Brexit

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Exports are booming thanks to the competitive pound

Remember George Osborne in his hi-viz jacket as he toured the nation’s metal-bashers and gromit-manufacturers in furtherance of his elusive ‘rebalancing of the economy’ away from services and consumers and towards manufacturing and exports? What a shame he is not still in office to witness his ‘march of the makers’ finally becoming a reality. This month’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for manufacturing has come in at a healthy 55.1, comfortably exceeding expectations. Any figure above 50 suggests expansion. The index was boosted especially by a sharp rise in new export orders, which rose at their second fastest level in the 17 year history of the index. As I wrote here

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Philip Hammond must ‘belt up’

Philip Hammond, of all people, ought to ‘relish’ Brexit and the opportunity it will hand to Chancellors to set their own tax rates. But in ‘yet another blunder’, says the Sun, the current occupant of No.11 has told the French that Britain won’t lower taxes. ‘Has he gone made?’ the paper asks. Back in January, Hammond said that lower taxes and limited regulation could be an important way of luring businesses to Britain after Brexit. ‘As a Conservative, that is exactly what he should be saying’. Now, though, says the Sun, ‘he has contradicted himself’. Whatever level the Chancellor plans to set tax rates, ‘why make any promises and surrender a potent bargaining

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Philip Hammond creates a one-man Cabinet split over Brexit

Leaving Philip Hammond in charge of the government was always going to be a risk because of his habit of putting his foot in it. There was the debacle of his first budget, then his saying in Cabinet that driving a train was so easy that even a woman could do it, and his comments that public sector workers are “overpaid”. Now, with the Prime Minister walking in the Alps, Hammond is in charge and has goofed again – this time in an interview with Le Monde. “I often hear it said that the UK is considering participating in unfair competition in regulation and tax. That is neither our plan nor our vision

Sunday

Charles Moore

How the economics of cow-milking can help explain Brexit

Writing about judicial appointments, I incautiously compared a silly interview question asking a judge to cite an example of when he had acted with integrity, to asking a farmer, ‘How many times a day do you milk your cows?’ Jamie Blackett, a farmer, writes to say that, in the 21st century, it is a question to which the answer reveals much. He explains. Farmer One milks his 50 cows only once a day. He follows the Norwegian system and makes a marketable green virtue of leaving the calf on the cow. He lives near rich people and sells them his artisan cheese and yoghurt. He voted Remain. Farmer Two milks

Michael Gove

I may disagree with him, but George Osborne’s first duty is to his readers

I may disagree with George Osborne on the odd issue. Like Britain’s relationship with the EU, our trading future and the exercise of democratic sovereignty. And as a Conservative minister, I certainly sometimes wince at the criticism his paper directs at the government of which I’m proud to be a part. Indeed, wince is putting it mildly. But no one can deny that, in journalistic terms, he’s proving a brilliant editor of the Evening Standard. He’s made the paper talked about in a way it hasn’t been since Paul Dacre edited it in the 1990s. He’s produced some great front pages. And he’s put the paper at the heart of critical

Saturday

Pádraig Belton

An Irish Sea border would damage British-Irish relations

Dublin and London had been fairly tight since December 1993 and the Downing Street Declaration—until yesterday morning. The Times led with ‘Irish want sea border with UK after Brexit’. The DUP’s Sir Jeffrey Donaldson rushed breathlessly on to the Today programme to say there was ‘no way’ his party would accept it. The notion isn’t new.  The idea is that the customs and immigration checks move away from the land border, and are done on ports or planes reaching either island. It pours cold seawater on Downing Street’s preferred idea that a ‘frictionless border’ can just rely on nifty cameras. ‘We do not want to pretend … we can solve the problems of the

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Politicians are still not sure what Brexit means or whether they can make a success of it

It was only a year ago that ‘Brexit means Brexit, and we’re going to make a success of it’ seemed like a reasonably fresh phrase which could actually mean something. Now, we don’t hear so much about making a success of the thing as we do about getting through it in one piece, hopefully with Theresa May’s Cabinet agreeing on a few things along the way too. The Cabinet is slowly starting to realise that a little pragmatism on both sides wouldn’t hurt as the government burrows into the detailed negotiations with the European Union. A bit of agreement on transitional periods, if not immigration, is handy, but this is

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The Labour left and Tory right agree on Brexit. Why don’t they merge?

Britain has not had a functioning opposition on the most vital question of the day ever since the Labour left and Tory right found they were in agreement on our future relations with the EU. Although both sides are too embarrassed to admit it, we are ruled by a Corbyn-Johnson pact. It will deliver a hard Brexit, whatever the costs to the country. When Nigel Farage hailed Jeremy Corbyn as ‘almost a proper chap’ you learned that whatever trouble this hopelessly ill-equipped government faces it will never face trouble from the Labour leadership. The left has ceased to exist as an organised force in British politics, at least as far as

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 27 July 2017

Bugs bite back Sir: Matthew Parris is quite right to say that we Leavers would prefer independence in reduced circumstances to affluent federalism (‘Dear Leavebugs, it’s time to admit your mistake’, 22 July). But he is wrong to suggest that our preference is a guilty secret, or that it should be. Many of us despaired at the narrowness of both referendum campaigns, which made no attempt at addressing our ‘spiritual’ concerns about EU membership, or indeed the equally spiritual hopes of the Remainers. Spiritual, moral and cultural questions are at the root of all politics and economics, and any debate which leaves them out is empty. What should have been

