Politics

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

Friday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Theresa May now faces a humiliating choice over Brexit

Here is the measure of Theresa May’s failure last night, according to an observer of her request to EU leaders for “assurances” that UK membership of the EU backstop would be finite and of short duration. They were ready to help. They assumed a process of officials agreeing a text over coming week would start today, to give her the necessary words that would persuade Tory and DUP critics of her deal to ultimately support it. But it was during the course of questioning her that they concluded such a process – such an extension of talks – would be a total waste of time. Why? Well according to one

Matthew Lynn

The myth of the Brexit cliff edge

The ports will be clogged up with lorries. The shelves at Tesco will be empty. Doctors will be rationing antibiotics, and the army will be called out to deliver food. As we approach the deadline for our departure from the European Union, as the Prime Minister returns empty handed yet again from yet another catastrophic round of negotiations in Brussels, and as the cliff-edge gets closer and closer, the conventional wisdom is that the pressure on Britain to agree to something – anything! – becomes more and more intense. And yet, as so often in the through-the-looking glass world of Brexit, that conventional wisdom is a bit off target. And

Steerpike Steerpike

Caption contest: the Theresa May vs Juncker death stare

Theresa May has just had a humiliating night, as EU leaders rebuffed her bid for concessions on the Irish backstop, and told her the withdrawal agreement was no longer negotiable. The bleak response she received from the EU27 may explain this rather icy moment between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker which was caught on camera at the beginning of the day: This doesn't exactly look like an exchange of pleasantries between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker as the Brexit summit gets underway. #EUCO pic.twitter.com/l0r4NwDj8h — Philip Sime (@PhilipSimeITV) December 14, 2018 UPDATE: Mr S is happy to provide an update for those wondering what the PM and Juncker were saying.

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Theresa May’s catastrophic night in Brussels

It has been a catastrophic night for the Prime Minister here in Brussels. She was rebuffed by EU leaders in her request for a few weeks of fresh work by officials to formulate words of what she called “reassurance”, such that Tory Brexiter and DUP MPs could be confident that the backstop they hate would only ever be short lived if implemented. “We do not want the UK to think there can be any form of renegotiation whatsoever” said EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. This means that the PM knows that, as and when she puts her Brexit plan to the Commons for a vote, more than 100 of her

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Brussels reject Theresa May’s plea for backstop concessions

Theresa May’s week has gone from bad to worse. In order to win the confidence vote tabled against her on Wednesday, May had to make several promises to her MPs: not to fight the next election, to get the DUP back on side – and to find a legally binding solution to the Irish backstop. The latter pledge appears to have already hit the buffers after a disastrous night for May at the EU council summit. The Prime Minister attended the summit on Wednesday evening in the hope of securing new concessions to her Brexit deal. She asked the EU 27 to ‘work together intensely’ to tweak the deal –

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 13 December 2018

Crisis at Christmas MPs were warned that they might have to give up part of their holidays to deal with Brexit. Here are some other political crises from Christmases past: 1066 William I was crowned on 25 December. Trouble was expected from the English so the streets of Westminster were lined two deep with soldiers. The service was interrupted by a boisterous crowd and houses near the abbey were set alight. 1974 Embarrassment for Harold Wilson on Christmas Eve — his former postmaster general John Stonehouse turned up in Australia, having faked his own death. 1989 Deposed Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena had their festive season curtailed

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 13 December 2018

Earlier this month, the Quorn and Cottesmore hunts took separate votes on merging. The Quorn voted for, the Cottesmore against. So the merger will not take place. The fact that the Quorn wants a merger is, given its history, astonishing. For a century and a half, it was the epitome of fast, grand hunting — with too much ‘leaping’ for hunting purists, but any amount of swagger. Melton Mowbray was to hunting what St Moritz is to skiing. The place was full of louche, rich, grand persons, chancers, hucksters, poules de luxe, all so well satirised by Surtees. There the future Edward VIII met Mrs Simpson. People would take a ‘box’

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

What Sadiq Khan can learn from Prince Charles about knife crime

Prince Charles has waded into the knife crime debate by speculating about the reasons for the current crisis: ‘there is no real means for marking the transition between childhood and adulthood’, he argued yesterday: ‘of course you need something, some motivation… at that period between 14 and 19 where all the worst aspects of this knife crime seem to happen.’ Charles may be right or wrong in his diagnosis of the problem but at least he is trying to look beyond the statistics towards the root cause. Meanwhile London’s mayor Sadiq Khan seems determined to do the opposite. His response to November’s spate of stabbings was to say that it

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tory pressure mounts on May to axe Karen Bradley

How can Theresa May regain the confidence of the 117 Tory MPs who voted against her leadership? A big part of May’s pitch to her party on Wednesday night was that she would repair relations with the DUP – after the confidence and supply agreement broke down over the backstop. One idea now gaining momentum with senior Conservatives of how to do that is to dump Karen Bradley as Northern Ireland secretary, as part of a mini-reshuffle to show May is listening to MPs’ concerns. After the Prime Minister limped home in Wednesday’s confidence vote, there is deep unrest over May’s leadership. Rather than quash the Brexit rebels, it’s become

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory whips had already planned to reinstate Charlie Elphicke before confidence vote

MPs have been expressing their fury today that the vote of no confidence in Theresa May allowed two suspended Tories to rejoin the party. Andrew Griffiths and Charlie Elphicke had both had the Conservative whip removed over claims of inappropriate sexual behaviour, but were reinstated yesterday so that they could vote. Labour’s Shadow Women and Equalities Minister Dawn Butler described it as a ‘betrayal of women’, adding ‘how can Theresa May call herself a feminist when she lets an MP who was suspended back into the Conservative party to vote for her in the leadership challenge?’ Tory sources last night said both men had returned to the party ‘for the

