Politics

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

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Project Fear turn it up to 11: Brexit could spell the end of western civilisation, says Donald Tusk

It’s happened. After weeks of Project Fear warnings from the Remain camp — from WW3 to house prices actually falling —  Donald Tusk has offered the most apocalyptic warning yet. A clear frontrunner for Mr S’s ‘Project Fear’ award, the president of the European Council has claimed today that Brexit could spell the end of… western civilisation. Yes, Tusk says that a vote for Leave could lead to the end of ‘western political civilisation in its entirety’: ‘Why is it so dangerous? Because no one can foresee what the long-term consequences would be. As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Can Gordon Brown give the ‘Remain’ camp the boost it so badly needs?

As the countdown to the EU referendum debate continues, the momentum appears to have continued to swing towards Brexit: ‘Leave’ went ahead in the polls last week, with one survey putting them five points clear of ‘Remain’. What’s more, David Cameron has looked more and more rattled. Yesterday, he had to answer questions on Marr about whether he really believed his warnings over Brexit, given that the UK leaving the European Union now doesn’t seem so unlikely. So if Project Fear isn’t paying off, what can the ‘Remain’ camp do to try and regain control of the debate? The answer for the Prime Minister this week is to take a step

Steerpike Steerpike

John McDonnell to reunite with ‘loony left’ comrades for rate-cap rebellion anniversary

Although John McDonnell is tipped to be Jeremy Corbyn’s likely successor, Mr S doubts his appearance at an an event next month will do much to help his leadership chances. The shadow chancellor is scheduled to appear at a talk entitled ‘Local Government in Revolt’ alongside Ted Knight and Hazel Smith. This event will see McDonnell reunited with his old comrades — and ‘key participants’ — from the Lambeth and Greater London Council rate-cap rebellion of the eighties. At the time, McDonnell was the GLC’s finance committee chairman. He was one of several figures who retaliated to the Thatcher government imposing caps on town hall spending by rallying supporters to oppose the caps and carry on spending regardless. In

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

David Cameron’s Brexit threat to pensioners is a new low

Campaigns only last for a few weeks, but politicians can be defined by what they say during those campaigns. Ed Miliband will never live down the #EdStone, Zac Goldsmith will always be stained by his murkier attacks on Sadiq Khan – and I suspect David Cameron will never manage to shake off the threat he made to pensioners today. At times, it can seem as if he’s got confused and has set out to attack his own reputation, rather than that of his opponents. Those who watched George Osborne grilled by Andrew Neil last week will know the issue: the Remain campaign has decided to pretend that pensioners will be worse off after Brexit.

Douglas Murray

The week in EU deceptions: Richard Reed, Ian McKellen and Eddie Izzard

Anyone with any more corkers in their armoury should take note there’s less than a fortnight left in which to release them. This week did see George Osborne finally challenged on why he and David Cameron keep pretending that a country they have always campaigned to bring into the EU will never in fact come into the EU. Questioned by Andrew Neil about David Cameron’s 2010 speech promising to ‘pave the road from Ankara to Brussels’ George Osborne said: ‘Well I was 16 years old when Turkey first applied to join the European Union, I’m now 45 and I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime because sadly

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron is not where he would like to be in this EU referendum 

David Cameron is now having to face questions on what he would do if, as looks far more likely than he would have liked at this stage, Britain votes to leave the European Union. As James predicted in his cover piece this week, Cameron will have to row back on predictions that he made about Brexit putting a bomb under the economy in order to calm nerves in the event of a Leave vote. But with the polls the way they are, the Prime Minister is already having to answer questions about whether he really believes his own warnings now, as he did on this morning’s Marr Show. Cameron can

James Lewisohn

Brexit could fire Denmark up to leave the EU – and reignite its smokehouses

Denmark has been basking in a glorious June heatwave this past week, hastening the annual migration cycle.  ‘Summer Danes’ are a delicate subgenus of the species.  We roam the planet’s warmer regions every year between September and May, absenting ourselves from Nordic noir winters.  But mercury rising brings us home; and last week was the warmest early June week in recorded history. So I made my annual pilgrimage to our idyllic local fishing village, Gilleleje, at the northernmost tip of Zealand, a few dozen miles north of Copenhagen. Though still gorgeous, Gilleleje isn’t what it used to be.  Among its many glories, including its beautiful natural harbour, home to Denmark’s fourth-largest

