Politics

The brass neck of Tony Blair. The Brexit vote was ‘based on imperfect knowledge’, says the man who unleashed barbarism across the Middle East on the basis of a student dissertation he printed off the internet. Who marched thousands into unimaginable horror on the basis of myth and spin. That NHS claim on the side of the Leave bus is small fry, infinitesimally small fry, in comparison with the guff this bloke came out with. It didn’t cause anyone to die, for one. For Blair to lecture the British people about truth is an affront to memory and decency and reason. No self-respecting citizen should put up with it. Blair

It’s less than two hours into Ukip’s Spring Conference in Bolton and already the cracks are starting to show. Although Paul Nuttall promised to unite the party as leader, his predecessor Nigel Farage has set the cat among the pigeons with a speech on the future of Ukip. The former leader said he was concerned that ‘too many people’ in the party now wish to turn their back on the bold strategy of ‘thinking the unthinkable’ and ‘saying the unsayable’ that got them where they are today: ‘This party succeeded because we had guts, we had passion, we were brave. But now I sense there are too many people in Ukip —

I want to be explicit. Yes, the British people voted to leave Europe. And I agree the will of the people should prevail. I accept right now there is no widespread appetite to re-think. But the people voted without knowledge of the terms of Brexit. As these terms become clear, it is their right to change their mind. Our mission is to persuade them to do so. What was unfortunately only dim in our sight before the referendum is now in plain sight. The road we’re going down is not simply Hard Brexit. It is Brexit At Any Cost. Our challenge is to expose relentlessly what this cost is, to show how the decision

Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage to find a new low. The latest nationwide poll puts them at 24 per cent, trailing the Tories by 16 points. No wonder Labour MPs look so boot-faced around Parliament, and an increasing number are hunting for jobs elsewhere. If a general election were called now, the Conservatives would win a huge majority. Labour would be further than ever from power, arguably even finished as a major parliamentary force. Polls are not rock-solid indicators of future electoral success or failure, but Labour’s ratings are so abysmal as to suggest a

Ken Loach has carved out a name as something of a Corbynista luvvie. The director put together a droning, hour-long promotional film for the Labour leader last year. And Corbyn returned in kind by offering a glowing review of his pal’s recent I, Daniel Blake movie, which he urged people to go and see. This week, Loach stepped up his campaign against the Tories by criticising the Government in a speech at the Baftas, saying the Conservatives ‘must be removed’ from office. Loach also made it clear whose side he was on in the battle between the wealthy and the poor: ‘And in the struggle that’s coming between the rich

The increasingly radical Catalonian independence project has been dealt its latest blow this week: on Tuesday, Spain’s constitutional court ruled that a projected September referendum on secession would be illegal. This means any plebiscite is effectively banned. But whether Catalonia’s pro-independence president Carles Puigdemont goes ahead anyway remains to be seen. A similarly defiant course of action was pursued by his predecessor Artur Mas, who held a vote in 2014 (in which eighty per cent of people backed independence), and is currently on trial. The latest setback in the quest for Catalonian secessionism is particularly ill-timed. Just last month, Puigdemont and his Vice President Oriol Junqueras addressed MEPs in Brussels in a bid to