Politics

The past few months have been testing for the so-called special relationship. President Trump’s visit to the UK ended in disaster for Theresa May when the US President gave an interview to the Sun in which he declared that her proposed Brexit deal would kill any chance of a UK/US trade deal. However, not all Cabinet ministers had a wholly bad experience. On Tuesday night, Mr S headed along to Jeremy Hunt’s Foreign Office Christmas reception at Lancaster House – also known as the ‘Foreign Secretary’s leadership launch,’ according to a fellow Cabinet minister. In his speech, Hunt told guests how his own relationship with Trump had flourished on that

A few months ago, the People’s Vote campaign was on the fringe of the national conversation. Today, we are seen by an ever-growing number of MPs as the best – perhaps only – way forward to break out of the current political impasse. As it becomes more likely that the British people will be given the right to have the final say about whether they wish to proceed with a Brexit that can never fulfil the promises made in the referendum of 2016 – or offer terms as good as the deal we’ve already got in the EU – we accept that the media will subject our every statement to increased

Several cabinet ministers have publicly backed a series of indicative votes in the Commons on the various Brexit options. I understand why, but they’re wrong: this approach is both messy and misguided. The best thing for MPs is to spend their Christmas break thinking carefully. Those who have criticised Theresa May’s Brexit deal should carefully think through their opposition. It’s my view that reports of the death of May’s deal are greatly exaggerated. It’s obvious there are only now three real options when it comes to Brexit: Leave with no deal; Leave with May’s deal; or, don’t Leave. Every possible path falls into one of these three boxes. Managed no deal (whatever that is

Liam Fox – Parliament could have a free vote on Brexit The International Trade Secretary joined Andrew Marr this morning to discuss Brexit’s next steps following a turbulent week which saw the Prime Minister win a vote of confidence by 200 votes to 117. With the date for Parliament’s ‘meaningful vote’ on the Brexit deal now pushed back until mid-January, Liam Fox entertained a potential course of action still open to the government: AM: Shouldn’t Tory MPs… be allowed a free vote? LF: Well that’s not something that we have considered. I have to say, personally I wouldn’t have a huge problem with Parliament as a whole having a say

The stakes could not be higher now. We face the biggest political crisis for at least a couple of generations. The risks are now both a democratic crisis and an economic one. We just cannot go on as we have been: evading and obfuscating choices – indeed frequently denying, against all evidence, that there are unavoidable choices. And the public will understandably not, for a very long time, forgive a political class which on all sides of the divide fails to level with it on the choices being made. This feels a rather unseasonal theme but as we are approaching Christmas I thought I would therefore talk about nine lessons

The copyright in the single digital market directive combines the deadliest ingredients in public policy: it is important, boringly complicated, and its effects are a long way off. This week, it was supposed to take a major step towards becoming law, but it has foundered – for now. The directive is largely technical tweaks to European copyright, which were last revised in 2001. But two clauses are so controversial that they’ve spurred more than four million Europeans to write to the Parliament to object to them and ‘save the internet!’. The changes have also been denounced by copyright experts, Tim Berners-Lee, the UN, movie companies and football leagues. At issue is