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Politics

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

Friday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Ignore the Brexit day party poopers – it’s time to celebrate

Don’t gloat. Don’t be too triumphalist. Don’t wave your flags too boisterously. Don’t say or do anything that might offend sad, pained Remainers, who will be huddled in their homes, looking with bemusement and concern upon the terrible new world that will be born at 11pm tonight. All of these warnings are being issued to Leavers today as we gear up for our Brexit Day celebrations. Be humble, we’re told. Be magnanimous. Be quiet. And the party-pooping isn’t only coming from Europhiles who think the end of our membership of the EU is tantamount to the End of Days. Like London mayor Sadiq Khan, who has expressed concern that after

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Revealed: Claire Perry to depart role as President of UN Climate Change Conference

Claire Perry, who is now known as Claire Perry O’Neill, is to leave her role as President of the UN Climate Change Conference, Coffee House understands. Over the summer, the former Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth had been nominated to serve as the President of COP 26 – for when the UK takes over the stewardship of the global effort to tackle climate change in a conference in Glasgow this November. However, a Whitehall source says that this will no longer be the case: ‘Everything to do with COP is being integrated with the SoS BEIS from this weekend. Clare Perry will no longer be involved. We

Mary Dejevsky

Brexit day is a gloriously muted occasion

Whatever your feelings about Brexit, this day, 31 January, 2020, will be seen as a point in history. It is the day that the UK left the European Union after nearly half a century and set out, once again, on its own. While we may have been through more than three years of parliamentary wrangling, two elections and something akin to a constitutional crisis to get here, the actual day itself is being marked with characteristic understatement – just a little bit. Bongs from Big Ben were ruled out with two weeks to go, a flag display promised as consolation. No one even dreamt of demanding that Westminster Abbey peal

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris lets slip HS2’s future

No. 10’s relationship with the media has been frosty at times, with ministers reportedly banned from appearing on shows like the Today programme. Boris Johnson has now taken that antipathy a step further. The PM has been caught on Sky News talking to a school children about one of the biggest long-running news stories of the moment. During the discussion, Mr Johnson was asked by ten-year-old Braydon Brent about HS2. Much has been made in recent weeks of the government’s potential plans to scrap the scheme. However, instead of revealing the fate of the troubled project to an established journalist, Boris decided that young Braydon should be the first to

Nigel Harris

Barmy government procurement is a key driver of HS2 costs

The fate of HS2 will soon be decided and news of the much-hyped Oakervee Review has started to leak. It seems to recommend that the project should go ahead in full (onwards to Manchester and Leeds from Birmingham) but concedes that potential costs are too high. HS2 now cannot be delivered within its £56bn budget, and £88bn is the more pragmatic figure. I’m the editor of RAIL magazine and we’ve been covering it for over ten years and I’ve noticed how much people aren’t being told. So here’s my attempt to distil the costs story into a few paragraphs. In the beginning, HS2 costs were estimated at about £34bn. To

William Cook

Why Europhiles should welcome Brexit day

As Big Ben fails to bong tonight, and Brexiteers toast a famous victory, will those who voted for Remain be ranting or sulking, or simply crying into their beer? If so, they should perhaps stop feeling so sorry for themselves. Of course, if you’re a Europhile, today is hardly a day of celebration – but neither is it a day for misery. Because if you believe in the EU, as I do, you should welcome Brexit Day. Brexit isn’t just a fresh start for Britain – it’s also a fresh start for the EU. For nearly 30 years, ever since Maastricht, Britain has been a constant drag on the development

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The Edition podcast: has the great Brexit divide mended?

31 min listen

First, as the news agenda is dominated by things like Huawei, HS2, and public spending, could politics be – whisper it – returning to normal? In his cover piece this week, Rod Liddle writes how, for the most part, the election result has put a lid on the civil war between Remainers and Brexiteers. One such Remainer who has reconciled herself with the result is Stefanie Bolzen, the UK Correspondent for Die Welt. She writes in the issue this week about just why Germans are so heartbroken about Brexit. Stefanie and Rod chat Brexit emotions on the podcast. Next, is there anything to be gleaned from the Chinese response to

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Boris Johnson must start taking Scexit seriously

Polls come and go and the YouGov survey showing support for Scottish independence at 51 per cent should be read with that in mind. The Nationalists have been ahead before and have fallen behind again. What Downing Street cannot take in its stride is this: five years since the Scottish referendum, and with the SNP government in Edinburgh plagued by crises in health and education, support for secession has not fallen away. The separatists still enjoy a solid base of support, around 45 per cent, which delivered them 47 of Scotland’s 59 seats in the general election. They lost the 2014 referendum 55 per cent to 45 per cent and

The Spectator

‘Bye Bye Brits’: European papers herald Brexit day

At 11pm tonight, Britain will finally leave the European Union, after 47 years inside the bloc. And, as expected, many European newspapers chose to mark Brexit day on their front pages. Le Figaro: ‘L’adieu a l’Europe Liberation: It’s time La Croix: See you! Le Monde: Europe enters the unknown Die Welt: The British leave. The Germans suffer El Pais (online): A new era without the UK Berlingske: Bye-bye, Brits Algemeen Dagblad: Farewell Dagens Nyheter De Tijd Gazeta Wyborcza: Brexit – a lesson for Poland Rzeczpospolita: Abandoned Europe The Irish Times: Britain leaves the European Union not with a bang, but a whimper

