Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Extinction Rebellion protestors have just sprayed 1800 litres of fake blood over the Treasury using an old fire engine. Unfortunately their protest backfired somewhat when the hose flew out of control, leaving campaigners covered in red liquid: Oh dear…
Vice President of the European Parliament Heidi Hautala has made her mind up about Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposal: it’s no good. The Finnish MEP said ‘it’s not a very serious proposal’. But has she actually read the Prime Minister’s letter to Jean-Claude Juncker? Err, no. ‘But I am more or less aware of the proposal,’ she said. Unsurprisingly Hautala got short shrift from Iain Dale, who was interviewing her on LBC. ‘Can I suggest you actually read the letter? It does contain detailed proposals, it protects the integrity of the single market,’ he told her.
As figures in Brussels mull over the Brexit proposal put forward by Boris Johnson, the initial signs are that EU leaders remain sceptical. However, over in the Commons the picture is somewhat rosier. After the government published the letter the Prime Minister had sent to Jean-Claude Juncker, cabinet ministers were quick to take to social media to describe it as a fair compromise – complete with a CCHQ banner highlighting its positives: This new proposal from @BorisJohnson, is supported by the DUP and a number of Labour and Conservative who previously opposed the previous withdrawal agreement. pic.twitter.com/hHtznTvZur — James Cleverly🇬🇧 (@JamesCleverly) October 3, 2019 More significant, however, is the number
Although Brexit remains the top of the news agenda, the Conservatives believe they will need to talk about more than just leaving the EU if they are to triumph in an early election. Boris Johnson used his conference speech to push a domestic agenda beyond Brexit. The areas he focussed on were the same ones that Downing Street has repeatedly pushed since the summer: the NHS, law and order, education and investment in the north. Johnson singled out tackling crime as a priority: ‘The first thing we must do in spreading opportunity is to insist on the equal safety of the public wherever you live to make your streets safer
‘It is definitely less than 50 per cent,’ says one Downing Street source when asked about the chances of a Brexit deal. And this is one of the optimists. One cabinet minister warns that the UK ‘is driving into a brick wall’ with its current Brexit proposals; other ministers are not sure if this offer is designed to make a deal or just to make the point that London was prepared to compromise but Brussels refused to budge. So it’s a stand-off. Boris Johnson is determined to take the whole of the UK out of the customs union, and the Irish and the EU are equally robust in their view
Charlotte Edwardes reports that Boris put his hand on her leg during lunch 20 years ago. Full disclosure, I put my hand on Boris’s leg 20 years ago during lunch. It wasn’t that I was making a pass at him. I just wanted to hold his attention while I was telling him something I wanted him to listen to. Now I am worrying. What if Boris and/or a cohort of other males come forward? ‘Mary assaulted me in a historic sex abuse incident. #SheToo.’ These are topsy-turvy times. Anything could happen and now I think about it, I’m sure I have been putting my hands on legs and generally assaulting
Over the past three years, as we have torturously debated our departure from the European Union, we have heard a lot from the Brexiteers about the industries that might benefit from leaving the EU. Some of these predictions may materialise, others may not. There is one industry, however, that is already doing very well as a result of the referendum. Lots of consultants are making a shedload of money. In the past few weeks, it has become clear just how much. Brexit ‘grifters’, to borrow a phrase from the classic 1990 movie, are roaming the country, occasionally helping companies cope with a significant yet hardly earth-shattering change in trading relations
Private secretary: ‘The Bank of England governorship, Prime Minister… opposition MPs have been saying it’s a political stitch-up and calling for the shortlist to be made public. Have you had time to look at the file?’ Boris, distracted: ‘Stitch-up piffle! I thought we’d picked my economist chum Gerard Lyons — very sound on Brexit.’ ‘Treasury wouldn’t have him, Prime Minister. They’re trying to fix it for one of their own, Sir John Kingman, former second permanent secretary, now chairman of Legal& General.’ ‘And weren’t we going to pad the list with women and, ah, minorities? Like Baroness Wossername?’ ‘You mean Labour peer Shriti Vadera, chair of Santander UK, Prime Minister?
Boris Johnson’s Brexit offer to the EU is not dead on arrival – but it may well be dead within the next 48 hours. And that could become clear as Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, briefs EU ambassadors and MEPs about what he sees as the deficiencies of the proposals. The biggest hole, as you would expect, is that EU government heads are being asked to take on trust that all the legal and technical preparations necessary for checks on goods and food flowing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, and all the legal and technical preparations for customs checks away from the Northern Ireland border, will be completed by the
The UK government has now published its Brexit offer to the EU. It has put out a letter from Boris Johnson to Jean-Claude Juncker making the case for its backstop replacement and a briefing note setting out how it would work. In essence, it puts a regulatory border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and a customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. But the briefing notes sets out the British belief that a combination of technology and checks at traders’ premises would mean that there’d be no need for checks at—or near to—the border. Northern Ireland’s continuing alignment with the EU on goods rules would require Stormont’s affirmative
In a first for Parliament, an MP has spoken openly and in detail about her experience of being abused emotionally and sexually by her partner. In an incredibly emotional speech, Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, told the Chamber about a relationship which started so promisingly but which was in fact a controlling one, full of rage and fear. She spoke of how her partner continued to tell her that he adored her, that she was all his, even as she was trying to work out how to leave, timing his morning showers so that she could quietly steal his keys and get him locked out of their home.
