All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
In the past 24 hours, Theresa May has lost two of the Cabinet ministers who have caused her the most trouble. Boris Johnson and David Davis were widely considered to be immovable, despite a number of crises entirely of their own making. The only way for them to go was by resignation, which lends them
Boris Johnson has resigned. The Foreign Secretary becomes the second senior Cabinet Minister to quit over the deal agreed at Chequers, which he reportedly called a ‘turd’. At the weekend, those close to Boris were clear that he wouldn’t resign. They said that the only people who would benefit from his resignation would be Michel
The appointment of Dominic Raab as Brexit Secretary to replace David Davis is very smart politics by the prime minister. He is regarded by the True Brexiters as one of them. In fact, David Davis sees Raab as his protege. For what its worth, his promotion shows the influence in Downing Street of the director
Theresa May’s nightmare Monday morning is going from bad to worse. Steve Baker, who followed David Davis out of the exit door at the Brexit department, has savaged the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan on the Daily Politics. When asked whether the Brexit blueprint was delivering Brexit in name only, he had this to say: ‘The problem
Dominic Raab has this morning been appointed as David Davis’s successor as Brexit Secretary. Raab moves from his role as minister of state for Housing to his first Cabinet post as Secretary of State for Exiting the EU. Well-liked among colleagues, Raab is someone who is seen to have been consistently overlooked for promotion. He
David Davis has walked away. It’s what he does best. DDexit was inevitable from the moment he was appointed Brexit secretary. Davis is a quitter, not a fixer; asked to compromise, his preference is always for blowing the whole show up. Reports suggest he was especially irked by the No. 10 briefing about ministers being
The Brexit rebellion has begun. After murmurs of discontent and Jacob Rees-Mogg editorials over the weekend, the kickback to Theresa May’s soft Brexit agreement has arrived in the form of a resignation from David Davis. Steve Baker – a former chair of the European Research Group – has followed suit and things are looking very
David Davis had left DexEU – and taken most of his colleagues with him. Steve Baker – junior minister– at the Brexit department has resigned and there are rumours Suella Braverman could also quit. So, with a growing Brexit rebellion brewing, Theresa May’s next move is pivotal. Who will replace Davis? No-one: The department for
David Davis has broken his silence on his resignation. Unsurprisingly his comments on the Today programme are devastating for Theresa May’s Brexit strategy. The now-departed Brexit secretary said his position was no longer tenable because he simply didn’t believe in the PM’s approach. In his resignation letter last night, he had said that ‘that the
Oh dear. At one point this weekend, it seemed as though Theresa May had pulled off a blinder – getting her Cabinet Brexiteers to sign up to her soft Brexit plan. Not so anymore after Davis Davis resigned late last night. And it seems, Davis and his band of Brexiteers are not about to make
Dear David, Thank you for your letter explaining your decision to resign as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. I am sorry that you have chosen to leave the Government when we have already made so much progress towards delivering a smooth and successful Brexit, and when we are only eight months from
There have been a significant number of occasions in the last year or so on which I have disagreed with the Number 10 policy line – ranging from accepting the Commission’s sequencing of negotiations through to the language on Northern Ireland in the December Joint Report. At each stage, I have accepted collective responsibility because it is
This piece was first published in the ‘190 years of The Spectator’ special. 15 March 1986 It is difficult to estimate the number of young investment bankers, stockbrokers and commodity brokers earning £100,000 a year. Perhaps there are only a couple of thousand, but they are so mobile and noisy that they give the impression
I listened to the Coffee House podcast about Danny Dyer’s David Cameron rant. Fraser Nelson appears to live in a parallel universe. It is true that Cameron probably expected to be in a coalition with the Lib Dems again in 2015 and to never have to fulfil the promise of an EU referendum. However it
The Brexit Secretary David Davis has quit. Davis’s resignation is the biggest political crisis that Theresa May has faced since the loss of her majority in the general election and leaves her facing a battle to save her premiership. Davis has gone because he could not stomach the opening UK negotiating position agreed at Chequers.
