Politics

Theresa May’s decision to seek votes across the House and start Brexit talks with Jeremy Corbyn in a bid to pass her deal has sent ripples through the Conservative party today. Junior minister Nigel Adams this morning resigned over his discomfort with the new plan and now Brexit minister Chris Heaton-Harris has followed suit. In his resignation letter, Heaton-Harris says he has worked hard to put no-deal preparations in place for the event that the UK leaves without a deal. He goes on to say that given that it is now clear the Prime Minister has no intention to leave without a deal, his job is irrelevant: After much contemplation,

There is a logic in Theresa May’s late move to Labour. It is the same logic by which both parties, at the last general election, put forward very similar policies about Brexit. They need to stay together (while feigning disagreement for party reasons) to frustrate what people voted for. Just as they both said in 2017 that they wanted to leave the customs union, now both are working to stay in it. It is the same logic by which Mr Speaker Bercow has arranged for Sir Oliver Letwin to become prime minister on roughly alternate days. None of the main players really wants Brexit, but none can really say so.

So, finally, we have a spirit of compromise. Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are going to sit down together and hammer out a deal on which both their respective parties can agree. Well, maybe not. There has been plenty of analysis over the past few hours predicting how it could all unwind – with further ministerial resignations and so on. But there is something more fundamentally wrong with what Theresa May has proposed. While searching for compromise might be a reasonable way to proceed on most political issues it simply doesn’t work in the case of Brexit. Either of the ‘extreme’ ends of political opinion on Brexit make sense: repealing

Theresa May’s statement in Downing Street was very different in tone to what she said a fortnight ago. She praised the best efforts of MPs and tried to strike a more conciliatory pose. May said she would request another Article 50 extension but she wanted it to be short so the UK would not have to participate in the European Elections. She invited Jeremy Corbyn in for talks, with the aim of either agreeing a common position on the future relationship or agreeing on a series of propositions to put to MPs with the government being bound by the result. In adopting this approach, May is essentially admitting that she

I have just come from chairing seven hours of Cabinet meetings focused on finding a route out of the current impasse – one that will deliver the Brexit the British people voted for, and allow us to move on and begin bringing our divided country back together.  I know there are some who are so fed up with delay and endless arguments that they would like to leave with No Deal next week. I have always been clear that we could make a success of No Deal in the long-term. But leaving with a deal is the best solution. So we will need a further extension of Article 50 – one that

After MPs failed to reach a consensus on the kind of Brexit they wanted for a second time on Monday, the parliamentarians led by Oliver Letwin who are seeking to take control of the Brexit process have changed their strategy. Instead of having another series of indicative votes on Wednesday as originally planned, the backbenchers will instead support a bill, put forward by Yvette Cooper and a cross-party group of MPs, which will attempt to force Theresa May to ask the EU for another Article 50 extension beyond the 12 April. The decision is a significant change in tack for the MPs, who seem to have accepted that at present