James Kirkup James Kirkup

You can thank Remainers for the hardness of this Brexit

The first chapter of Britain’s Brexit story ends tonight. For some, that’s something to celebrate. For others it means sadness. For most of us, I suspect, emotions are mixed: a bit of relief at the sense of clarity that underpins politics; a bit of optimism that we might all learn from the psychodrama/culture war of 2016-2019; a bit of foreboding about the Brexit dramas still to come. I voted Remain. I believed that despite its flaws (and I know them well: I covered more than 50 EU summits as a reporter, and projects including birth of the euro, the stability and growth pact and the European Constitution) Britain’s long-term interests

Thursday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris Johnson’s Blairism is bamboozling Labour

Is Boris Johnson the Blairite who may not speak his name? All the PM’s talk of levelling up rather than levelling down? That is pure, plagiarised Blairism. Fixing public services – like chaotic Northern Rail – with a focus on what works, rather than an ideological attachment to private sector or public sector ownership? That would be Blairism mirrored – inverted in the sense that Blair’s mission with Labour supporters was to make the case for the private sector, whereas Johnson needs to remove the stigma of public ownership for Tories. As for allowing Huawei to build a third of the UK’s new superfast digital networks – more than a

Steerpike Steerpike

The five stages of Brexit grief

It’s been more than three years since the Brexit referendum, and we’re only a day away from actually leaving the EU, but it appears that some of the UK’s residents are still struggling to come to terms with the country’s exit from the European Union. Today, the pollster YouGov released a survey of Remain voters in the UK, in which it asked which of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) closest described how they feel about the EU referendum result. The options ranged from the rather sanguine, ‘I have come to terms with the fact that the UK will leave the EU’, to full-throated denial,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mike Pompeo: the UK will be ‘front of the line’ for a trade deal

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 no need to worry. Pompeo declared that the UK/US relationship was in a ‘fantastic place’. He largely pulled his punches on Huawei. He emphasised the US’s view that the ‘Chinese Communist Party is the central threat of our times’ but he implied the US thought the UK’s eventual plan was to move away from Huawei

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: MEPs sing Auld Lang Syne as Brexit deal passes

Members of the European Parliament voted this afternoon to pass Boris Johnson’s Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, ensuring that Britain will leave the EU on 31 January, with a Brexit deal in place. The passing of Boris’s deal also heralded the close of Britain’s participation in the European Parliament, ahead of Brexit day on Friday. And, as expected, the vote ended up being an emotional moment for many MEPs, who chose to mark Britain’s departure by singing Robert Burns’ Auld Lang Syne. Watch here:

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Boris relishes his new-found power

Jeremy Corbyn has stopped asking questions at PMQs. The lecture-circuit now looms for the Labour leader, so he uses the Wednesday sessions to practise the Grand Orations he will soon be making to drowsy socialists in overheated conference-halls around the world. He’s unlikely to match the fees commanded by the world’s top lecture-stars, Tony Blair and Barack Obama. His performance lacks bounce or crackle. He’s incapable channelling either passion or excitement and he simply recites his bullet-points like a sleep-deprived Bingo-caller. And his jokes misfire. Today he opened with a gag about the presenter of Just A Minute who died yesterday, aged 96. ‘Mr Speaker,’ said Corbyn, ‘can we take

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lindsay Hoyle aims to curb the excesses of the Bercow era

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 if the Clerk of the House disagreed with the Speaker’s decision on procedural grounds, the Clerk would have the ability to ask for a written direction equivalent to what civil servants can request from ministers who want to proceed with a course of action despite advice to the contrary from ministers. The Clerk’s objections would

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour official election report: result nothing to do with Corbyn

There’s nothing like a period of reflection after a historic election defeat. It offers those involved a chance to look at issues afresh and seek out difficult answers. Alternatively, if you are say Ian Lavery or Andrew Gwynne, it offers a chance to confirm everything you had already thought. The Financial Times reports that the results of Labour’s official report on the party’s worst election defeat for 80 years are in. The finding? Jeremy Corbyn was not at fault. Corbyn allies – and election co-ordinators – Gwynne and Lavery penned the report and it was shared with the national executive committee on Tuesday’s away day. The report suggests Jeremy Corbyn

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris risks backbench rebellion if he doesn’t get Huawei right

Tory MPs are not happy with the Huawei decision. Normally loyal MPs are expressing their bafflement at the announcement. As one of them put it to me yesterday: if they’re not safe to be at the core of the network, how are they safe to be in any of it? The crucial determinant of whether this row continues or not is what this 35 per cent cap on ‘high risk vendors’ means. The government has said that these ‘high risk vendors’ should be: ‘Limited to a minority presence of no more than 35 per cent in the periphery of the network, known as the access network, which connect devices and

Finn McRedmond

Why Varadkar’s Brexit bashing is falling flat

Leo Varadkar did not pull any punches in his interview with BBC Political Editor Laura Kuennsberg on Monday. Embroiled in a general election campaign, with less than two weeks to go until polling day, the incumbent Taoiseach told Kuennsberg that Britain is underestimating the difficulties that lie ahead as phase two of Brexit gets underway: ‘I think the reality of the situation is that the European Union is a union of 27 member states, the UK is only one country, and we have a population and a market of 450 million people. The UK is about 60 [million]. So if these were two teams up against each other playing football,

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Boris is failing a crucial One Nation test in Scotland

Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon unveiled a proposal to devolve certain aspects of our post-Brexit immigration policy to Scotland. Well, you might say, she would say that, wouldn’t she? But Sturgeon’s argument has some merit, for Scotland has a demographic problem that is not shared by the rest of the United Kingdom. A few thousand Scotland-only visas issued each year has the potential, assuming they proved sufficiently attractive, to address that. This is not just an SNP ploy, either. There is a widespread acceptance in Scotland that the country needs to be able to do more to attract more immigrants. On current trends, immigration is likely to be essential for the population