Although Moggmentum has been building for some time among the Tory grassroots, conventional wisdom dictates that Jacob Rees-Mogg is still very unlikely to make it to No 10 – no matter how enthusiastic the members – thanks to the fact that he doesn’t have the support of enough Tory MPs to get onto the ballot
After an away day at Chequers on Friday, the Cabinet has finally agreed on a compromise approach for negotiating the UK’s future Brexit deal. The proposals include a ‘free trade area for goods’, a joint institutional framework for the European Court of Justice and a ‘common rulebook’ to maintain high regulatory standards in a variety
From the flurry of joint op-eds from Cabinet Ministers today, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Chequers deal is the deal. But, of course, it is not. Rather, it is the UK’s government opening position in the negotiation on the future relationship. So, logically, you would expect the government to have to make
The career of the new President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (‘Amlo’), suggests he is a populist. He jumps from party to party and ends up founding his own. He advocates price ceilings for tortillas. Disputing his defeat in the presidential election of 2006, he proclaims himself ‘legitimate President’, wearing a presidential sash. Yet
Is it coming home? If it is, don’t expect all the home nations to welcome it. In Scotland, the dismal grunt of ‘Anyone but England’ (ABE) is the balm that soothes our aggrieved wee souls. It’s never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman watching England do well and even the most fleeting flicker of sunshine.
The latest challenge was to cast a well-known figure on the world stage, living or dead, in the role of agony aunt/uncle, submitting a problem of your invention and their solution. Adrian Fry, channelling Emperor Nero, had these nuggets of wisdom for Worried of Dorking, who is concerned about his grandson’s pyromania: ‘I agree that
Ten years ago today, I was pronounced dead on the front line in Afghanistan. I had collapsed with acute heatstroke in temperatures of 52°C during a military foot patrol. I am a reporter not a soldier, but for four minutes, as a medic attempted to restart my stopped heart, I was a category A. That’s
In January, a pair of pandas flew to Finland on a diplomatic mission. Hua Bao and Jin Bao Bao had been dispatched from their native Chengdu as a gesture of goodwill from China’s president Xi Jinping. Their arrival, part of China’s ‘panda diplomacy’, is one of several signs that the country is on a High North charm
Tory MPs and ministers have consistently under-estimated their leader. What Theresa May achieved at Chequers yesterday was extraordinary. She persuaded her cabinet to sign up for a Brexit plan that drives a coach and horses through what the Brexiters in her team – especially Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – said Brexit was all about,
Theresa May is through Chequers with a plan that proposes having the UK follow EU rules on goods and agri-foods. This isn’t what the Cabinet’s Brexiteers would have expected two years ago, or even nine months ago. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the biggest single reason they are putting up with
As someone who follows the news on Radio 4 at 6, 7 and 8 each morning, I notice that the bulletins begin very leftish and become slightly less so later. I assume the unit responsible, ‘Newsgathering’, works through the night from its default political position. So it relies heavily on the ready supply of ‘news’
Even though I don’t watch much football I love the World Cup because it’s my passport to total freedom. I can nip off to the pub, slob indoors on a sunny Sunday afternoon, leave supper before we’ve finished eating, let alone before the dishes are done. And where normally that kind of behaviour would at
Pity the flunky at Bute House, official residence of Nicola Sturgeon, whose job it is to get the red carpet ready for formal visits. The poor lad mustn’t know whether he’s coming or going. Two weeks ago, the First Minister said it wasn’t ‘appropriate at this time for the red carpet to be rolled out’
Theresa May’s Cabinet away day is finally over and the Prime Minister can go to sleep safe in the knowledge that there have been no resignations… yet. In a No 10 statement this evening, May said the Cabinet had agreed its collective position for the Brexit negotiations – for a common rule book on industrial goods
Today has been so bigged-up as a day of destiny for Britain that it can only deliver disappointment. Even if we do have white smoke rising from the chimneys of Chequers by the end of the day, together with a photo full of strained smiles as the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary apparently agree on a
Stop it. Stop saying we can’t be sure why people voted for Brexit. Stop saying it was just a screech of rage against politicians and so must now be tempered and made into sensible policy. Stop saying it’s fine for Theresa May in her Chequers showdown to ‘soften’ Brexit and keep us entangled in a
Theresa May has come under some pressure these last few weeks over her plan for Britain’s post Brexit trade relationship. Both wings of her party have aggressively pitched their preferred version. Today it’s crunch time as the Cabinet head to Chequers to thrash out a position. But has the most convincing argument for the Brexiteer
The young writer Guy Stagg threw in his job a few years ago to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome – choosing a hazardous medieval route across the Alps. It nearly killed him: at one stage, trying to cross a broken bridge in Switzerland, he ended up partially submerged in the water, held up
At 3pm tomorrow, a thin blue line will be drawn across my living room. My wife will be supporting her motherland, Sweden. I’ll be rooting for my adopted country, England. We’ll have food and drink from both countries on either side – but the question is who gets custody of the kids for those 90