Uk politics

Faced with the prospect of overwhelming defeat, Theresa May has once again decided to kick the Brexit can down the road and delay the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal. Standing before the House of Commons, the Prime Minister told MPs that ‘it is clear that while there is broad support for many of the key aspects of the deal, on one issue – the Northern Ireland backstop – there remains widespread and deep concern.’ which is why she is shelving the vote. All of which rather confused Mr Steerpike. After all, nothing had really changed in the past week, and Mr S was sure he had heard multiple times that there was absolutely no possibility that this vote would be cancelled.

I may have spoken too soon when I predicted that the Daily Mail might not suffer from its Brexit volte-face. At the Daily Telegraph’s Christmas charity phone-in last Sunday, I was struck by how many donating readers mentioned the Mail’s desertion, and by reports of recruitment by the Telegraph of disconsolate Mail readers. There are rumours that the Mail’s new editor, Geordie Greig, has personally rung to plead with readers who are cancelling their subscriptions. Geordie is a charming man, but obviously he cannot speak to all the disgruntled tens of thousands. The Mail has chosen to switch from an insurgent to an establishment position just when that establishment is more discredited than at any time since the 1930s.

Given how Remainers have lost no opportunity to accuse the official Leave campaign of telling porkies about how much money we send to the EU – £350 million per week according to Vote Leave but closer to a net £250 million once the UK rebate is taken into account – one might imagine that the 'People’s Vote' campaign would take extra special care over statements relating to financial contributions to the EU. But it seems not. It has been caught out doctoring a report written by an outside expert, leading to inaccurate claims about how EFTA members’ contributions to the EU are spent. Yesterday, 'People’s Vote' published a report entitled ‘Why Norway Plus Won’t Work’, with a foreword by David Miliband and Jo Johnson.

An Oxford professor's claim that it was “very likely” that  overspending by Vote Leave swung the referendum for Brexit has taken off like wildfire. Professor Philip Howard's analysis made the front page of yesterday's Independent under the headline: 'Illegal Facebook spending 'won 2016 vote for Leave''. So do the numbers behind the headline add up? Prof Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, calculated that: Around 80 million Facebook users saw the Vote Leave campaign ads on social media during the period of excess spending; 10 per cent of users clicked through; 10 per cent of those users switched their vote as a result, giving over 800,000 switched voters. This argument falls at each hurdle.