Brexit

EU leaders look set to formally approve a move on to the next stage in Brexit talks today in Brussels. Yet back home, this week saw the government suffer its first defeat on Brexit legislation in Parliament. So will the actions of the Tory rebels leave the government hamstrung? The Tory rebellion may prove to be a ‘momentous vote foreshadowing serious cross-party opposition’ to Britain’s departure from the EU, says the FT. Or it could just be ‘fury and thunder signifying nothing’. What it certainly shows though, according to the FT, is that Parliament is willing to stick up for itself. The ‘Brexit mutineers’ ‘should be congratulated’, says the paper.

Brexit could split the Tory party. So many people wrote articles arguing this before and after David Cameron called the EU referendum, but it was generally assumed that the split would involve disgruntled eurosceptics claiming they had been betrayed after Britain voted to stay in the bloc after all. It was also generally assumed that the split would at least involve something quite serious. But today MPs are locked in a war of words over whether or not they should get a ‘meaningful’ vote on the final Brexit deal. Those in favour defeated the government last night: Theresa May’s first serious Commons defeat since the snap election. Stephen Hammond was

The government has just been defeated in the House of Commons on whether the final Brexit deal will get a ‘meaningful vote’ by Parliament. MPs voted 309-305 to pass the amendment to the EU withdrawal bill by Dominic Grieve. There were dramatic scenes in the Commons, as MPs had initially believed that the government had won. This was based on the way one of the tellers for the rebels was standing in the Chamber (the tellers are MPs who announce the result, and they stand according to whether the Ayes or Noes have it). Heidi Alexander only moved to the other side of the floor at the very last minute,

In my lifetime, I cannot remember any thing or idea or person getting as bad a press as Brexit has. It’s relentless. It’s not daily — it’s hourly, minutely, by the second. Open a newspaper, switch on the radio, browse the web, and there it is: more Brexit-fear, more predictions of economic calamity and national decline if we continue down this course dumbly mapped out for us by the electorate. It’s exhausting to read; heaven knows what it must be like to write it! I fear for the sanity of the Brexit Doom hack. No doubt reporters and columnists will say they’re doing their job and reporting uncomfortable facts. But

Despite the government reaching its long-awaited milestone of ’sufficient progress’ in the Brexit talks last week, certain key figures on both sides of the debate seem intent on muddying the waters as much as possible. Mr Steerpike reports on David Davis’s latest efforts on that front, while Labour MPs are trying to understand the implications of Keir Starmer’s latest utterances on their party’s Brexit position. The Shadow Brexit Secretary appeared to walk into a trap laid by Andrew Marr yesterday, in which the presenter asked him reasonably innocent questions about Labour’s demand for a ‘single market variant’ and the need for a new treaty enshrining the full access to and

David Davis: May’s EU deal ‘a statement of intent’ The Brexit Secretary David Davis joined Andrew Marr this morning to discuss Theresa May’s recent round of negotiations in Brussels, where the European Union finally agreed to progress to the second phase. Friday’s breakthrough included an agreement that there would be ‘no hard border’ between the UK and Ireland, and that the UK would maintain ‘full alignment’ with the EU’s single market and customs union. Marr asked Davis about how the Prime Minister’s deal would affect the negotiations going forward: DD: This [deal] was a statement of intent more than anything else. It was much more a statement of intent that

Now that ‘sufficient progress’ has been achieved, attention shifts to the coming Cabinet discussion on what kind of trade deal the UK wants with the EU. I report in my Sun column this morning that the inner Brexit Cabinet were meant to meet on Monday afternoon, but that has now been postponed by a week. When the inner Cabinet do discuss the end state, on one side there’ll be Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd and Greg Clark who favour a cautious approach of staying as close to EU roles as possible to maximise access to the EU’s internal market. On the other will be Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Liam Fox and

There’s relief in No 10 today after Theresa May and Jean Claude Juncker finally reached deal on the Irish border, EU citizens’ rights and the so-called Brexit bill. The European Commission have subsequently recommended that ‘sufficient progress’ has been achieved in time for this month’s EU council meeting – and that the Brexit talks should move on to trade in the new year. In order to get to this point, May has agreed a £40bn Brexit bill, time-limited ECJ role and a promise of no hard border between Northern Ireland and the republic. However, for the government the hard work is only just beginning. The second round of negotiations is