Politics

Boris Johnson says the EU has refused to negotiate seriously with the UK for the last few months, and time has now run out for reaching a trade agreement before 31 December when the current transition period ends. The PM has been pressing the EU for a free-trade agreement comparable to Canada’s deal with the EU (CETA). He is right to say that what the EU is offering the UK is inferior to CETA, despite the UK’s close relationship with the EU for the last 45 years which should, if anything, lead to a better deal. The problem isn’t just the EU’s demands for permanent ownership of a large slice

The government’s negotiations with the EU appear to be going a little better than their talks with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. While there is yet to an agreement on moving Greater Manchester into Tier 3, there has been a development on Brexit. On Friday, the Prime Minister used a video clip to warn the country to prepare for no deal. He complained that EU intransigence meant that unless there was a shift from Brussels, there was little point continuing the trade talks. Michel Barnier’s offer to come to the UK this week was declined and Michael Gove toured the television studios on Sunday insisting the UK is willing to go it

If there is one word that best describes Senate Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, it’s “docile.” With the exception of a few independent-minded lawmakers who have been able to make a name for themselves or who have spent decades cultivating their own brand, the Senate GOP conference has played the roll of cannon fodder–dewey-eyed shock troops at the front waiting for instructions from the General residing on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. It doesn’t matter what Trump says or what controversy he creates for himself: the GOP will defend him until the last man standing. Yet a little more than two weeks from Election Day, this dynamic

Boris Johnson has not had the easiest of relationships with the north lately. While the Prime Minister started his premiership promising to ‘level up’ northern regions, during the pandemic he’s ended up spending more time clamping them down, as Covid restrictions have been introduced across swathes of the north, and he’s clashed with local MPs and regional mayors. So you’d imagine he was not exactly enthused when it was announced last week that a new group of Tory MPs were banding together to form a ‘Northern Research Group’ (NRG) to make sure the ‘levelling up’ agenda was not forgotten. These days ‘Research Group’ tends to spell trouble for the government.

Despite being barely two months old, Spectator TV — The Spectator‘s latest broadcast venture — is already making headlines from New York to New Zealand. Andrew Neil‘s interview with Dr David Nabarro of the World Health Organization was raised in the House of Commons and even tweeted by Donald Trump. In this week’s episode, Andrew Neil is joined by feminist activist and former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali to discuss Emmanuel Macron new bid to tackle Islamic extremism. However, she has her reservations about the French President’s plans: Leaders have failed constantly, and they’ve failed in four ways. They failed to make it very clear what Islamism is; they’ve allied with the wrong people; they’ve failed to