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Going for Boris just makes the Remain side look rattled

All sides of the Remain campaign are turning their fire on Boris Johnson at the moment. But these attacks are, I argue in The Sun today, a mistake by the Remainers. First, it makes Boris, the most popular politician in the country, the face of the Out campaign when the IN campaign’s strategic aim is to make voters think that Nigel Farage embodies the Out case. Second, it means that the whole referendum is seen through the prism of the Tory leadership. This is not only bad for Tory party unity post-referendum, but also makes it harder for IN campaign to get the support of Labour party voters as it

Steerpike Steerpike

John McDonnell’s advisor calls for ‘Royal Aid’ to fund the Queen

Weary that his republican views could put-off some Labour voters, Jeremy Corbyn has been keen to make clear that he won’t fight to scrap the monarchy — ‘it’s not the fight I’m interested in’ — if elected Prime Minister. So, what of his rumoured successor John McDonnell and his team? Just in time for the Queen’s birthday celebrations, Steerpike has been passed an article that the shadow Chancellor’s media advisor penned back in 2011. In the article for the Guardian, James Mills argues that the Royal family ought to be funded by donations from the public: In this he argues that a suggestion by MPs and the Lords to donate £85,000

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Brexit – the first 100 days | 11 June 2016

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. The EU referendum on June 23rd looks set to be one of the most important political moments in a generation. But if Britain does vote out, what would the next 100 days actually be like? The Prime Minister has predicted disastrous consequences, saying Brexit would plant a bomb under the economy. And we’ve been warned that house prices will crash and everything from air fares to ice cream will cost more. So, would Cameron step down straight away and watch the pound tumble?

Friday

Nigel Farage

Transcript: Nigel Farage grilled by Andrew Neil on Brexit

This is an abridged transcript of Nigel Farage’s Brexit interview with Andrew Neil IMMIGRATION Reducing the level of immigration has been central to your pitch to voters, can you tell the British public at what level broadly you’d expect net migration to fall if we left the EU? Up to us. The point about this referendum, too much of this is sounding like a manifesto, a Remain manifesto, a Leave manifesto.  The real point about this referendum is who makes the decisions, do we have the ability to control the numbers that come to Britain or not, that’s the first and most important point to make.  What do I think

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Nigel Farage has just been rumbled on immigration

The Leave campaign has been talking a lot about immigration, but just what kind of effect would Brexit have? How many fewer would come? “Up to us, that’s the point of this referendum” said Nigel Farage, in is interview with Andrew Neil. Let MPs debate the ideal figure in the Commons, he said. His implication: that post-Brexit Britain could pick a number for net migration, any number. Given that Britain’s net migration is about 330,000 a year, Andrew Neil asked Farage how far he sees it falling after Brexit. He didn’t have an answer. From the 1050s to the 1990s, it used to be 30,000 to 40,000 a year, he (wrongly)

Charis St Clair Fisher

Political gimmicks won’t encourage young people to vote

The government’s decision to extend the voter registration deadline by 48-hours was undoubtedly aimed at young people. David Cameron recently cited his ‘greatest concern’ to be getting more people, especially the under 30s, to vote. But, even with the extension, the Remain campaign haven’t really done anything meaningful to urge under 30s to turn out. The extension will inevitably have helped the Remain campaign. But an extension doesn’t make up for the lack of actual engagement with the younger generation – the generation that, statistically, Cameron now realises he needs. Figures suggest that 73 per cent of 18-29s would vote to remain in the EU, compared to 23 per cent who would vote

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Andrew Neil Interviews: Nigel Farage tones it down

