is or isn't) is a way of dressing up no deal with a nice bow.

Katy Balls

Corbyn tables a motion of no confidence in May – will it backfire?

From our UK edition

After an afternoon of will-they-won't-they over Labour's threat to table a motion of no confidence, Jeremy Corbyn has told the Speaker he will do just this. However, where earlier reports suggested the no confidence vote would be in the government, it will now be in Theresa May herself. This is important because a confidence motion in the Prime Minister personally has no legal or constitutional force – were May to lose it she would not need to resign. It is also up to the government whether they make time for it – they don't have to. Given that Labour have no opposition day debates left to set the agenda, it could just not happen. The Labour leader's decision to do this comes after a bizarre afternoon filled with contradicting messages from party figures.

James Forsyth

Theresa May’s Brexit deal isn’t dead yet

From our UK edition

One might have expected today’s Commons statement to go rather badly for Theresa May. After all, she had gone to the European Council seeking legal and political assurances and come back with very little. Her anger was shown by the way she confronted Jean-Claude Juncker over his description of her as ‘nebulous’. But it actually turned out rather well for her. May’s decision to say that the meaningful vote will take place in the week of the 14th of January meant that Jeremy Corbyn’s threat – that he’d call a no confidence vote in her personally, if she wouldn’t name a date for the meaningful vote – lost whatever force it might have had. Without that, Corbyn’s response lacked impact and direction.

Steerpike

Watch: Leave MP kicked out of Sky News interview

From our UK edition

As we get closer to Brexit day in March and the campaigners for a second referendum begin to gain momentum, tensions are starting to run seriously high in the Westminster village. But the most recent spat between two MPs might just be the most remarkable sign yet of how fraught relations have become between Remainers and Leavers. On Sky News, Labour MP and second referendum supporter Anna Turley locked horns with Conservative MP David TC Davies about the impact no deal Brexit would have on the country's economy. As the two sparred over which economic forecasts by the Treasury should be taken more seriously, Davies - unable to get a word in - took the unusual step of declaring that he would look at his phone while he waited for Turley to finish.

Matthew Lynn

Why business and the City should speak out against a second referendum

From our UK edition

Parliament is deadlocked. The cabinet is split down the middle and Brussels won’t compromise on the deal it has already offered to the Prime Minister. As the clock ticks steadily towards March 29th, there seems little way out of the impasse surrounding our tortured exit from the European Union. No one can agree on how to leave, or how to stay either. Against that backdrop, it is probably no great surprise that a second referendum is gaining momentum. It is at least a way out of the mess, and possibly a more decisive one than any of the alternatives. Theresa May has spoken out against that today, even if many of her Cabinet ministers are staying strangely silent on the issue. As the debate intensifies over Christmas, business and the City should support her in that stance.

Robert Peston

Can David Cameron rescue Theresa May from her Brexit crisis?

From our UK edition

If you want a symbol of the catastrophe Theresa May faces over Brexit here it is: her predecessor David Cameron is advising her how to get some kind route out of the EU – that isn’t the fast one over the cliff – through Parliament. This is like the Pope asking the Chief Rabbi on the true meaning of the Eucharist: when Theresa May became Prime Minister she defined herself by defenestrating all things and people of a Cameroonish hue (including, most notoriously – and some would argue most self-destructively – packing Osborne off to the backbenches). But now the former prime minister has become her personal Brexit-crisis adviser, as she desperately tries to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU with a chaotic no deal.

Brendan O’Neill

Leo Varadkar is being played like a fiddle by Brussels

From our UK edition

A few decades ago, Irish people would march through the streets of London to holler at the British government: ‘Hands off Ireland!’ As an Irishman, I wish Irish people would now take to the streets of Dublin to say to Leo Varadkar’s government: ‘Hands off Britain!’ For Varadkar’s meddling in British politics, his and his minions’ attempts to scupper Britain’s break from the European Union, is profoundly anti-democratic. What we have here is a foreign leader interfering in Britain’s domestic, democratic affairs. It was wrong when the British did that to Ireland, and it is wrong for the Irish now to do the same to Brexit Britain. The way Varadkar, the Taoiseach, talks about Britain is astonishing.

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: loss of a confidence vote

From our UK edition

Liam Fox - Parliament could have a free vote on Brexit The International Trade Secretary joined Andrew Marr this morning to discuss Brexit's next steps following a turbulent week which saw the Prime Minister win a vote of confidence by 200 votes to 117. With the date for Parliament's 'meaningful vote' on the Brexit deal now pushed back until mid-January, Liam Fox entertained a potential course of action still open to the government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OuCktv1INE AM: Shouldn’t Tory MPs... be allowed a free vote? LF: Well that’s not something that we have considered.

Saturday

Ivan Rogers

The nine lessons of Brexit

From our UK edition

The stakes could not be higher now. We face the biggest political crisis for at least a couple of generations. The risks are now both a democratic crisis and an economic one. We just cannot go on as we have been: evading and obfuscating choices – indeed frequently denying, against all evidence, that there are unavoidable choices. And the public will understandably not, for a very long time, forgive a political class which on all sides of the divide fails to level with it on the choices being made. This feels a rather unseasonal theme but as we are approaching Christmas I thought I would therefore talk about nine lessons we need to draw from the last two and a half years, if the next two and a half – indeed the next decade – are not to be even more painful.

James Forsyth

Where does May go from here?

