Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: David Cameron’s real referendum mistake

Cameron’s fatal error Sir: Jo Johnson’s otherwise informative review of David Cameron’s For the Record (Books, 12 October) suggests Cameron’s ‘mistake’ was to not call the referendum earlier, and his ‘fatal error’ was his failure to nail down the Leave campaign on how they ‘would actually deliver Brexit’. Not so. Cameron’s mistake was to assume the referendum would produce a Remain result. Cameron’s fatal error was to have taken sides in the referendum. Had he not taken sides, had he not allowed George Osborne to launch ‘Project Fear’, and had he encouraged the dissemination of practical information for both the Leave and the Remain sides, then after the result he

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Nigel Farage had better hurry up and settle for a peerage

Last week, an angry Telegraph reader asked me why I had got through a whole column on Brexit without mentioning Nigel Farage. My exact answer is that the column was about MPs in relation to Brexit and Mr Farage and his Brexit party have no MPs. But there is a more general answer too. It is that the Brexit party’s irreducible core is now clearly shown to be small. The rest of its vote is entirely dependent on the behaviour of whoever is the Conservative leader. Mrs May’s behaviour swelled its ranks; Boris Johnson’s has reduced them. It really is as simple as that. Now that Boris has actually got

The Spectator

The rise of democrophobia

It has become perceived wisdom that we are heading for a ‘people vs parliament’ election. But that is a false construct. Who gets to sit in parliament is the one matter in our political system over which the people have almost total control. The battle currently underway is to limit the powers that parliament has – putting certain issues beyond the reach of democratically-elected politicians. At its heart lies a fear of democracy, a fear of the decisions that people might make when more of UK life is under the control of those sent to parliament by UK voters. It is worth looking at this democrophobia in some detail, as

Tom Strathclyde

Boris Johnson may not have to resign if he loses a no confidence vote

Constitutional government relies on a series of shared understandings, and those with differing political objectives being willing to act in accordance with agreed practice. The high tempers of the Brexit process have certainly put pressure on these understandings and on that willingness. From the Cooper-Letwin episode to the Benn Act, too many parliamentarians have, unfortunately, proved themselves willing – with help from the Speaker – to override constitutional norms. And so we find ourselves in an extraordinary state of affairs in which the House of Commons does not in substance have confidence in the government and yet is unwilling to formally withdraw confidence or bring about an early election. The

James Forsyth & Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal has changed everything

Ever since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister his opponents — both inside and outside his party — have been convinced that his ‘do or die’ pledge to have the UK out of the EU by 31 October would be his greatest vulnerability. ‘We’ll make him miss this deadline,’ they thought, ‘and his credibility will be shot.’ Brexit party voters would write him off as another blusterer from a Tory party unable to deliver. He seemed to think so too, repeatedly saying that ‘extension means extinction’. His enemies have now succeeded; the defeat of the government’s Brexit timetable in Tuesday night’s vote means it is near impossible for him to meet

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Caroline Flint: why I’m backing this Brexit deal

Nothing in Caroline Flint’s CV would have marked her out as someone who would end up marshalling 19 of her fellow Labour MPs through the ‘aye’ lobby to vote for Boris Johnson’s deal. One of the original ‘Blair babes’, she went on to become Gordon Brown’s minister for Europe. She campaigned for Remain in the referendum but this week she ended up telling MPs that ‘the EU is not God’ while fending off accusations that she is the devil. One commentator called her ‘a heroine for those seeking to turbo-charge Thatcherism’. He didn’t mean it kindly. When we meet in her office, on another one of the supposed Brexit make-or-break

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour is set to deny Boris Johnson a December election

Word tonight is that Labour will whip its MPs to abstain on Monday’s general election vote. Officially, Labour won’t formally declare its position until tomorrow. But if its MPs do abstain this means that the government won’t secure the necessary two-thirds support to dissolve parliament under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. So no general election on 12 December. The government will respond to its failure to secure an election by doing the minimum necessary in parliament, effectively daring the opposition to bring the government down in a confidence vote. It is looking increasingly likely that the opposition will have to go down this route. If the EU grants an extension

