All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
So far, things have gone very smoothly for Jo Swinson since she was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats. The party has managed to increase its numbers in parliament and coalesced around a new hardline Remain position of revoking Article 50. Yet, there were signs today that all is not well with some Liberal Democrat
Steve Barclay – Boris Johnson ‘believes in Brexit’ David Cameron’s memoirs are due to be released this Thursday, with some of the more explosive highlights already seeing serialisation. The Sunday Times has published an extract today that argues that Boris Johnson did not believe in Brexit, and only backed the Leave campaign to win over
The Liberal Democrats have cemented their credentials as a fully-fledged Remain party this afternoon, after members at their conference in Bournemouth voted to make revoking Article 50 and cancelling Brexit their official party policy. The overwhelming majority of Lib Dem members at the conference voted to pass a motion, which called for the party to
What is going on at The Guardian? They don’t like David Cameron, fair enough, but an editorial published earlier on this evening attacked him for only experiencing “privileged pain” following the death of Ivan, his six-year-old, severely-disabled son. Its leading article, published at 8.40pm – and presumably in the print issue tomorrow – had this to say:-
It is almost 11 years to the minute since we reached the eye of the banking-crisis storm. And even though I was right in the middle of it, reporting on it day and night, I feel much more anxious today as I chronicle our political and constitutional crisis. The reason is simple. However egregious the
There’s a line in Desperately Seeking Susan where Madonna (Susan) reads aloud the diary of Roberta, the bored housewife she has swapped places with: ‘Couldn’t sleep. Went into kitchen. Gary came in, turn off light. Gary left. Finished birthday cake.’ Then she exclaims: ‘Pages of it; it’s got to be a cover — nobody’s life
Remember that mildly cringeworthy gag when Boris won the Tory leadership contest, and he promised to ‘Deliver Brexit, Unite the Country and Defeat Jeremy Corbyn’? He joked that Defeat, Unite and Deliver made the rather unfortunate acronym of ‘dud’. Throw in ‘energise’, and he claimed that he would be the ‘dude’ to save the UK
The EU side regularly points out that the UK government hasn’t presented any detailed proposals on what it wants to replace the backstop with. At a Cabinet committee meeting this week, the Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay set about explaining to ministerial colleagues why this was. As I report in The Sun this morning, He told
For something that has yet to and may never happen, Brexit has reordered the fundamentals of British politics in just three years. The Tories have shifted decisively from post-Thatcher ambivalence about their role as upholders of the prevailing order to a right-wing radicalism that views Parliament, the legal establishment, and captains of industry as threats
Boris Johnson is a gung-ho classicist. He has supported the subject throughout his journalistic and political career, is a generous donor to the charity Classics for All, and has a bust of his hero Pericles in his study. Indeed, he says his reading of Pericles’s famous funeral speech (431 bc) when he was 12 or
Last week I wrote here about James O’Brien of LBC. In particular, I highlighted the platform he gave to the convicted liar and paedophile Carl Beech (aka ‘Nick’). In July Beech was sent to prison for 18 years for fraud and perverting the course of justice. Over the course of some years, he had made
In 1891, a 29-year-old man moved from Philadelphia to Chicago intending to start a business. With $32 to his name, he began by selling scouring soap. Hoping to boost sales, he gave away small packets of baking powder with every purchase. Soon he found that the baking powder was more popular than his soap, so
To the extent Joe Biden is capable of actually formulating coherent sentences — always a questionable proposition — he challenged Bernie Sanders in Thursday night’s Democratic nomination debate in Houston in a way that Sanders has never really been forced to grapple with during either of his presidential campaigns. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s position meant
It’s only been four days since John Bercow announced that he will retire as Speaker of the House of Commons, yet it seems that the bellicose MP is showing no sign that he’ll spend the rest of his tenure keeping quiet, or defending the impartiality of his role. Last night, the Speaker had a break
Oh dear. Boris Johnson’s decision to withdraw the whip from the Tory Brexit rebels continues to send ripples through Westminster. While Chief Whip Mark Spencer has laid out the appeals process to the rebels, many of their colleagues remain unhappy about the decision to remove them from the party. Now things have taken a turn
I am at a conference on domestic violence today, entitled Stand up to Domestic Abuse, listening to story after story of violent men murdering women they had professed to love. Men who slayed their victims because they had the audacity to attempt to leave them. I hear the dreadful tale told by Luke Hart, whose mother