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 27 July 2017

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, invited the media to take a photograph of her beginning a holiday with her husband Philip at Lake Garda before pressing on to Switzerland for some walking. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, resisted demands by Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament Brexit negotiator, that the European Court of Justice should retain jurisdiction over EU migrants in Britain. BMW said a fully electric Mini is to be built at Cowley in Oxford, with motors made in Germany and shipped over for assembly. The government announced plans to ban new diesel and petrol cars and vans from 2040. The number of people over 90 with a driving

The Spectator

Playing chicken

Besides being important in themselves, the trade talks between Britain and the United States which began this week are symbolic of the opportunities that should become available as we leave the European Union. For years we have dealt with the US, our biggest single customer, under burdensome tariffs and other regulation — but we had no choice. The EU handled trade policy and it never succeeded in completing a trade deal with any of its major trade partners. Britain, by contrast, has always been more global than Europe in its outlook. The vote for Brexit was, among other things, a vote to raise our sights to more distant horizons. At

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Bad news for the Tories: Corbyn has learned to love the centre

When Tony Blair was selling out the Labour Party by introducing a minimum wage, paid holiday leave and free nursery education, the hard left reckoned it had his measure. Semi-Trots and leftover Bennites, since decamped to one of the many exciting acronyms British Leninism has to offer, filled monochrome magazines and academish journals with tracts denouncing Blair as a Tory, a Thatcherite and both a neoliberal and a neocon. The charge sheet was echoed with righteous indignation by proud purists on the backbenches and in the columns of the Guardian and the Independent. New Labour was so far to the right it was indistinguishable from the Conservatives. What was the

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Macron’s vanity fair

On this week’s episode we discuss whether Macron is losing his gloss, ask if the Brexit talks are heading in the right direction, and recommend how to get the best out of the Edinburgh festival. First, it’s been just over two months since Emmanuel Macron became President of France, and already cracks are starting to show. Swept into the Elysee Palace by a sea of young voters rejecting Marine Le Pen and the National Front, those same voters are beginning to turn on the centrist former banker who they reluctantly championed. So says Gavin Mortimer in this week’s magazine, where he laments the new President’s vanity, and he joins the podcast from Paris along

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Free traders need to get their act together

The row over chlorine-washed chicken should be a wake-up call to British free traders. It is a sign of the opposition that any new trade deals will face. The producer interests keen to oppose the extra competition that free trade brings are organised and ready to go. But the consumers who’d benefit from greater choice and lower prices have no organised, political voice at present. There is a danger that trade deal after trade deal is derailed or limited by the kind of scare tactics we have seen in recent days; having not had a trade policy for 40-odd years, there are few people in this country versed in how

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The dark clouds threatening Brexit

It’s summertime and the living is easy… unless you’re a civil servant working on Brexit. Whitehall has recognised that the UK needs to step up its preparations for leaving the EU and to offer greater certainty about the country’s immediate future. A big speech is planned for September, probably by the Prime Minister, which will set out more of the government’s thinking on the issue. One aspect of Brexit that urgently needs clarity is how Britain will leave the European Union. Theresa May has long been open to a transitional period or, as she terms it, an implementation phase. But since the election, the government’s enthusiasm for this has become

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If Brexit is dying, what about democracy?

Never meet your enemies — you might like them, and that ruins stuff. I had dinner with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, about a year ago. During his time in office, Rowan came out with what I considered to be some of the most cringing, effete, left-liberal, self-abnegating rot I have ever heard. But then, at this dinner, I met the most kindly, charming, humble and witty human being. If a man could be said to actually radiate goodness, that was Rowan. I left the dinner utterly dismayed. Never meet your enemies. So it is with Matthew Parris. I bump into Matthew every so often and am always

Will Heaven

‘I like making things’

Sir James Dyson would make a good therapist for anxious Brexiteers. Everything about him is comfortingly precise — his manner and way of speaking, his owlish round glasses and blow-dried white hair. He exudes a Zen-like calm. What he has to say is reassuring, too. He is as sunnily optimistic about leaving the EU as he was before the referendum last year. ‘I am very confident,’ he says, ‘in our ability to negotiate trade deals outside Europe — with Japan, Australia, China, America and so on — because it’s very easy. It’s just us negotiating with them. It’s very, very straightforward and you don’t have to satisfy 27 other people.’

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Why must I have a view on everything?

At a party earlier this summer, I was chatting to a man who asked me how I voted in last year’s EU referendum. I don’t see why anybody asks that question more than a year on, and I don’t see why anyone should be expected to answer. There is no faster way to sour a perfectly fine evening. Whatever you say, you risk causing offence, so why bother? I told the man I preferred not to say, and that I still don’t really know what I think about Brexit. He appeared put out by my reluctance — as if I was the one being rude. Before long he made his

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Cheating German car-makers are good news for Brexiteers

It came as no great surprise to learn that the EU competition authorities are crawling all over the three major -German car-makers, Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler, to investigate collusion via ‘secret technology working groups’ dating back to the 1990s. The most damaging allegation — reported by Der Speigel — is that the three groups colluded over the use of AdBlue, an additive that neutralises -diesel emissions, by agreeing to use small but inadequate AdBlue tanks in their cars when larger, more expensive ones might have done the job properly. (BMW denied that story, but the other two groups declined to comment.) This follows the 2015 emissions -scandal in which half

Wednesday

Ross Clark

It’s a score draw on the economy for Brexiteers and Remainers

Yesterday was a golden day for the Despite Brexiteers – those who try to frame every piece of good economic news as if it is somehow a great surprise and shouldn’t really have happened. BMW announced that it is to build the electric version of the Mini in Britain, Amazon announced it was doubling the size of its research team in Britain, while according to the CBI, output from factories is growing at its fastest rate in 20 years. Today, though, comes news which is firmly on the other side of the fence: the ONS’s first estimate for economic growth has come in at 0.3 per cent. This is a