Politics

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

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris drops his controversial Brexit bill clause

Today brings some surprising Brexit news. The UK and the EU have announced that they have come to an agreement in principle on all the outstanding issues in the Northern Ireland protocol. As a result, the clauses of the Internal Market Bill, which breached the UK’s international law obligations in a ‘specific and limited way’, will be dropped. The reason why this is surprising is that the assumption had long been that some of these differences would only be resolved once a trade deal was done. (A tariff-free trade agreement between the UK and the EU would make it much easier to fix various of these issues). The details of

Robert Peston Robert Peston

What the EU still wants from the Brexit talks

There is a tonne of contradictory stuff flying around about what Michel Barnier says is the EU’s bottom line for fair competition in any free trade agreement with the UK. As I understand it, what follows is the EU’s position. For the ‘level playing field commitments’ there should be ‘non-regression’ — i.e. on standards for working practices, environmental rules etc., the UK must stick to current EU rules and subject to tests. There would be a risk of legal challenge if there is a perceived breach of the obligations. And the non-regression rules apply to the EU as well as to the UK. They are mutual symmetrical obligations in that sense. The

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Could Brexit talks drag on past Christmas?

Brexit deadline after deadline has slid to the right. There is, however, one deadline that is set in law: that the transition period finishes at the end of this year. Comments from the UK government and the European Commission today suggest that this now is, really, the only deadline. The European Commission has said that ‘hopefully’ the talks will continue after the Boris Johnson-Ursula von der Leyen meeting in Brussels this week. This is to be expected given that the gaps are too big to be bridged in one meeting. The Commission’s spokesman also suggested that the talks could carry on even in the event of a no deal on

Steerpike Steerpike

Downing Street’s royal snub

Making the case for the union is a rather uphill task these days. With the SNP on course for a majority in next year’s Scottish parliament elections and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon polling well with the public, many Tory MPs comes across as rather defeatist on the issue. But try they must. So, Mr S was curious to listen in to today’s No. 10 lobby briefing. Sturgeon has had some rare negative press this week after she refused to endorse the decision by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to embark on a three-day tour – stopping in Edinburgh. Critics suggested she was being a misery-guts – putting nationalism ahead of an effort by

Steerpike Steerpike

Is it one rule for Sky News, another for everyone else?

Kay Burley is hardly what you would call a ‘sympathetic personality’ – but Steerpike is a magnanimous sort and he can’t help feeling a little sorry for her on this chilly winter’s morning. The poor presenter is having a miserable time because, having spent much of the year berating others for their failings vis Covid, she has been caught breaching the stop-the-spread rules herself in order to celebrate her 60th birthday. Who doesn’t deserve a little bit of a dinner out — or two — to celebrate becoming a sexagenarian (her special day is actually on December 17th, but hey who’s counting)? The trouble is Kay and her pals, including

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Blame Theresa May, not Remainers, for our Brexit crisis

Are Remainers to blame for the looming hard Brexit? The theory goes that had Remainers compromised and accepted soft Brexit, none of what is about to unfold would ever happen. It’s true that the behaviour of some Remain campaigners in the aftermath of the referendum has hardly been exemplary. The whole Russian conspiracy thing was deeply alienating to anyone who might have listened to their case otherwise. These campaigners helped turned Brexit into a skirmish in the culture was, unconsciously saying that Brexiteers weren’t just wrong but a malign force in British politics. Some remain campaigners also sucked up to Corbyn in a fruitless and embarrassing manner. Yet hard Brexit isn’t their

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Did false data lead to lockdown?

When shaping policy to protect us from Covid-19, the government relies on data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to provide the scientific basis for its actions. The weekly ONS coronavirus survey is supposed to be the information gold standard — and in particular it underpinned Boris Johnson’s controversial announcement at the end of October to put England back into national lockdown. No other course of action seemed sensible, given that the ONS survey on 30 October showed the incidence of coronavirus in the community in England had surged from 4.3 per 10,000 people on 3 October to 9.52 on 17 October, the latest date for data then available.

Steerpike Steerpike

Has Kay Burley just been cancelled?

It’s a big morning for news in the UK as the first patients receive the Pfizer coronavirus jabs and Brexit deadlines loom. So, one would have imagined Kay Burley would be front and centre of her self-titled morning breakfast show. Apparently not. Mr S was curious to note Burley’s absence on today’s show — with Sky News’s Sarah Hewson instead broadcasting from Coventry University Hospital, where the first vaccinations are taking the place. It appears Burley has been deemed a safety risk after Guido broke the news that the Sky News anchor had breached social distancing rules with her 60th birthday celebration. Her crime? Burley is alleged to have gone over the permitted rule of

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Deal or no-deal? The choice is Boris Johnson’s

If you voted for Brexit, did you think it was a state of pure and perfect national independence, or did you think that given how connected the UK is to the EU – economically, diplomatically, in respect of security – it might be a bit of a fudge and compromise? Is Brexit an absolute state of putative grace – or a place on a spectrum, somewhere between Switzerland and Norway, which are semi-independent, and North Korea, which is wholly independent? Because your answer will help you determine whether or not you think Boris Johnson is being reasonable in rejecting the EU stipulation that the UK should not weaken its environmental,

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can Boris’s dash to Brussels secure a Brexit deal?

