Brexit

Thursday

The Spectator

Stronger together

There is unlikely to be much of a legacy from Theresa May’s premiership, which could yet be truncated a short way into its second year. Yet one very good thing looks like coming out of it: the strengthening of the United Kingdom. The Union suddenly looks in better health than it has done for several years. Nicola Sturgeon did not quite scotch her dream of a second independence referendum this week, but in delaying the required legislation until the autumn of 2018 at the earliest she has bowed to the inevitable. She has been sent, as the Scottish national anthem says, homeward tae think again. Meanwhile, the importance of Northern

Steerpike Steerpike

Professor George Osborne makes it job number six

George Osborne has been keeping himself busy recently putting the boot into Theresa May at every opportunity. Not content with using the Evening Standard to bash the PM, the former chancellor has now added job number six to his CV, having been made an honorary professor of economics at the University of Manchester. This means that Osborne will have to balance his day job at the Standard – as well as his lucrative speeches, BlackRock gig, fellowship at a US think tank and his work on the Northern Powerhouse – alongside giving lectures to students on economics and austerity. Mr S thinks that before Osborne delivers any lectures, he would do well to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is finally looking forward to some Brit-bashing

Was that a touch of gloating I detected last night as I watched the news on French television? The lead item was Donald Trump’s acceptance of President Macron’s invitation to attend the Bastille Day commemoration in Paris next month. It’s always a prestigious occasion and this year marks the centenary of America’s entry into WW1. Hence the invitation to the American president which came in a telephone conversation where the pair also agreed on a joint military response against the Syrian regime should Bashar al-Assad launch another chemical attack. That Trump has accepted at relatively short notice – Macron only issued the invite on Tuesday – suggests that The Donald is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why May must stay

Sometimes crises end simply because all of the participants are exhausted. Essentially, this is what has happened with the post-election Tory leadership crisis. No one has the energy for a fight, so Theresa May carries on as Prime Minister. Conservative MPs say it is now almost certain that she will make it to the summer break and will still be in place at party conference. If the coronation of a new leader could be arranged, things would be very different. But it can’t be. From the great offices of state down, the Tories are simply too split – over both policy and personnel – for the succession to be resolved

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The next financial crisis is coming ‘with a vengeance’, says the expert. But when?

There’s a passage in Philip Larkin’s All What Jazz, the collection of his writings as the Daily Telegraph’s jazz critic, that imagines his typical readers. Husbands of ‘ageing and bitter wives they first seduced to Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine”’ who take comfort from collections of ‘scratched coverless 78s in the attic’, they are ‘men whose first coronary is coming like Christmas’. The same sense of gloomy inevitability often pervades the so-called ‘dismal science’ of economic commentary, amplified by political uncertainty and traumatic events: the one thing we know for certain is that economic life is cyclical and that any run of benign signals can only ever be temporary. It’s

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Did Glastonbury love Corbyn as much as it loved pirates in 2007?

I saw him — the loneliest man at Glastonbury. He was wearing a neon-green Hawaiian shirt, and he was next to a stall selling baguettes, and he was standing on a path facing a stage, and he was screaming that Jeremy Corbyn was a cunt. This was not, actually, a stage that had Corbyn on it. His speech was being shown on the giant screens, yes, but only as a prelude to the Kaiser Chiefs. Possibly the man in the Hawaiian shirt didn’t know this. ‘You lost the election, you wanker!’ he shouted, and ‘Get the fuck out my life!’ and ‘IRA sympathiser!’ and ‘Hezbollah lover!’ and so on. He

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Nicola Sturgeon asks Scotland for one thing: patience

Ever since the general election Nicola Sturgeon has lurked in her tent, contemplating the future. The result of that election, in which the SNP’s share of the vote fell by 13 points and in which it lost 21 seats, demanded a period of ‘reflection’ from the first minister. Where does Scotland stand now? The answer, which was wearily predictable, is just where it stood before. Nicola Sturgeon emerged from her period of reflection yesterday with a simple message: nothing has changed. Sure, she talked about ‘resetting’ her timetable for independence, confirming that she would not this year introduce a bill at the Scottish parliament seeking the Section 30 order from

