All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Boris Johnson managed to defy his critics today and reach a Brexit deal with the European Union. The new agreement updates the Northern Ireland protocol of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration, which deals with the future relationship. But while the rest of the deal appears to be unchanged, Boris has succeeded in
Twitter is a useful safety valve. I’ve been enjoying some reactions to a bizarre performance last night on Channel 4 News by a beefy chap in a balaclava – whose identity was protected by a weird voice-over, more Scottish than Irish. He claimed to speak for the New IRA, the few hundred supporting the most
‘Well, it’s just not Brexit’. That’s Nigel Farage’s withering verdict on Boris Johnson’s revised deal with the EU. The Brexit party leader waited all of an hour before telling the BBC that the new agreement was not up to scratch: ‘It should be rejected. The best way out of this would simply (be) to have
Boris Johnson has got a new Brexit deal. It’s true that the Prime Minister has some way to go if he is to get the agreement over the line, not least in trying to persuade the DUP to back it. But Mr S remembers a time not too long ago when plenty were claiming the PM
Both the UK government and the EU are now saying that a Brexit deal has been done. There is both a revised withdrawal agreement and political declaration. However, the DUP are not yet on board. This makes it very hard to see how this deal can pass the Commons. At Cabinet yesterday, Chief Whip Mark
Another female Jewish MP has left the Labour party, apparently bullied out of the movement she has worked in for decades. Louise Ellman, MP for Liverpool Riverside, announced in a letter last night that she ‘cannot advocate a government led by Jeremy Corbyn’ because he ‘is not fit to be Prime Minister’. She complains that
Here we go. As Boris Johnson heads to Brussels today for the EU council summit, hope inside government that Johnson will be able to pass a provisional deal in the Commons this Saturday is fading. Despite progress in talks between the UK, Brussels and Ireland, the Prime Minister is yet to successfully convince his confidence
It looks as though it is all getting a bit too much for Jean-Claude Juncker. The EU Commission president snapped at Channel 4 News’s Matt Frei for asking him a question. ‘I’m speaking,’ Juncker yelled when he was quizzed on ruling out another extension. Oh dear.
Extinction Rebellion attempted to shut down several underground lines this morning, as part of an escalation of their citywide protests against climate change. Protestors climbed on top of underground trains to prevent them from moving, and glued themselves to the electric-powered DLR. Exactly why the protestors decided to target one of the most environmentally friendly
By now we’re all used to being lectured by woke hypocritical celebs. But Lewis Hamilton’s suggestion that we all turn vegan in order to save the planet takes the biscuit. This is a man who zooms around a track in gas-guzzling speed-machines for a living and he wants the rest of us to eke out
The Irish backstop and the arrangements to replace it are now the focus of the eleventh-hour Brexit talks. Their importance is not because of Ireland, but because of the battle for the UK’s constitutional freedom to decide the laws that govern this country’s economy and trade. Will the UK’s economic system break free of EU
This I think is important. There may be an agreement between Brussels and London negotiators on a deal. But no detailed text has yet been shared with the 27 EU leaders and their respective governments – so, it looks way too late for EU leaders to endorse a formal Brexit deal with Boris Johnson at
Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds are currently the two most important politicians on the European continent. If the DUP is happy, there’ll be a Brexit deal between the UK and the EU. If it is not, it is hard to see how there can be—it is almost impossible to see how an agreement that they
We’re still waiting to hear what Mark Francois – and the rest of the ERG – make of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. But while Westminster waits with bated breath, Francois has delivered a withering verdict on SW1’s noisiest inhabitant: the ‘stop Brexit’ protester. Francois was about to give his answer during an interview on the
In an astonishing interview on the Today programme this morning, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson tried to explain why she was tabling an amendment which would force a referendum on any deal the government presents to the House of Commons on the grounds that we should ‘let the people decide’. She then asserted that the
What is the purpose of the police? Maybe your answer has something to do with “preventing crime” or “arresting criminals”. Or maybe you think it’s the job of officers of the law to tell us how to behave, to police our conduct, and to make sure we all speak to each other nicely. In which
Tooba Gondal, a notorious female Isis recruiter from Britain, was until Sunday a captive in the Ain Issa camp in north-eastern Syria. Now that the camp has fallen amid the chaos that is unfolding in the region, she is free again, as are hundreds of the other foreign denizens of the camp she was housed with.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) has announced it will finish its ‘Autumn Uprising’ earlier than planned in order to make way for the People’s Vote march on Saturday. The two groups have been in informal discussions for some time aimed at avoiding getting in one another’s way, according to a report in the Times. Even if the
