Politics

We’ve heard that Brexit could cost Britain billions in the form of a divorce bill from Brussels. But what is the price of staying in? That question is answered by the Daily Mail this morning which reveals Treasury estimates slipped out last week that the UK’s contribution to the EU will jump to £10.2bn in 2019 – up from £7.9bn this year. The numbers also show that if Britain is still in the EU by 2021-22, taxpayers will have to pay out £10.9bn to Brussels. For the Daily Mail this is proof that Brexit is the best course of action. ‘Doesn’t this revelation, slipped out by the Treasury, show precisely

Oh dear. It’s safe to say that Labour’s candidate for the Stoke-on-Central by-election has not had a good day. After Guido published tweets in which Gareth Snell called a variety of women ‘sour-faced’ and ‘annoying’, the Sun revealed that he had said Deirdre from Coronation Street deserved a slap. Meanwhile, Mr S notes that Snell also found time to tweet an expletive-laden message telling Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight book series, ‘f— you very much’. So, what does Snell make of today’s female politicians and his potential colleagues? Well, he has blasted Ukip’s Suzanne Evans for having the audacity to ‘moan’ about sleaze and sexism in the Tory party: Claire Perry, the Conservative

The BBC again. A profile of the speaker, John Bercow, for Radio Four. His  pet cat is called ‘Order’ – hilarious! And he’s stood up for stuff like same sex adoptions and opposed the ‘nasty’ (qv- BBC again) tendencies of the Tory Party. What a lovely bloke! And he’s been bloody brilliant as a speaker! This was the conclusion we were invited to draw from Mark Coles’s profile, which ran on Radio Four just before 18.00 on Sunday. Aaah, you hold your heads in the hands and wonder. Mark Coles is a superb reporter and one of the most talented makers of radio packages I have ever come across –

I thought you’d like to see this, in case you haven’t already. This is David Aaronovitch being made to look like an utter fool on Newsnight because he doesn’t know what he is talking about. He doesn’t get Brexit, or Trump, or the Chatham House survey which I reported on a couple of days ago. He is in a state of denial – a familiar state for David, because however good a writer he may be, he has the analytical capacities of a wardrobe. And not a very good wardrobe, either. A DFS thing, I would reckon. Wrong about the Iraq War, wrong about Islam (until he conveniently changed his

Jeremy Corbyn has called reports of his departure ‘fake news’. This despite the Labour leader having a net approval rating of minus 40 per cent and polling suggesting that only 15 per cent of voters think Corbyn stands any chance at all of triumphing in 2020. It seems that, at any cost, the Labour leader is determined to stumble on. Yesterday, he announced a reshuffle – shaking up the cast of nobodies in his shadow cabinet. Whatever Corbyn does, though, if he stays put it’s clear that these next few years are going to be a ‘miserable experience’ for him, says the Daily Telegraph. It’s inevitable that whether the Labour leader has a