This is a thought-experiment. Imagine the following scenario: A Conservative Prime Minister is dishing out peerages. Among the people given a lifelong right to sit in the House of Lords and vote on new laws is a lobbyist who has conducted a long campaign to diminish women’s rights under the law. The lobbyist, leading an
In December 2015, Donald Trump claimed parts of the French capital were no-go zones for the police. ‘Paris is no longer the same city it was,’ said the then-Republican presidential hopeful. ‘They have sections in Paris that are radicalised… The police refuse to go in there.’ His remarks echoed a similar claim made by Fox
A general election is looming. With no working majority, Boris Johnson found himself cornered last week by an unlikely alliance bent on stopping a no-deal Brexit. The alliance share a common enemy for now, but how long can this coalition last? For one, there’s no love lost between Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson; and the
The latest Operation Yellowhammer disclosures put me in mind of a book I read a few years ago describing an unsettlingly plausible zombie outbreak in Britain. When the streets were too full of undead shamblers for the government to ignore, the Home Secretary asked officials who were barricaded in his office for the contingency plan
For the second time, Ireland’s Phil Hogan will serve as an EU Commissioner in Brussels, after his appointment was announced on Tuesday by the next President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Whereas Hogan didn’t receive a lot of attention in his previous post – even though he was responsible for the biggest spending
In verbal ding dongs Nigel Farage usually gives as good as he gets. But he has been oddly restrained in his response to the Tories ruling out any kind of electoral pact with him on the grounds that he is not a ‘fit and proper person’. On the Andrew Neil show last night, Farage was
The Government’s yellowhammer report on planning assumptions for Brexit will go down in history as a key document in the struggle to achieve Brexit. Farcically it is not a statement of government policy and probably does not reflect the views of government. It is rather a piece of civil service advice, commissioned by we know
On Wednesday evening, the government was forced to publish details of ‘Operation Yellowhammer’, the government project which is preparing the UK for a no-deal Brexit. Below is the full text of the government’s ‘worst case’ planning assumptions in the event of no deal: When the UK ceases to be a member of the EU in
The Court of Session has ruled today that the Prime Minister’s advice to the Queen to prorogue Parliament, and the prorogation that followed, was unlawful and so is null and of no effect. This is a startling – and misconceived – judgment. It does not though seem itself to recall Parliament into session, if that
Scotland’s Court of Session has ruled this morning that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for over four weeks is unlawful. The case will now be appealed in the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Those who brought the case, including the SNP’s Joanna Cherry, now argue that parliament should be recalled. Below is a summary of the
The Conservatives want the next election to be about Brexit and Boris Johnson in Number 10. Labour want the election to be about stopping no deal and issues other than Brexit like the NHS, education and the climate change crisis. In terms of how this plays out in marginal seats, both sides have headaches. So
This afternoon, Lib Dem MPs gathered outside a freshly vacated parliament in a defiant attempt to bag a photo opportunity of them looking stern. The impromptu press conference came after the Court of Session in Scotland declared Boris’s decision to prorogue parliament ‘unlawful’ earlier this morning. Nevermind the fact that the case, having already been
Why has Tom Watson given a speech about what his party leadership should do on Brexit? The party’s deputy leader has urged Labour to ‘unambiguously and unequivocally back Remain’ and to campaign for a referendum ahead of an election. This is contrary to the current frontbench position that a referendum should contain a ‘credible Leave
Has any member of Cabinet seen the full legal advice given to the Prime Minister, which persuaded Johnson proroguing or suspending parliament is lawful? Julian Smith asked for it, on the day Cabinet was bounced into agreeing prorogation. Amber Rudd asked for it subsequently. I am not aware that either got it. Instead they received
The Court of Session’s verdict that prorogation is unlawful is a major headache for Boris Johnson. It makes the Supreme Court’s decision on the matter, and the court will hear the case on Tuesday, much more unpredictable. There is now a significant chance that parliament will have to be recalled. The Supreme Court will hear
Another week, another step along the road to Britain’s transformation into a kritarchy – rule by judges. Last week, the Court of Session in Edinburgh and the High Court in London both ruled that Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks had been lawful. But if you thought it was all over you
The government has lost its majority. The constitution has fallen apart. The country no longer has any idea whether it is leaving the European Union or not. Historians and political commentators are queuing up to tell us this is the lowest point in the country’s history since the Suez Crisis/Civil War/Dissolution of the Monasteries (delete