Monday

David Gordon

Give the DUP a chance

A political party barely known outside Northern Ireland now holds the balance of power in Parliament. Nobody saw it coming, but then that’s the new catchphrase in politics. So who are the DUP? And do they deserve the pillorying that has been coming their way since the general election catapulted them into the spotlight? I have been watching the party up close for decades. Yet while the DUP isn’t always a pretty sight to behold, the party is much more complicated than the hysterical stereotyping makes out. It’s true that the DUP has its roots in uncompromising unionism and religion. And for many years it was little more than a one-man’s fan club: the political extension of Ian Paisley’s hardline

Alex Massie Alex Massie

England, you wanted Brexit so you can pay for it

The message to be taken from today’s Downing Street proceedings is a simple one: England, you wanted Brexit so you can pay for it. That, in essence, is the meaning of the confidence and supply agreement brokered between the Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist Party. That the DUP favoured Brexit too is of no account and nothing more than a cute irony. Nobody gets between an Irish politician and their pork. ’Twas ever thus, north and south of the border, and ’twill ever be thus. This is the word of the book, you know. Enough too, please, of pretending to be shocked by the shocking discovery that politics is a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour’s nonsensical Brexit position is perfect opposition politics

After Theresa May received a hostile response in Brussels, perhaps she was hoping for a more amiable reception today in the Chamber when she revealed more details of her pitch to EU nationals living in the UK. In a statement, the Prime Minister told MPs that hers was a fair and serious offer (confirming she remains opposed to European Court of Justice adjudicating on rights of EU nationals after Brexit) but went one step further – telling EU nationals: ‘we want you to stay’. Alas, her words did little to appease Jeremy Corbyn. Boosted by rowdy opposition benches, he accused the government of treating EU nationals like bargaining chips. The Labour leader said

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Corbynism isn’t funny any more

The laughing should stop, says the Sun, which calls Corbynism a ‘joke’ which ‘simply isn’t funny any more’. The Labour leader has now said himself that he could be PM within six months. If he does make it to Downing Street, ‘terrifyingly, says the Sun, Trident could be gone’. And in just a few days ‘Corbyn would leave Britain open to attack’. A Corbyn government would also be ‘financially ruinous, militarily empty and so confused on Brexit and immigration that his own party contradicts itself at every turn’. After Corbyn’s rapturous reception over the weekend at Glastonbury, ‘let’s hope’ says the Sun, that the ‘enthusiasm’ for Corbyn ‘remains in a

Sunday

Charles Moore

Brexit backsliding fears are stronger than ever

In February, Matthew Parris wrote that Brexiteers seemed very anxious, despite having won. He thought this was because they were ‘secretly, usually unconsciously, terrified that they’ve done the wrong thing’. The following week, I suggested that our undoubted anxiety was more likely attributable to fear that ‘having come so far, we might be cheated of what we thought we had achieved’. Exactly a year after the referendum, this fear of being cheated is even stronger. Last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, came within an ace of saying in public that Britain must not leave the customs union, thereby undermining the negotiating position of the government in which

Toby Young Toby Young

The writers of the Guardian’s ‘Brexit Shorts’ have swallowed Project Fear

Earlier this week the Guardian launched ‘Brexit Shorts’, a series of monologues written by Britain’s ‘leading playwrights’ about the aftermath of the EU referendum. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘What fresh hell is this?’ But bear with me. Watching the first batch of these short films, which are on the Guardian website, isn’t complete purgatory. Not because they’re much good, obviously — although one is, and I’ll come to that in a moment. But because the reason these writers are so anxious about Brexit is due to their uncritical acceptance of Project Fear. Perhaps they’ll become a little less hysterical once they’ve been introduced to some solid facts. Take