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Coffee House Shots: Boris’s cake-and-eat-it-too election strategy

Boris Johnson wants an election this side of Christmas – the Conservative party is doing well in the polls, he has secured a deal with the EU, and Labour’s Brexit message is simply not cutting through, if the polls are anything to go by. But an election is not within his gift. On Monday, MPs will vote again on whether or not to trigger one, but the vital two-thirds majority isn’t necessarily there. So why is he trying again? On this evening’s Coffee House Shots, James Forsyth explains Boris’s cakeism – tonight’s announcement means that Boris can be seen to try to get his Brexit deal through the Commons once

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP: turkeys don’t vote for a Christmas election

Boris Johnson has announced that MPs in the House of Commons will vote next week on holding an election on 12 December, in an attempt to break the Brexit impasse. And as expected, plenty of Labour MPs are already lining up to think of reasons to avoid being accountable to the electorate. Mr S wonders though if Labour HQ will be less than pleased with one MP’s excuse for avoiding an election this Christmas. Speaking to Sky News in the Palace of Westminster, the veteran MP Barry Sheerman was asked whether his party should back an election next week, and what Jeremy Corbyn will recommend to his party. But in

Boris Johnson

Full text: Boris Johnson’s election offer to Jeremy Corbyn

Boris Johnson has announced that MPs will vote next week on whether or not to hold an election on 12 December. Below is the letter he has written to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, calling for him to back an election. Dear Jeremy, Last week, I agreed a new Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union. This is a great new deal which Parliament could have ratified and allowed us to honour our promises and leave by 31 October. Sadly you succeeded in persuading Parliament to ask the EU to delay Brexit until 31 January 2020. On Tuesday, the Commons voted for our new deal but again voted for delay and, even worse, handed

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson calls for December 12 election – will he succeed?

Boris Johnson will make his third attempt to call a general election. In an interview with the BBC, the Prime Minister unveiled his new offer to opposition MPs: he will bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons on the condition that there is a general election on 12 December. Explaining his decision, Johnson said that he believed the UK was heading for an extension – something he regretted. He said he was willing to bring his Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons so long as MPs agree that a general election will follow. The reason? ‘In order to create a deadline that is credible in everybody’s mind

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why David Lammy should join the Brexit camp

For three-and-a-half years Brexiteers have been told that we didn’t know what we were voting for. I think that might be truer of hardcore Remainer MPs like David Lammy. Today Mr Lammy is bemoaning the fact that the French President has more say over the length of a Brexit extension than our own Prime Minister does. Yes, David, we know — and it’s because people like you voted for precisely this scenario! Does Mr Lammy even understand what he’s voting for? It seems not. He’s forgotten that he and the other 326 MPs who voted though the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act — commonly known as the Benn Act

Steerpike Steerpike

George Osborne declares war on CCHQ

George Osborne may have stepped away from the front-line of politics when he become editor of the Evening Standard, but the former Chancellor still clearly hasn’t lost his reputation for political ruthlessness. Osborne’s knives were out this morning, after CCHQ’s press office criticised his paper’s coverage of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. The Standard had accused the government of peddling ‘fake news’, when it claimed that Boris’s Brexit bill had been ‘passed’ by parliament. In fact, the bill had only passed its second reading, suggesting in principle that it had the Commons’ support. After CCHQ objected to the coverage, claiming the paper’s story was ‘simply not true’,  Osborne responded personally on social media,

Liam Halligan

The Brexit deal gives Northern Ireland an extraordinary opportunity

Ulster says No. So went the Unionist slogan against the Anglo-Irish Agreement which paved the way to ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Signed by London and Dublin, the 1985 treaty gave the Republic of Ireland a role in Northern Ireland’s governance for the first time, while confirming the six counties’ constitutional position within the UK — a vital step towards the Good Friday Agreement 13 years later. ‘Mrs Thatcher tells us the Republic must have some say in our Province,’ boomed the Revd Ian Paisley outside Belfast City Hall, railing against this original power-sharing breakthrough. ‘We say never, never, never.’ Yet Paisley’s implacable opposition proved futile. He eventually played

