James Forsyth

Michel Barnier’s press conference this morning and Boris Johnson’s speech served as reminders as to how far apart on a trade deal the EU and the UK currently are. The EU view is that any tariff free, quota free trade deal must include ‘robust commitments to ensure a level playing field’. The EU seems to

Now that Britain is out of the European Union, it will be very hard to go back in. In the 2016 referendum campaign, one of the things that Vote Leave did most effectively was point out that because the EU was constantly evolving, no one could be confident that a vote for Remain was a

In practical terms, little has changed tonight. Businesses and citizens here will not feel any real difference in the coming weeks and months as they interact with the EU. But in another sense, everything has changed tonight. The UK is now out of the EU and the bar for rejoining will be very high. First

Given how hard Washington had been lobbying the UK government against allowing Huawei to have any role in the UK’s 5G network, there was a certain nervousness in Whitehall about the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to London this week. But judging by Pompeo’s appearance with Dominic Raab at Policy Exchange there was

Lindsay Hoyle is a very different Speaker to John Bercow. He talks less, chairs in a kindly manner, and keeps the Commons running to time. Today he announced a new procedure designed to prevent a repeat of the excesses of the Bercow era. In a brief statement after PMQs, he said that from now on

‘No one disagrees with what the government is trying to do but what they do worry about, is the capacity of the state to deliver it’, one Tory grandee tells me. As I wrote in the Sun, the concern is that the government sees infrastructure as the way to boost Britain’s growth rate, but these

Until Labour gets a new leader, PMQs will be a rather predictable affair. Whatever topic Jeremy Corbyn goes on, Boris Johnson has an ace up his sleeve: Labour’s defeat in the election. In today’s session, Boris Johnson trumpeted, ‘I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer that the British people gave some moments ago’. It

This government has just suffered its first defeat of the parliament in, unsurprisingly, the House of Lords. The Lords voted for the Oates amendment which entitles EU nationals to a physical document attesting to their right to stay in the UK after Brexit. In truth, the government and the Lords aren’t that far apart on

Boris Johnson’s election victory has been the political equivalent of Dyno-Rod, unblocking the drains of Westminster, I say in the Sun this morning. The return of majority government has led to not only Brexit sailing through parliament but being vital to the restoration of power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Moving forward offers a chance to bring

At Cabinet on Tuesday, Boris Johnson said that he was setting the government a target of cutting violent crime by 20 per cent. As I say in the magazine this week, this will be the focus of the new Cobra-style Cabinet committee on crime that he will chair with Priti Patel as his deputy. This

One of the moments that sunk Jeremy Corbyn in the election campaign was his interview with Andrew Neil. So, there is a particular interest in Andrew Neil’s interviews with the Labour leadership contenders. Lisa Nandy was this evening’s guest. At the beginning, she was visibly nervous as he questioned her on foreign affairs. Nandy went

For the first time since the referendum, the United Kingdom has a strong government that knows what it wants from Brexit. This will make the second round of the negotiations with the EU very different from the first. Theresa May famously declared, and repeated, that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. This was a soundbite designed to conceal