From our UK edition

How does Theresa May break the Brexit logjam? Well, as I write in the Sun this morning, there are three ways to do this being discussed by Cabinet Ministers—the situation is now such that ministers don’t feel there’s anything disloyal about discussing contingency plans. The first option would see the government back an amendment to May’s deal when it comes to the Commons for a vote in January. The government would accept an amendment that added a sunset clause to the backstop, this would mean that it would expire after a defined period of time unless parliament voted to keep it going. With that change, May’s deal would have a fighting chance of passing the Commons. Some in government think that this might just be enough to win over the DUP.

Ross Clark

The simple solution to Theresa May’s Brexit dilemma

From our UK edition

For once, I think Jean Claude-Juncker might have a point. “Nebulous” was a pretty good description of Theresa May’s mission to Brussels. What, exactly, was she expecting from EU leaders that was also going to please her own backbenchers? She must have known the EU would stonewall her over the backstop. She seemed merely to be asking for ‘reassurances’ rather than a legal guarantee that Britain could not be trapped in the backstop – in spite of knowing full well that reassurances are not going to be enough to win over her Commons critics. To adapt Winston Churchill, May’s strategy has become a nebula trapped inside a smog, hidden within a miasma.  Yet there is such as easy way out of the mess.

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Juncker vs May, Part II

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Theresa May has had a wretched time at the EU Council summit – not helped by the face Jean-Claude Juncker appeared to take a personal swipe at the Prime Minister by calling her nebulous. The pair clashed this morning over the apparent comments. Now the European Commission President has attempted to smooth things over. Only Mr S suspects he may have done the opposite. Asked in his press conference, what the pair said to one another when May confronted him, Juncker said they 'were not dancing' in reference to Theresa May's 'Dancing Queen' days. He insisted he did not mean that May was 'nebulous' – the comment was directed at UK Parliament in general. As for now? 'She was kissing me,' Juncker added, bizarrely. https://twitter.

Katy Balls

A nebulous press conference: Theresa May insists progress made on backstop

From our UK edition

After a nightmare EU Council summit, Theresa May attempted to put on a brave face in her summit press conference. The Prime Minister told hacks that despite the fact the EU had refused to agree to her request for a 12 month limit to the backstop, progress had been made. As for that heated exchange between May and Jean Claude Juncker in which she appeared to call the European Commission president out for describing her as nebulous, that was merely the type of 'robust' conversation good friends can have. While there is reason to believe Juncker was being disingenuous in calling May 'nebulous' over her requests (the UK side insist the EU side know what it wants), this press conference did manage to fall into the nebulous category.

Robert Peston

Theresa May now faces a humiliating choice over Brexit

From our UK edition

Here is the measure of Theresa May’s failure last night, according to an observer of her request to EU leaders for “assurances” that UK membership of the EU backstop would be finite and of short duration. They were ready to help. They assumed a process of officials agreeing a text over coming week would start today, to give her the necessary words that would persuade Tory and DUP critics of her deal to ultimately support it. But it was during the course of questioning her that they concluded such a process – such an extension of talks – would be a total waste of time. Why? Well according to one observer of the conversation between May and the EU27 leaders, “she could not say what would actually deliver a majority in parliament for her”.

Matthew Lynn

The myth of the Brexit cliff edge

From our UK edition

The ports will be clogged up with lorries. The shelves at Tesco will be empty. Doctors will be rationing antibiotics, and the army will be called out to deliver food. As we approach the deadline for our departure from the European Union, as the Prime Minister returns empty handed yet again from yet another catastrophic round of negotiations in Brussels, and as the cliff-edge gets closer and closer, the conventional wisdom is that the pressure on Britain to agree to something – anything! – becomes more and more intense. And yet, as so often in the through-the-looking glass world of Brexit, that conventional wisdom is a bit off target. And not just by a little as it happens, but by 180 degrees.

Robert Peston

Theresa May’s catastrophic night in Brussels

From our UK edition

It has been a catastrophic night for the Prime Minister here in Brussels. She was rebuffed by EU leaders in her request for a few weeks of fresh work by officials to formulate words of what she called “reassurance”, such that Tory Brexiter and DUP MPs could be confident that the backstop they hate would only ever be short lived if implemented. “We do not want the UK to think there can be any form of renegotiation whatsoever” said EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. This means that the PM knows that, as and when she puts her Brexit plan to the Commons for a vote, more than 100 of her MPs will vote against it, plus the DUP and the opposition parties. She would lose by a colossal and humiliating margin of more than 200 votes.

Katy Balls

Brussels reject Theresa May’s plea for backstop concessions

From our UK edition

Theresa May's week has gone from bad to worse. In order to win the confidence vote tabled against her on Wednesday, May had to make several promises to her MPs: not to fight the next election, to get the DUP back on side – and to find a legally binding solution to the Irish backstop. The latter pledge appears to have already hit the buffers after a disastrous night for May at the EU council summit. The Prime Minister attended the summit on Wednesday evening in the hope of securing new concessions to her Brexit deal. She asked the EU 27 to 'work together intensely' to tweak the deal – with the UK suggesting a new target for a trade deal by the end of 2021, in order to show the backstop was not indefinite.

Thursday

Katy Balls

Tory pressure mounts on May to axe Karen Bradley

From our UK edition

How can Theresa May regain the confidence of the 117 Tory MPs who voted against her leadership? A big part of May's pitch to her party on Wednesday night was that she would repair relations with the DUP – after the confidence and supply agreement broke down over the backstop. One idea now gaining momentum with senior Conservatives of how to do that is to dump Karen Bradley as Northern Ireland secretary, as part of a mini-reshuffle to show May is listening to MPs' concerns. After the Prime Minister limped home in Wednesday's confidence vote, there is deep unrest over May's leadership. Rather than quash the Brexit rebels, it's become clear that the concern over her premiership goes beyond the European Research Group of Eurosceptic MPs.