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The question a second referendum must ask

Mostly I stay confident the Prime Minister’s team are playing a weak hand badly, but my confidence does occasionally falter. Then Downing Street does something really stupid (like expelling 21 of its own parliamentary party) and I’m reassured that these people aren’t clever at all. This happened last weekend when I opened my Sunday Times to find there a personal attack on Sir Oliver Letwin by ‘senior sources’. These sources had scoffed to journalists that when, before the Commons vote on his amendment, Letwin was at Downing Street to discuss it, he was taking ‘conspiratorial phone calls’ on his mobile phone, giving him ‘instructions’ from David Pannick. Lord Pannick is

Mark Mason

An ‘I’ for a ‘my’: why we’re terrified of getting our grammar wrong

Jonathan Agnew recently described off-the-record interviews as those where you agree that it’s ‘between you and I’. Last month, Jess Phillips tweeted that she had ‘read a few wild accounts of Boris Johnson and I in the lobby’. And a Times journalist wrote about someone who had ‘made Jenny and I feel so welcome’. All three are articulate, intelligent people. And yet all three wrote ‘I’ where they meant ‘me’. It’s happening more and more. The only explanation can be self-doubt. Give any of these people a second to think about it, and they’ll reply that yes, of course they should have said ‘me’. It’s easy to work out: just

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

For Remainers, Brexit is really about power

At the New Yorker Festival party in mid-October, my astute colleague hardly needed the caution. But you know how at a discombobulating bash you seize gratefully on something to talk about. So as Matthew Goodwin and I rubbed elbows with the East Coast elite at the Old Town Bar in Manhattan (‘Look! It’s Ronan Farrow!’), I warned him about the following afternoon’s audience for our panel on Brexit. They’ll be Democrats, I explained, and they’re hardwired to associate both the referendum and Boris personally with Trump. They’ve all been brainwashed by the New York Times, which portrays Brexiteers as a cross between the extras on The Walking Dead and the

Wednesday

Gawain Towler

Why the Brexit Party are needed more than ever

About a year ago, over a pint with Nigel Farage, it became clear that our little attempt to get on with our lives was over. He had been sounding out a few people and the bald reality had struck home. The Prime Minister, despite her repeated mantra of leaving by 29th March was going to let us down. Farage had always said that ‘if they made a Horlicks of it I would have to return’. They had, so we would have to. Wearily at first, but with gathering purpose, people across the country started rummaging in their cupboards, sheds and under the stairs. We weren’t looking for greaves and breastplates, nor rusty

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson is dodging scrutiny – but so are MPs

Boris Johnson has cancelled his appearance before the Commons Liaison Committee tomorrow morning, arguing that he feels he should devote himself to trying to secure a Brexit deal. In a rather last-minute cancellation, the Prime Minister has written a personal note to the Committee’s chair Dr Sarah Wollaston in which he argues that it would be much better for the MPs to question him when he has been in the job for five to six months, as it did with his predecessors. This is a valid argument, but it would carry more weight if Johnson had made it from the outset, rather than at the sort of time that students

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Boris Johnson’s half lap of honour

It was a semi-victory. A partial triumph. A success with many strings attached. Yesterday the House finally approved a Brexit deal but prevented itself from passing it into law. Today Boris took half a lap of honour at PMQs. He was keen to trumpet his achievement. ‘It’s remarkable that so many Members were able to come together and approve the Second Reading.’ ‘Alas,’ he went on, ‘the House willed the end but not the means’. Jeremy Corbyn quoted a statement made by Boris a year ago that customs checks might ‘damage the fabric of the Union.’ Boris called Corbyn a terrorist-hugging hypocrite. ‘It’s a bit rich to hear from him