Boris

Monday

Mark Galeotti

What Boris should do about a problem like Putin’s Russia

With Brexit, the arrival of a new US administration, and trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the government’s foreign policy docket for 2021 will likely be pretty full, but in the odd spare moment, perhaps when he’s walking Dilyn, Boris might want to give some thought to his Russia policy. The great virtue is, after all, that there is pretty much nowhere to go but up. Putin’s Russia is an antagonist, and although the threat is primarily through disinformation, espionage and subversion, the first necessity is a continued firm reaffirmation of the UK’s commitment to Nato. This is, after all, not just or even mainly as a source of common

Thursday

James Forsyth

Fishing is now the sole major obstacle to a Brexit deal

Ursula von der Leyen and Boris Johnson spoke this evening to try and give the negotiations a shove. The statement that the Commission president has released after their call makes clear that fishing is now the biggest obstacle to a deal. She says ‘big differences remain to be bridged, particularly on fisheries. Bridging them will be very challenging’. The Number 10 statement is more downbeat. In a clear attempt to pile on pressure, it declares that ‘Time was very short and it now looked very likely that agreement would not be reached unless the EU position changed substantially.’ It says that the ‘UK could not accept a situation where it

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Why does Ian Blackford get a free pass at PMQs?

The Speaker was busy at PMQs. He jumped in at the start and told Michael Fabricant, the orange-haired member for Lichfield, to stop rambling and get to the point. He admonished an SNP member for addressing the Prime Minister as ‘you.’ Convention dictates that ‘you’ in the Commons means the Speaker himself. ‘You keep saying ‘you’. I’m not responsible for any of this,’ Lindsay Hoyle said. And he jokingly called Boris, ‘Father Christmas,’ after a Tory suggested that the PM was like Santa for school kids. So there seemed to be a semblance of seasonal cheer in the chamber. And then Sir Keir Starmer stood up and read out a

Monday

James Forsyth

Can Boris’s dash to Brussels secure a Brexit deal?

The upshot of Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen’s conversation this evening is that the pair will meet in Brussels in the ‘coming days’ to see if they can resolve the remaining ‘significant differences’ on the level playing field, governance and fish. Presumably this meeting will take place before the European Council on Thursday. Johnson and von der Leyen are being left with a lot to resolve in their summit. This isn’t going to be simply about finding a compromise on fish but on sorting the three issues that have bedevilled the negotiations from the start. Optimists will point to how negotiations on the withdrawal agreement last year seemed