brexit Archives

Tuesday

24 Jan 2017

What the Supreme Court got right and wrong in today’s judgment

The Supreme Court has today rejected the Government’s appeal from the High Court judgment by a majority of eight justices to three. The decision means that a new Act of Parliament will now be required before the Government may lawfully trigger Article 50. However, the Court has also unanimously dismissed the devolution challenges, which argued that the consent of the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was a constitutional precondition to Brexit. The judgment is obviously important, but perhaps less important than once assumed. The litigation was launched immediately after the referendum. While it was framed as an attempt to vindicate parliamentary sovereignty, the point of the litigation

Tom Bill

Don’t blame Brexit: the vote to leave the EU has had little effect on the housing market

As a former property journalist I understand why the media uses Brexit to explain the performance of the UK housing market. Or even, at a stretch, Donald Trump. House prices are a national obsession, but a Brexit headline gives the story an extra dimension. Coverage of all three subjects is likely to intensify in 2017, as this morning’s Article 50 verdict reminded us, so it seems like an appropriate moment to examine how close the links are between house prices, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union and the new US President. First, let’s look at prime central London (PCL), where you would expect the biggest impact to be

Fraser Nelson

Nicola Sturgeon’s Brexit charade continues

With the predictability of an atomic clock, Nicola Sturgeon has come out today condemning the Supreme Court which has reminded her that foreign affairs are not devolved, so Brexit is handled by the UK government on behalf of everyone in the UK. She concludes that ‘Scotland’s voice is not being heard and not being listened to within the UK’. She started wanting to find a compromise about Brexit, she said, trying to be reasonable. But she – or, rather Scotland because they are of course the same thing – faces ‘hard-right Brexit opinion’. Nicola Sturgeon on the UK Government not having to consult the Scottish Government before triggering Article 50. https://t.co/pfqV2e3r2F pic.twitter.com/JX6OFPyxfX —

Isabel Hardman

How ‘straightforward’ can the Government’s Brexit bill actually be?

The Government may be accepting its defeat in the Supreme Court graciously overall, but David Davis was in a rather dismissive mood when he responded to Labour’s questions about the ruling in the House of Commons this afternoon. The Brexit Secretary gave a statement to the House explaining that ministers would publish ‘within days’ a bill that would give the Government the legal power to trigger Article 50. Both in the statement and in his responses to questions about it, he repeatedly told the Chamber that it would be a ‘straightforward’ bill. Meanwhile the Government had already offered MPs plenty of scrutiny of the Brexit negotiations, and the Prime Minister had

Isabel Hardman

The mental gymnastics of the Brexit debate

What a lot of contortions we are seeing this morning from so many quarters about the Article 50 ruling. Brexiteers such as Iain Duncan Smith are cross with the Supreme Court for ruling that Parliament must have a say on triggering the process for Brexit, with the former Tory leader telling the BBC this morning that the judgement raised ‘real constitutional issues’: ‘They have stepped into new territory here, where they have actually told parliament not just that they should do something, but actually what they should do. I think that leads further down the road to real constitutional issues about who is supreme in this role.’ There is something

Saturday

21 Jan 2017

James Forsyth

What does President Trump do to Brexit?

With Theresa May expected to head to Washington next week to see President Trump, I have a look at what the Trump presidency might mean for Brexit in my Sun column this morning. Despite his protectionist rhetoric, on full show again yesterday, Donald Trump is keen on a US / UK trade agreement. He has told people that he would like to get personally involved in negotiating the deal. I understand that his transition team has done more work on it than they have for any other agreement. Squaring the circle between Trump’s protectionist rhetoric and his enthusiasm for a US / UK deal isn’t as hard as it first looks.