The upshot of Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen’s conversation this evening is that the pair will meet in Brussels in the ‘coming days’ to see if they can resolve the remaining ‘significant differences’ on the level playing field, governance and fish. Presumably this meeting will take place before the European Council on Thursday. Johnson and von der Leyen are being left with a lot to resolve in their summit. This isn’t going to be simply about finding a compromise on fish but on sorting the three issues that have bedevilled the negotiations from the start. Optimists will point to how negotiations on the withdrawal agreement last year seemed

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Tory Covid wars aren’t going away

The Covid wars in the Tory party aren’t going away any time soon, not least because MPs are expecting a change of policy on the tiered system later this month. But rebels aren’t just demanding a more localised approach to the tier system. They also want a change of tone from ministers. There was fury in the party when the government used Public Health England analysis predicting 4,000 deaths a day by December to justify the second English lockdown. This model has become known among lockdown sceptics as the ‘dodgy dossier’ because of problems with the data used — yet it has still surfaced during presentations to backbenchers from officials. Some suspect a political

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is the chance of a Brexit deal diminishing?

12 min listen

It looks like Brexit talks could finally be coming to a head. After Boris Johnson and Ursula Von Der Leyen decided that efforts to reach an agreement should continue, negotiators spent the weekend bartering over fishing rights and the level playing field. The pair are set to have another call later today, but can it break the impasse? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth.

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: vaccine minister rules out ‘immunity passports’

This morning the new vaccine deployment minister, Nadhim Zahawi, appeared to change his tune when it comes to the use of ‘immunity passports’ for the British public. After telling the BBC last week that UK residents might need some proof of their Covid vaccination status to dine out at a restaurant or attend a sporting event, Zahawi rolled back his comments on Spectator TV. In a Q&A following his keynote speech at The Spectator’s Health Summit (held in partnership with MSD), Zahawi told broadcaster Alastair Stewart that so-called ‘immunity passports’ were not actually on the cards: ‘There will not be an immunity passport. I may have misspoken or it was conflated

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Talks resume in a final bid for a Brexit deal

The Brexit negotiations are continuing in Brussels this morning. But Michel Barnier’s briefing to EU member states suggests that little progress was made yesterday. Boris Johnson and the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are due to speak this evening. It seems highly unlikely that there’ll be a deal for them to bless in that call. Rather, it will again come down to whether their conversation can lead to a breakthrough in the negotiations, which is surely going to have to come from some creativity rather than just the two sides going over the same well-trodden ground again. I had thought that today really was the deadline on Brexit because

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

If Boris agrees a Brexit deal, Labour should vote it down

It now seems more likely than ever that the UK will leave with no deal at the end of the year. But let’s imagine for a moment that I’m wrong and the UK and the EU manage to overcome their substantial differences. It would then have to be voted on in Parliament – and Labour should vote it down. Why? Because the deal put before the Commons would not be between Brexit and Remain. That ship has long since sailed. It would instead be between the thin deal Boris Johnson will have agreed with the EU and the choice of leaving with no deal whatsoever. Whichever way Parliament votes, we leave the transitional

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Inside the no-deal reasonable worst case scenario

I’ve been passed the government’s ‘reasonable worst case scenario planning assumptions to support civil contingencies planning for the end of the transition period’. The 34-page document describes itself as a ‘challenging manifestation of the risk in question’ but ‘not an extreme or absolute worst case scenario’. A government source confirmed the official sensitive document, which was written in September, still underpins contingency planning. It is ‘not a forecast’ but a ‘reasonable’ assessment of what could happen to us if, in the next day or so, talks collapse on a free trade agreement with the European Union and the negotiations can’t be rescued. Also, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Sunday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Johnson’s ‘last throw of the dice’ in Brexit talks

The UK’s chief negotiator David Frost has arrived in Brussels for last-minute talks with the EU’s Michel Barnier. After a phone call between Boris Johnson and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday failed to break the deadlock, these latest talks are being billed within government as a ‘last throw of the dice’. The main differences that remain are on level playing field and fishing. As senior Brexiteers call on Johnson not to blink and cabinet ministers voice their support in the papers for no-deal if the Prime Minister sees it fit, the likelihood of no-deal is viewed to have increased in recent days. Senior government figures on the UK side now

Steven Barrett

The House of Lords must stop blocking Boris’s Brexit bill

Boris Johnson’s internal market bill is back in the House of Lords next week, but will peers let it through?  The bill gives the government an express power (a written one in a statute) to break an international treaty. The Lords do not like that the government might break a specific treaty. Where you stand on those are political, not legal questions — so not for a lawyer like me to answer. But what is for law, is to firstly recognise (whether peers like it or not) that the power to break a treaty, does exist. Think of it like a physical thing; it is in our constitution and we’ve lost track of

Bruce Anderson

A Grantham statue is the least Margaret Thatcher deserves

Grantham in Lincolnshire has an interesting history. Newton went to school there. Turner produced several paintings of local scenes. During the last war, the town, set in flat countryside ideal for airfields, made a significant contribution to the bombing of Nazi Germany. In private, the most famous person ever to be born in the town might well have said: ‘jolly good thing too.’ Margaret Thatcher never found it easy to forgive what happened during the war. A lot of people still do not find it easy to forgive her. Some locals are now complaining about a proposal to add laurels to their town by erecting a statue to this greatest

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Brexit talks ‘in a very difficult position’

Sophy Ridge was joined this morning by the Environment Secretary George Eustice. The first item on the agenda was the reconvening of post-Brexit trade talks after negotiators failed to reach an agreement last week. Eustice confirmed that EU demands on access to British coastal waters and on state aid were still the key barriers to a deal: GE: These [talks] are… in a very difficult position, there’s no point denying that… There was some hope early last week… at one point it looked like there might be a breakthrough… We’re going to continue to work on these negotiations until there’s no point in doing so any further. ‘We will see’