Steerpike Steerpike

‘Stop calling me insane’: Polly Toynbee gets taken to task over Brexit

Polly Toynbee has been complaining about Brexit again. This time though it appears that she has met her match. The Guardian columnist appeared on the BBC’s Politics Live earlier today talking about the woes of a no deal Brexit. But she ended up being taken to task for appearing to question her fellow panellist Liam Halligan’s sanity for disagreeing with her. Here’s how he responded: ‘You can’t keep calling people like me, questioning my insanity. I’ve spent the last three years reading documents about no deal that you don’t even know exist. There are many, many people out there who voted to leave the European Union – I know you don’t like it

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Theresa May’s Brexit aim is no longer Mission Impossible

Politics is all about words, which only sometimes mean what they seem to say. So if you took what the DUP leader in Westminster said on my show last night you would think that just maybe there is a route through the current parliamentary chaos for the PM towards a Brexit deal that MPs could approve. The DUP’s Nigel Dodds told me: “Well I think that the Prime Minister if I may say so maybe is extending a bit of an olive branch to us in the sense that she is now sitting down with us, acknowledging that we have an issue, acknowledging that it’s not just an issue we

John Osullivan

Theresa May has won but at the price of boxing herself in

Theresa May’s victory in the 1922 committee confidence vote is one of those boxing matches that leaves both sides preparing for an early rematch—with the challengers somewhat more eager for one than the champion. The defeated Noes got 37 per cent of the vote, according to the numerate Tim Stanley, of an electorate that provided a 100 per cent turnout of Tory MPs. That’s seventeen votes short of a two-thirds majority for the Prime Minister compared to John Major’s achievement of getting four votes more than that traditionally decisive margin in 1995. Her critics got about the same percentage of the non-payroll vote. Given that this time Brexit was also

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Never trust the people

It was late, and a friend and I were left to talk Brexit. He’s a keen and convinced Tory Brexiteer MP but to stay friends we have tended to steer off the topic. This, however, felt like a moment to talk. The conversation taught me nothing about Brexit, something about him, and a lot about myself and the strain of Conservatism I now realise I’m part of — and which is part of me. Oddly, then, this column is not really about Brexit, but about trusting the people. I don’t. Never have and never will. Our conversation forced me to confront the fact. My friend knows well enough why I’m

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Parliament and power

Who should govern Britain? This has always been the most contentious question in British politics. Magna Carta, the Reformation, the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and the Reform Acts were all struggles over this fundamental point. Brexit asks this question twice over, so we should not be surprised by how divisive an issue it has become. It is about the extent to which the writ of the European Union should run in the United Kingdom — but also about the relationship between the people and parliament. By an overwhelming majority, MPs legislated to let the public decide. But ever since the voters returned the opposite answer to what the Commons

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Javid manifesto

There’s an old joke that the most dangerous position in the Tory party is the favourite for the leadership. The frontrunner always ends up with a target on his back, which is why Sajid Javid should be feeling a little nervous right now. Theresa May survived a confidence vote but only after saying that she would resign before too long – so the hunt for a successor is on. He is Home Secretary, his fourth cabinet post. A poll of 700 Conservative councillors found they’d rather have him as leader than anyone else. He is also a former financier who made his name handling economic crises and is someone to

Morten Morland

Brogues gallery

I spend most of my time drawing politicians, trying to work out what makes them distinctive. The eyes, the expression, their mood: it’s all about finding people’s peculiarities and accentuating them. When I started, I’d focus on the face. Everything else was an afterthought. It wasn’t until I came across a drawing by the Norwegian cartoonist Finn Graff – a cartoon of Helmut Kohl, I think – that I realised what I had been missing. How much you can tell from someone’s shoes. I didn’t discover this, so much as rediscover it. When I was a teenager, I worked in a shoe shop in my home town of Arendal, Norway.

Wendy Cope

Poet’s Notebook

There’s a Christmas poem of mine, written in the 1980s, that ends with the line ‘And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful, if you’re single’. When I read Bridget Jones’s Diary I was interested to find that the central character felt the same, and even more interested to see that Helen Fielding had included my poem. The first thing I did was to check the acknowledgements to make sure that her publishers had asked permission from my publishers. They had. Having established that, I was delighted. I wrote to Helen and got a nice reply. When I heard that there was going to be a film I had high hopes

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The imitation game

Imagine looking at a photo of a stranger and feeling in response, quite naturally, the sort of happy affection you might feel towards a spouse. Well, it’s weird. In July this year, when Benedict Cumberbatch was filming Channel 4’s upcoming Brexit film (Brexit: The Uncivil War) a friend sent me some photos by text message, tabloid snaps from the set. Benedict plays my husband Dominic Cummings, director of the Leave campaign, and the shots were long-lens and hazy: Ben/Dom pushing his son on a swing; Ben/Dom kissing his wife. The real son-of-Dom and I were halfway through our Rice Krispies when the photos came through and I remember how taken

Robert Tombs

Beyond Brexit | 13 December 2018

None of us can predict the potential fallout from Brexit, good and bad. What began as a vote of confidence in our institutions has shown them to be dangerously fallible. A country where people usually rub along together is now marked by a cultural and emotional rift. If Brexit does continue to dominate our politics for years, will it mean a reform of our institutions, or a battening down of the hatches by a beleaguered elite? Will the House of Lords, having alienated its natural defenders, at last be seriously reformed? Shall we try to restrain the dangerously capricious powers of prime ministers? Shall we empower local government? Both Brexiteers