Friday

20 Jan 2017

Steerpike

Watch: Emily Thornberry’s opposition blues on Question Time

On Thursday, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet found themselves in disarray after the Labour leader suggested he would issue a three-line whip for MPs to vote to trigger Article 50. This upset many in his party as they had hoped he would make Labour’s consent — at the very least — conditional upon certain details being revealed or caveats regarding Britain’s possible future as a tax haven. So, with that in mind, brains at Labour decided the best plan of action was to send Emily Thornberry on Question Time to field questions on the matter. Alas the shadow foreign secretary soon found herself under fire from all sides as Chris Grayling took issue with

Thursday

19 Jan 2017

The Spectator

Letters | 19 January 2017

Particle of faith Sir: Fraser Nelson draws our attention to the most worrying aspect of economists getting it wrong, which is their reluctance to recognise it (‘Don’t ask the experts’, 14 January). Some economists, seduced by sophisticated mathematical models, aspire to the status of, say, particle physicists, who can tell us they have found something called the Higgs boson. The fact that we tend to believe the particle physicists despite being more familiar with prices, jobs and buying and selling than with quantum equations comes down to physicists having a long track record of heeding the biologist E.O. Wilson’s advice: ‘Keep in mind that new ideas are commonplace, and almost

The Spectator

Doing Brexit right

From the start of the European Union referendum campaign, competing visions of Brexit have been advocated. To Nigel Farage, the case for leaving the European Union was all about what we did not like (the diktats, the immigration, etc). This played into the caricature cleverly presented by the Remain campaign: the shaking fist of Little England, a country that had had enough of foreigners and the tolerance that the European project represented. Then came the vision put to Britain by the Vote Leave campaign, articulated by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was of a globally minded Britain, fed up with the EU’s parochialism. A country itching to go out

Michael Gove

Diary – 19 January 2017

Donald Trump was gushing about one European leader in his Times interview this week. But it was the wrong one. The President-elect told me that he was delighted that he’d been congratulated on his election by the ‘very fine gentleman’ who was the ‘head of the European Union’. ‘Mr Juncker?’ I ventured. ‘Ah, yes,’ he replied. Inaccurately as it turns out. For the European president who’d rung to congratulate the American president-elect was not the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, but the European Council president Donald Tusk. Many of my colleagues will, I’m sure, regard Mr Trump’s error as proof of the folly of electing an unschooled barbarian to the

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 January 2017

It is hard to be shocked by anything in these tumultuous times, but I was brought up short by the ‘attic’ headline of Tuesday’s Times, advertising the paper’s T2 section: ‘Up close and personal with Donald Trump — Michael Gove’ , it said, and continued, ‘Sex after 50: it’s fabulous’.. The earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous offered their famous Twelve Steps, which the drunkard must take in order to recover, born of their own experience. The Twelve Steps are still the foundation of AA. They work because they are taken by people who have hit rock bottom and realise it. The first step says, ‘We admitted we were powerless over

Isabel Hardman

The irony of Corbyn’s three-line whip

Jeremy Corbyn is a famous rebel, so famous that when he was elected, many in his party wondered how he might tell MPs to vote the way he wanted them to when he himself had refused to listen to the whips throughout his backbench career. When he was still a backbencher, he enjoyed telling a tale about Sadiq Khan, then his whip, ringing him up to check he would definitely be rebelling on a certain vote, and not bothering to waste his energy trying to get him to abstain instead. Now the Labour leader is faced with one of those awkward moments that involve him telling his MPs to vote

Brendan O’Neill

Voting ‘leave’ meant leaving the single market – and most voters knew it

The angrier, snootier sections of the Remain camp have done many bad things since 23 June. Some have suggested Brexit should be overthrown. Others have issued terrible libels against Leave voters, branding them ‘low information’ and xenophobic. Witness Nick Clegg in this Guardian video published this week having a good old laugh at Sheffield people who voted for Brexit after apparently falling for the ‘emotionally pungent’ claims of Leave leaders. But worst of all has been their sly rewriting of history. They’re engaged in a campaign to misremember the referendum, to depict it as a time of lies and idiocy, of racism unleashed. They’ve cranked up the memory holes, sharpened

Nick Hilton

The Spectator podcast: You’re fired!

