Politics

An old joke among political journalists is that you know a writer has run out of topics when they start producing columns either on their children or the Liberal Democrats. With so many other things going on, perhaps this is why Westminster has been oddly indifferent to the leadership contest taking place between Jo Swinson and Ed Davey over the past couple of months. We should have been paying more attention, as the winner may well have an important role to play in the political turmoil over the next few months. Last night, the BBC held its hustings with the two candidates, and I was one of the journalists invited

Before he even gets in to Number 10, Boris Johnson must make one of the most important calls of his premiership. As I say in the Sun this morning, he must decide what his Brexit plan is. On Wednesday, calls with European leaders will begin—and Boris Johnson will have to know what he wants to tell them. As one of those preparing him for government puts it, ‘They’ll call him to say congratulations—and he’ll have to set out his stall’. This is crucial because the European Commission will refuse to negotiate with Boris’s government unless it is instructed to do so by the member states. Within the Johnson camp, there

Darren Grimes has won his appeal against a £20,000 fine imposed by the Electoral Commission. Grimes, the 25-year-old who ran the BeLeave campaign group, was accused by the watchdog of breaching expenditure rules during the EU referendum. Following proceedings which saw Grimes crowdfund his legal campaign, Judge Marc Dight has ruled that the fine be withdrawn. The Guardian reports: ‘Dight agreed with Grimes’ counsel that the campaigner had not intended to mislead and had been confused by the Electoral Commission’s registration form. He further concluded that the commission had failed to satisfy itself beyond reasonable doubt that BeLeave was not a genuine unincorporated association, and therefore was not able to

Interviewing Boris Johnson is like staring long and hard into an expressionist painting: there are pyrotechnics, the shape of commitments and policies, but it might all be mirage. After I spoke with him on Wednesday for my show, my abiding sense was that he would dearly love a root-and-branch renegotiation of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, but that his famous optimism is not the same as naïveté. He knows replacing the Withdrawal Agreement at this late juncture is a million-to-one chance – and so leaving without a deal may be the only way to meet his deadline of Brexit by 31 October. That is why, for example, he was so gung-ho