Boris Johnson’s new Brexit offer to the EU comprehensively rips up the backstop agreed by Theresa May – but it contains one proposal that may upset some Brexiter purists, namely that Northern Ireland should more-or-less remain in the single market for goods, food and agricultural products, subject to rules set by Brussels. At 3pm this afternoon Boris Johnson sent a four page letter to the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, outlining the PM’s plan to break the Brexit impasse. Along with the letter, Johnson’s negotiator David Frost will present a six page explanatory note, and 40 pages of legal text to replace the controversial Northern Ireland protocol in
The prime minister usually spends several weeks fine-tuning his conference speech. Today Boris gave an address that felt as it if had been roughed-out yesterday evening and converted into a final draft over a full English breakfast. The informality looked good. No autocue. Just notes and smiles as he climbed the low step onto the platform. He benefited from a sensible new stage lay-out. Previously the lectern had been set many yards back from the audience. Today it stood on a narrow causeway thrust deep into the crowd. It’s easier for a speaker to excite an audience that surrounds him physically. He began on a sombre note with ‘a tribute
A FAIR AND REASONABLE COMPROMISE: UK PROPOSALS FOR A NEW PROTOCOL ON IRELAND/NORTHERN IRELAND There is now very little time in which to negotiate a new Agreement between the UK and the EU under Article 50. We need to get this done before the October European Council. This Government wants to get a deal, as I am sure we all do. If we cannot reach one, it would represent a failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible. Our predecessors have tackled harder problems: we can surely solve this one. Both sides now need to consider whether there is sufficient willingness to compromise and move beyond existing positions
Boris Johnson’s conference speech felt more like an after-dinner speech than a traditional leader’s speech at times. There were more jokes than policy announcements. The purpose of this speech, though, wasn’t to set out a series of detailed policy prescriptions but to try and get three messages across. First, Boris Johnson wanted to persuade the public that he had made a reasonable offer to the EU and that if they wouldn’t engage with it, then no deal was the only way to get this done. He repeatedly stressed that he was compromising in the hope of getting a deal. He claimed that if the EU wouldn’t agree, they’d be going
What was the point of Boris Johnson’s speech? It didn’t contain any announcements for Tory activists to clutch as they left the hall. Details of his proposals to resolve the Brexit stand-off were missing, and will instead be unveiled to parliament later today. It even finished on a strangely low-energy note, rather as if Johnson had ended up emulating the electric cars he had been praising by running out of battery sooner than expected. Yes, there were jokes, but many of them, particularly his fish-themed mocking of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, have turned up in conference speeches of years gone by. So why bother? Before he appeared to run
This was not just the best speech that Boris Johnson has given since becoming Prime Minister, it’s the first proper weapons-grade speech that he has given since running for the job. It showcased his gift of communication, his ability to mobilise language to uplift, enthuse and motivate. To convey a sense of cheerful mission – even when it comes to Brexit and correct the tone: seek to replace the acrimony with optimism. To say that we love Europe but after 45 years of constitutional change we need a new relationship with it. It showed use of comic metaphor. ‘If parliament were a laptop, the screen would be showing the pizza
Why do so many people try to compare Boris Johnson with Donald Trump? There is a US president whose manner and approach our Prime Minister resembles, but it isn’t Trump – it is Bill Clinton. It is hard to think of anyone else who has honed to a fine art the ability to survive narrow scrapes with native charm. Just look at the reaction to the allegation that Boris groped a young female journalist, Charlotte Edwardes, beneath The Spectator’s dining table two decades ago Yes, Donald Trump survived groping allegations too, but not without stirring up a hornets’ nest of outrage, culminating in a mass protest following his inauguration. Trump survives
It’s great to be here in Manchester at the best attended conference for years and I know that some of you may have been mildly peppered with abuse on the way in but are you abashed? are you downcast? Of course not. We are conservatives and we get on with serving the people and speaking of service I should begin by paying tribute to my predecessor Theresa, I know the whole of conference remains full of gratitude to you, and to Philip May, for your patience and your forbearance, and yes, we will continue with the work of tackling domestic violence and modern slavery and building on your legacy I have been prime minister for
Boris Johnson’s offer to the EU isn’t nothing. He, seemingly with the DUP’s blessing, is proposing that Northern Ireland follow EU regulations on not just agriculture but also manufactured goods for at least the next four years. But his insistence that the UK must leave the EU with its customs territory intact means that there will have to be customs checks on the island of Ireland and that breaches one of the EU and Dublin’s red lines. So, what happens now? Well, I doubt that there will be a deal. I wonder even if there’ll be full-on negotiations; the two sides are just so far apart. Without an agreement, the