Politics

Some fiddly amendments from Sir Oliver Letwin that no one quite understands. A legal action against someone or other from Gina Miller. Lots of protest marches. A petition or two – and possibly even an unreadable novella from Ian McEwan/JK Rowling/John Le Carre (delete as applicable) ranting against Brexit. We don’t quite know yet how exactly we will fill up the latest three-month extension to the already protracted saga of our departure from the EU. It probably won’t be a great deal different from the last three months, or the three months before that. There is one thing we should know for sure by now, however. It will be very

It’s all out chaos at the People’s Vote campaign today, after the outgoing chairman of Open Britain (one of the campaign’s five organisations) Roland Rudd attempted to fire the group’s head of communications, Tom Baldwin, and its director, James McGrory. In their place, Rudd wished to appoint Patrick Heneghan, the former head of campaigns for the Labour party. Unfortunately, the wheels quickly came off Rudd’s attempted coup. Baldwin took to the airwaves this morning to insist that Rudd couldn’t fire him, and said he would travel in to work this morning. While former New Labour spinner and Remain activist Alastair Campbell launched his own attack on Rudd’s move, which he said was

Oh dear. As Boris Johnson attempts to call a general election, this could be the week that supporters of a second referendum get together and push for a so-called people’s vote before any snap poll. One of the big Tory worries is that a majority of MPs could coalesce around such a position. However, that currently looks unlikely. Instead, the People’s Vote campaign is consumed with infighting. On Sunday night, Roland Rudd – the outgoing chairman of Open Britain, one of the five groups that make up People’s Vote – emailed staff to announce that he had asked People’s Vote staff James McGrory, the director, and Tom Baldwin, the head of communications,

When Rory Stewart declared his candidacy for the London mayor, there was some concern in CCHQ that the former Conservative MP could eat into Tory candidate Shaun Bailey’s vote share. Stewart has been keen to pitch himself as an outward looking politician in touch with modern Britain. While there’s still some way to go to polling night, the initial signs suggest that Stewart’s own efforts will be no walk in the park. Stewart has found himself under criticism after he described three East London men he met back when he was campaigning to be the next leader of the Conservatives as ‘minor gangsters’. Stewart attempted to speak to the group as

As Boris Johnson laid out his plan at political Cabinet on Thursday, it quickly became apparent how much of it was dependent on factors outside of his control. I write in The Sun this morning that he said that he still hoped that the EU would offer only the shortest of extensions, forcing parliament to get on with it. But he admitted that the EU was inclined to offer an extension to the end of January and that Emmanuel Macron was fighting a lonely battle against this. Earlier in the day, the Elysée had told Number 10 that the French President was too isolated on the issue in the EU

Update: Heidi Allen has announced that she will no longer stand at the next election. This weekend, Anthony Browne wrote about her confusing political odyssey: As I pound the streets of South Cambridgeshire where I am the Conservative candidate, the most common reaction I get from voters is “How did that happen?”. (That, at least, is an edited version to keep things family-friendly for Spectator readers). It is usually accompanied by a liberal dosage of decidedly unparliamentary language and the sort of words that if I repeated would lead to me being accused of inflaming passions in politics. But the passions among the public are already inflamed and the issue