Brexit

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 7 December 2017

I’m afraid I have a deep faith in the Democratic Unionist Party’s capacity to cede an issue of principle in return for more gold, baubles, Renewable Heat Incentives etc. It may well give in, after receiving some bung, in a few days. But its resistance, at the time of writing, to the idea of ‘regulatory alignment’ with the Republic, seems wholly justified. This is not a pernickety matter solely for the province — it should apply just as much to the entire United Kingdom. If we agree to align trade rules with EU ones (as opposed to each recognising the other’s rules), we are sacrificing the economic point of Brexit,

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

May’s mistake was embracing the lie that Brexit would be easy

Brexit is getting a far easier ride than it deserves. I accept that its promoters live in a world of paranoid irresponsibility. They lament their unjust suffering, and blame everyone but themselves for its many failings. But consider how Britain has bent over backwards to enable their project. We don’t have an opposition willing to oppose Brexit. A Tony Blair or indeed an Ed Miliband would be hammering home the government’s failures. They would by now have ensured that voters, who barely thought about politics from one month to the next, knew that they had been sold a false prospectus. Instead of robust opposition, however, we have the gloriously hypocritical spectacle

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Carry on Brexit

On this week’s episode we’re looking at the Brexit situation as 2017 draws to a close. We’ll also be marvelling at all the wondrous, and infuriating, jargon to come from our EU withdrawal, and asking whether British aristocrats are being seduced by the new ‘glamocracy’. First up: the days might be getting shorter, but the crises faced by Britain’s Brexit negotiations seem never-ending. Ireland has been the sticking point this week, compounding a torrid month for Theresa May. Her task is Herculean, writes James Forsyth in this week’s magazine cover story, not because she herself is Hercules, but because her tasks are getting more and more difficult. Will the EU ever

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Labour must clarify its Brexit plan

Another day, another Brexit warning: this time it comes from the head of Standard Chartered, who says that Britain’s imminent departure from the EU is already having a negative impact. Bill Winters said that his bank is already ‘preparing for the worst’. The Sun says that the ‘same old commentators’ are repeating themselves constantly with their warnings that ‘Britain’s going to hell in a handcart’ as a result of Brexit. ‘Give it a rest’, the paper urges them. The Sun goes on to concede that yesterday ‘wasn’t a good day for the Government’. David Davis’s ‘impact assessment’ misunderstanding and the ongoing row between the Irish PM and the DUP which rumbles

Dot Wordsworth

Lost for words

Emma Bridgewater has, since 1985, produced pottery acceptable in tasteful middle-class kitchens. Some jars had Coffee on and some Biscuits. Coffee meant ‘coffee’ and Biscuits meant ‘biscuits’. In a similar attempt to achieve popularity, Theresa May told us that Brexit meant ‘Brexit’. It said so on the jar. But as the Emma Bridgewater range grew, it included a plate bearing the words ‘Bacon & Egg. Bubble & Squeak’. The ampersands were attractive, but it was unlikely that the plate would really accommodate the items suggested. Now Brexit, once an admirably plain portmanteau of Britain and exit, became a mug’s game. Its meaning is supposed to vary according to what adjective

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Get a grip, Prime Minister

Theresa May’s Brexit challenge is truly Herculean. Every time she believes she has done enough to finally move the Brexit process on, she is told that there is something else she must do. And each time, her tasks become more difficult. The problem is compounded by the fact that May is weakening her own hand. The Monday misstep has harmed the UK’s position. As one Tory insider laments, ‘Things with the EU are bad. It shows Theresa can’t really deliver.’ Even a senior figure at the Department for Exiting the European Union admits that the ‘handling was poor’. The UK is also coming up against hardball negotiating tactics. There have

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn scores six own-goals in a row at PMQs

Ah the joys of political marriages. Theresa May’s pact with the DUP bolstered her at PMQs today, and she delivered her most assured performance since the election. Having an ally who secretly hates you is the ultimate liberation, as David Cameron discovered with the LibDems. May is free to flourish the ultimate get-out clause any time: ‘Them lot made me do it,’ is the best excuse in Westminster. And the DUP are a pretty formidable outfit. Grouped en masse around the microphone they look like a pack of concrete gnomes designed to halt a speeding tank. The Easter Island statues would probably deliver a softer Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn had a

Steerpike Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg: May’s Brexit red lines look ‘a little bit pink’

Theresa May’s Brexit red lines were intended to keep her backbenchers happy, reassuring them that there would be no backsliding on Brexit. The approach worked. But at PMQs today there were signs that some Brexiteer Tory MPs are starting to worry. Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Prime Minister he was concerned her red lines were ‘beginning to look a little bit pink’. He urged her to ‘apply a new coat of paint’ before she next goes to Brussels. Perhaps the PM had better get her paint brush out before she has a backbench rebellion to add to her list of woes…

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

David Davis’s words are coming back to haunt him

Not for the first time, David Davis’s words came back to haunt him as he was quizzed on Brexit today. The Brexit secretary, who is having something of a tough week in a year of tough weeks, told MPs that no detailed sector-by-sector analysis of what the impact of leaving the European Union would be had been carried out. He said this morning that: ‘The usefulness of such a detailed impact assessment is near zero and given how we were stretching our resources to get to where we were at the time, it was not a sensible use of resources.’ So far, so simple. The only problem? As Hilary Benn

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Brexit draft agreement leaks

Theresa May is having a tough week after her plan to agree ‘sufficient progress’ with Jean Claude-Juncker in time for the crucial EU council meeting was brought to a stop by the DUP. The DUP are now dragging their feet over whether or not they can back or amend the government’s ‘solution’ to the Irish border – a promise of ‘regulatory alignment’ in relation to areas covered by the Good Friday agreement (and perhaps beyond). Meanwhile, the eurosceptic wing os the party is seeing red over any agreement involving UK-wide regulatory alignment on the basis that it could hinder their vision of a clean Brexit which would allow the country to