The Brexit talks are at a critical stage as we approach this week’s European Council summit. The rumoured landing zone for a deal – essentially a version of the ‘Chequers’ proposals for customs, but applied to Northern Ireland only – is promising. But to get there, both sides will need to compromise – and that
Sadiq Khan’s verdict was clear on plans to make voters show ID before casting their ballots: ‘This is voter suppression’, he said. ‘It will hit poorer and minority communities, just as it does in the US’. But Mr S couldn’t help but notice one of the requirements for people to attend the Mayor of London’s
There was a fairytale quality to Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the SNP conference this afternoon. On the one hand, she demanded a second referendum on independence next year; on the other, almost no-one in Scottish politics really believes there will be a referendum next year. In tandem with this rallying call for national liberation –
Some things just don’t pass the gut test. Your head tells you they’re right, all the facts point in their favour, but you can’t suppress a dyspeptic rumbling. The jailing of Catalan separatist leaders should give us all political indigestion. On Monday, Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced 12 activists and key figures from the autonomous government
Emily Thornberry has had a busy day in the Commons. Labour’s shadow foreign secretary heckled her counterpart Dominic Raab this morning after he claimed Jeremy Corbyn wanted Britain to withdraw from Nato. Now, she’s been at it again: apparently yelling the word ‘bollocks’ at international development secretary Alok Sharma during a testy exchange. John Bercow
Sympathetic journalists covering the Remain movement are stuck by how far away it is from the ugliness of politics. Its activists are, to use a word that damns with faint praise, ‘nice’. It is better to be nice than vicious, of course. It is better to be nice than mendacious and unscrupulous and so criminally
We should know on Wednesday night whether Boris Johnson has his Brexit deal proper, or whether he has an outline deal that will require a few more weeks of technical talks, or whether the gap is unbridgeable. Why? Because Donald Tusk has made it clear there will be no serious negotiations at the EU council
‘I wouldn’t be here if you were a climate denier’. This was William Skeaping, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (ER), talking to Toby Young on The Spectator podcast. That statement tells us much about the environmental pressure group’s tactics and strategy. It also reveals that, in the battle behind the climate war, Extinction Rebellion has already
The Guardian ran a story on its website today headlined: ‘Hate crimes doubled in England and Wales in five years.’ Alarming if true, but is it? The story is based on some data released by the Home Office today which, on the face of it, does appear to show the number of hate crimes increasing.
Discussions of ‘privilege’ have become one of the themes of this age. In a short space of time, the obsession with the subject has forced its way from the margins of the social sciences right into the centre of all cultural and political debate. Politics and office politics is increasingly consumed by it. One day
There is a big temptation to see the coming general election as a contest between advocates of a Corbynite command economy and liberal champions of the market. The trouble with that narrative is that there are many forms of a market economy, and even ardent capitalists see that there are fundamental flaws in the prevailing
There are few assessments of a police investigation more damning than the one written by retired judge Sir Richard Henriques, published last week, concerning how the Metropolitan Police investigated the allegations of a man called “Nick” over the course of 15 months. Yet the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s report, published a few days later, was right
If today’s Queen’s Speech was meant to offer a preview of what the next general election and life after it will look like, you might be forgiven for wishing you were somewhere far, far away from British politics. The debate in the House of Commons this afternoon was turgid and pointless. It was almost as
Sadiq Khan has got some front. He is complaining about the government’s voter ID plans, claiming it will lead to ‘voter suppression’. And yet he is engaged in the most explicit and awful act of voter suppression in the living memory of this country — the elitist effort to suppress the votes of the 17.4m
This is more an election manifesto launch than a conventional Queen’s Speech, because Boris Johnson simply does not have the numbers in the Commons to legislate for all – or any – of the measures announced today. At the risk of being sexist and aide-ist, the legislative programme shows the strong influence on the PM of the
As tradition dictates, at every Queen’s Speech and State Opening of Parliament, Black Rod (the House of Lords official) will knock three times on the House of Commons door before entering, and leading MPs to listen to the Queen’s speech in the other Chamber. And every year, like clockwork, the Labour MP Dennis Skinner will heckle