On this week’s episode, we discuss the winners and losers as Trump moves into the White House, where Theresa May’s Brexit strategy is headed, and whether you can wear fur so long as the animal died in a snowstorm. First, the world’s media is currently congregated in Washington for the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. But what will happen when Trump swears the oath of office, and what will it mean for the UK and the rest of Europe? We had a peek behind the curtain this week, thanks to The Times’s intrepid reporter Michael Gove, but whilst we wait for the full reveal, we

Theresa May

Theresa May’s Davos speech – full text

This is an organisation that is, as it says in the very first line of your Mission Statement, committed to “improving the state of the world”. Those of us who meet here are all – by instinct and outlook – optimists who believe in the power of public and private cooperation to make the world of tomorrow better than the world of today. And we are all united in our belief that that world will be built on the foundations of free trade, partnership and globalisation. Yet beyond the confines of this hall, those forces for good that we so often take for granted are being called into question. The

Liam Halligan

Ireland will have the hardest Brexit of all

Irish eyes aren’t smiling – when it comes to Brexit. As one who hails from the Emerald Isle, I’ve taken plenty of ‘schtick’ from Irish diplomats, relatives and pundits after publicly voting to leave. For the Republic of Ireland, European Union membership carries deep political significance. Joining in 1973, along with the UK but on equal terms, was hugely symbolic. A country then less than 30 years old was finally able to represent itself on the world stage. It is this escape from British dominance, more than Brussels-funded motorways, that makes EU membership central to modern Ireland’s identity. Liam Halligan and James Forsyth discuss Theresa May’s Brexit plans: That’s why

James Forsyth

May has taken back control

‘No negotiation without notification’ has been the EU’s mantra since 24 June last year. Its leaders have been determined that there’ll be no talks before Britain has formally submitted its Article 50 letter, starting the two-year countdown to this country leaving the union. Even now, after Theresa May has set out her Brexit plans with a decent amount of detail, the EU is sticking to this line. Why? Because it wants Britain to be negotiating against the clock. Despite this, there have been informal conversations over the past six months that have helped forge the Brexit strategy that May set out on Tuesday. EU leaders’ insistence that they won’t compromise

Freddy Gray

A renewed special relationship

Freddy Gray, Paul Wood and Kate Andrews discuss Trump’s arrival at the White House: As president, Barack Obama was too cool for the special relationship. The romantic bond between the United States and Great Britain, which always makes Churchill fans go all soggy-eyed, left him cold. Obama was more interested in globalism, ‘pivoting’ to Asia and the European Union. Donald J. Trump is a very different creature. The new US President seems to cherish Great Britain, whereas the EU annoys him. Brexit is beautiful, he believes — and the EU is falling apart. Trump may or may not know the name of the British Prime Minister but, as he

Wednesday

18 Jan 2017

Charles Moore

Theresa May’s Twelve Steps for EU recovery

The earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous offered their famous Twelve Steps, which the drunkard must take in order to recover, born of their own experience. The Twelve Steps are still the foundation of AA. They work because they are taken by people who have hit rock bottom and realise it. The first step says, ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.’ Theresa May’s Twelve Objectives, announced in her outstanding speech at Lancaster House of Tuesday, play a similar role for national recovery, substituting the words ‘European Union’ for ‘alcohol’. Until the June referendum, Mrs May, like millions of others, barely even admitted there

Steerpike

SNP MP’s fake news

Although Theresa May’s speech revealing her plan for a global Britain was well-received by her party and much of the media yesterday, the SNP found much cause for concern. While Nicola Sturgeon has said May’s announcement that the UK will leave the single market makes a second independence referendum more likely, Paul Monaghan has a different interpretation. The SNP MP has tweeted out what Theresa May has said ‘in her own words’ a hard Brexit would mean. It comes with a quote — attributed to May — claiming: ‘Yes, things will cost more. Yes, you’ll have to retire later. Yes, our standing in the world will decline.’ Only May said