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: May should ditch her plan to leave the single market

17.4million people backed Brexit, but only two – at least one of whom campaigned for ‘Remain’ – decided that leaving the EU should also mean a departure from the single market, the customs union and the European court of justice, says the Guardian. The pair were, of course, Theresa May and her former aide Nick Timothy, who made what the paper describes as ‘fateful national decisions’ based on ‘personal interpretations of the vote’. This was a ‘reckless’ and ‘foolish’ act, says the Guardian, and nowhere is this seen more obviously in the Irish border row which has been spilling out this week. Here, the decision to leave the customs union collides

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Tories are playing a dangerous game with the Union

It is a measure of devolution’s success that politicians, provided they are of sufficient stature, can make waves and news even though they are not members of the House of Commons. In their different ways – and with their very different destinations in mind – both Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson demonstrate as much. The United Kingdom – for such it just about remains – is better for this.  For some time now, we have been waiting for Davidson to make a Brexit intervention. This morning she obliged. Addressing yesterday’s near-fiasco on the other side of the north channel, the Scottish Tory leader released a statement demanding that: ‘If regulatory

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Nick Clegg is right: we need a second Brexit referendum

I didn’t think I would ever see myself write this, but I think Nick Clegg is right: we need a second referendum on the EU. I come to this conclusion not because – like some Remainers seem to do – I think 52 per cent of the British population are too thick to make decisions affecting the future of the country and need to be made to vote again so that they can come up with the correct answer. I have come to it because it is the only way that Theresa May and her government are going to survive the next 15 months. As is clear from polls at

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Now we know just how much Theresa May is willing to give away to secure Brexit

The thing to appreciate about the Conservative and Unionist Party is that the only principle it understands less than Conservatism is Unionism. The Tories have convinced themselves that these concepts mean their perfect opposite, so that Conservatism is a counsel of market dogmatism and social reaction; and Unionism is the English national interest with brief interludes from Glasgow and Belfast, like a constitutional Last Night of the Proms.  The Tories’ Unionism has always been more honoured in the breach than the observance. If their handling of the Scottish referendum result was not confirmation enough, their pursuit of a hard Brexit has put it beyond all doubt. Tory Brexiteers were warned

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: How will May sell her fudge pudding to the DUP?

Theresa May’s plan to wrap up an agreement on the first stage of Brexit talks was scuppered at the last minute yesterday. Good, says the Sun. The paper argues that yesterday’s deadline was ‘always going to be a moveable feast’, and that ‘the Prime Minister is right not to agree a deal to meet a made-up deadline’. OK, it’s ‘disappointing’ that the PM will now need to do it ‘all over again later this week’. But the paper says May should remember that there is only one deadline that must be met: March 29th, 2019. Brexit is a process ’that will decide the future of our once-again sovereign country for decades

Monday

Robert Peston

To prevent an Irish Sea border, Theresa May will align UK regulations with the EU

So it turns out there is something Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party fears and loathes more than the possibility of a government led by Jeremy Corbyn. They would be prepared to sink Theresa May and her government to prevent even the remotest prospect of a border being introduced in the middle of the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Which is why the prime minister has to be quadruply clear that any regulatory alignment she offers to the EU to prevent the re-establishment of a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has to be alignment that applies clearly and equitably to the whole of

Katy Balls Katy Balls

No 10 calls briefing meeting, says nothing

Following Theresa May and Jean Claude Junker’s press conference to announce that no deal has been reached (yet), Tory MPs were summoned to the Committee room corridor to be given a briefing on the progress – or lack there of. Only the meeting’s organisers, Gavin Barwell and Steven Baker, didn’t appear to have all that much to say – telling MPs that both sides were working hard to iron out the final issues holding up ‘sufficient progress’. Or, as one MP puts it, ‘what we were told is nothing has been agreed and nothing has been ruled out’. One Tory walked out with their hands in the air – though a more

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why Number 10 needs to calm some Tory nerves this afternoon

In the midst of the confusion over whether the UK and Ireland have agreed for Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union, Tory MPs have been invited to a party meeting this afternoon at 4. Some backbenchers who are particularly interested in scrutinising Brexit had requested that they be given the same sort of off-the-record briefings on policy and developments as are offered on a regular basis by the Ministry of Defence, so this may well be one of those meetings. But the presence of Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, suggests that it’s not just an off-the-record update from Brexit minister Steve Baker. The chances are that

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Ireland, the EU is playing you like a fiddle

The EU has no shame. It is a completely shame-free zone. How else do we explain the grotesque spectacle of EC President Donald Tusk cosying up to Ireland this weekend, and claiming to respect Irish sovereignty, as if the past 15 years of Brussels treating Ireland as a colonial plaything had never happened? As if the EU hadn’t time and again overridden the Irish people’s democratic wishes? As if the EU didn’t just a few years ago send financial experts to run the Irish economy above the heads of the apparently dim Irish demos? Tusk claiming to be a friend of the Irish takes EU chutzpah to dizzying new heights.

Ed West Ed West

All conservatives should support Michael Gove’s green crusade

‘The sea is in my blood. My father made his living as a fish merchant, as did his father before him. Generations of Goves have gone to sea, harvested its riches and fed families with the healthiest — and most renewable — resource on the planet, our fish.’ So begins Michael Gove’s passionate call to arms, inspired by Blue Planet II, to save the oceans from mankind. Gove is one of the most intellectually original people in politics, and a very likeable man. But if British politics is a box set series, he also has the best character arc of any politician – like Jaime Lannister after he loses his hand