Saturday

John Mills

It’s vital we act now to fix the ticking time bomb under our economy

The UK economy is not in good shape. We invest a lower proportion of our GDP every year than almost anyone else, which is the main reason why our productivity is almost static. We have deindustrialised to a point where we do not have nearly enough to sell abroad to pay for our imports. We have a chronic balance of payments problem financed by selling assets and borrowing from abroad. As a result, both as individuals and as a nation we are getting deeper and deeper into debt. What growth we have is driven by consumption, financed by asset inflation rather than by exports and investment. On almost every measure,

Friday

Ed West

13 things we have learnt about Britain since the EU Referendum

Happy Independence Day everyone (groan). One year on from that momentous day, here are 13 things we’ve learnt from the Brexit vote. Most people will take any argument that suits them. They will swap ideological clothing if needs be – note how many on the Left suddenly care deeply about the pound and the City, while many on the Right seem keen on huge economic risks. Most voters are ignorant. This applies to both sides, although on average Remainers are better educated. But as Dominic Cummings has pointed out, the average Remainer didn’t know that much about how the EU actually works; they just looked at Nigel Farage and knew

Thursday

The Spectator

Opening gambit

The unexpected outcome of the general election has led some to hope that a weakened government will be forced to pursue a ‘softer’ Brexit. They are right to think that the emphasis of the negotiation will have to change, but they use the wrong adjective. The choice before David Davis and his team as they start work in Brussels is not and never has been between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ Brexit; it is between an open Brexit and a closed Brexit. The former is one where Britain retains open trade with, and a high degree of free movement to and from, other EU countries — as well as taking fresh opportunities

Toby Young Toby Young

Panic of the playwrights

Earlier this week the Guardian launched ‘Brexit Shorts’, a series of monologues written by Britain’s ‘leading playwrights’ about the aftermath of the EU referendum. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘What fresh hell is this?’ But bear with me. Watching the first batch of these short films, which are on the Guardian website, isn’t complete purgatory. Not because they’re much good, obviously — although one is, and I’ll come to that in a moment. But because the reason these writers are so anxious about Brexit is due to their uncritical acceptance of Project Fear. Perhaps they’ll become a little less hysterical once they’ve been introduced to some solid facts. Take

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 22 June 2017

How much longer can it go on? Deaths caused by terrorism are always followed now by candlelit vigils, a minute’s silence, victims’ families/ government ministers/emergency services/clergy/imams all clustered together, walls of messages and flowers, flags at half-mast. Instinctively, I feel uneasy because the meaning of it all gradually suffers attrition, and also, perhaps, because it asserts a solidarity which isn’t quite there. Yet the fundamental cause of mourning is true and deep enough — it is first for the dead, then for a civilisation which may be dying. In these pages, on 4 February, Matthew Parris wrote that Brexiteers seemed very anxious, despite having won. He thought this was because

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The Tories are in office but not in power

This was a Queen’s Speech to fit the ‘sombre mood of the nation’, says the FT. ‘British politics is in a state of paralysis,’ and the government’s plan ‘was notable for what it lacked’, the paper says – pointing to the key manifesto pledges cast aside. It’s good news that some of these policies – such as a free vote on the hunting ban – are gone. But there’s further good news, too, in the form of Theresa May’s ‘belated recognition of the complexity of the Brexit process’, the FT says. Indeed, ‘Mrs May’s monopoly over the terms of Brexit has also been broken’ – with Philip Hammond among those now

Harry Mount

Boiling point

Bicycling up Regent Street in the intense June heat last week, I was cut up by a black cab driver. When I remonstrated with him, he leapt out of the cab and assaulted me, with a violent shove in the small of my back, trying to push me off my bike. It was the heat that did it. The driver wouldn’t have deserted his snug cab — and his passenger — if it had been raining. But, in the longest heatwave in more than a decade, he went stir-crazy in his confined space, as the black paint of his taxi absorbed mind-altering quantities of ultraviolet rays. He isn’t the only