Sometimes you sense that Nigel Farage is keen to create controversy, to stir things up. But tonight in his interview with Andrew Neil, Farage seemed keen to do the opposite; turning in a restrained performance. When Andrew Neil asked what net migration would be post-Brexit, Farage replied that ‘it would be up to us’. He said that the two sides in this campaign shouldn’t be putting forward manifesto-style promises, as the question is really about who governs not what they do. The subtext of this seemed to be that it wouldn’t be him deciding the policy. Under further questioning from Andrew Neil, Farage said he would like to get net

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

‘Please don’t go’: Spiegel magazine urges Brits not to leave

A week after Angela Merkel intervened in the Brexit debate to say she hopes Britain stays in the EU, Germany’s Spiegel magazine has also waded in. The magazine’s headline is certainly emotive: ‘Please don’t go’, it urges, in an issue which includes several pages in English in a bid to reach out to Brits. As with the clear-cut message on the front cover, the magazine’s poll on whether Germans want Britain to stay in the EU is also conclusive. Spiegel’s survey, conducted by TNS, showed that 79 per cent of people in Germany thought Britain should remain in the EU. It’s possible that this attitude derives from the popularity of

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Brexit: the triumph of the right

The only arguments that matter in politics today are the arguments on the right. The only futures that are possible to imagine are those offered by the different strands of right-wing thought. The right’s arguments are not good to my mind. Nor are the futures it offers desirable. It is just that the right’s opponents are all but absent from the debate. The future of the country is up for grabs, but only the right hand of England is reaching up to seize it. The journalist in me almost hopes that the ‘leave’ campaign wins. The lies it has told will then be clear, and the liberal press will have

Vicky Spratt

The Brexit debate is a luxury many young people can’t afford

Newsflash: young people don’t care about the EU referendum. On the whole, we are neither Eurosceptic nor Europhobic. I work as features editor of millennial female news lifestyle site, The Debrief. When we asked our readers how they were going to vote on 23 June, an overwhelming 71 per cent said they would vote to remain. 19 per cent said they didn’t know. As a millennial myself I know that my peers have hardly found the Brexit debate inspiring – the prospect of leaving the EU is not something many of us had considered and we resent it being forced upon us. The EU – complete with fisheries, Jean-Claude Juncker, Schengen and Maastricht – has

Steerpike Steerpike

Friday caption contest: Boris attack!

Just in case last night’s Boris-bashing in the ITV debate wasn’t enough, Labour have decided to take another jab at the leading Brexiteer today at its ‘Tory Brexit Budget’ press conference. The room was filled with Remain activists wearing BoJo masks. A number then made their way to the Red Lion in Westminster where they posed with pints and St George flags. Steerpike suspects that the stunt will backfire — given that Euro 2016 means the nation are about to go to their local watering hole and do exactly this. Still, Mr S welcomes your caption suggestions for the latest Boris attack. The winner will be revealed on Monday.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The EU bullies everyone – on both the Left and the Right

The prevalent notion is that all those people who wish for us to leave the European Union are thick as mince ‘Little Englanders’ (the wrong insult, incidentally), motivated by racism, nostalgia and xenophobic spite. The left-wing argument to get the hell out has been scarcely touched upon, and yet it is – for me, at least, and I suspect quite a few voters – just as compelling as the stuff about immigration and democracy. So huge credit to Suzanne Moore for her piece in Wednesday’s Guardian. It’s, as ever, an excellent bit of writing and gets straight to the point. One caveat, though. Moore recognises the fundamental anti-democratic mindset of the

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Did ‘Operation Batter Boris’ go too far?

The takeaway point from last night’s EU referendum showdown was the extent of the personal attacks on Boris. The former Mayor of London came under repeated fire during the debate – with his Tory colleague Amber Rudd leading the charge. But did she go too far? And is there a chance the intention of targeting Boris could end up backfiring? Here’s what the papers had to say: Anyone reading The Sun‘s coverage of the debate will probably end up feeling sorry for Boris. The article tells how Boris ‘suffered relentless abuse’ over his apparent ambitions to be the next PM. It also goes on to say Rudd ‘reeled off Government