Brexit

Monday

Nick Cohen

Brexit lies are opening up a terrifying new opportunity for the far-right in Britain

The Tory leaders of Vote Leave, those supposedly civilised and intelligent men, are creating the conditions for a mass far-right movement in England. They have lined up the ingredients like a poisoner mixing a potion, and I can almost feel the convulsion that will follow. They have treated the electorate like children. They pretended that they could cut or even stop immigration from the EU and have a growing economy too. No hard choices, they said. No costs or trade-offs. Now the Tory wing of the Brexit campaign, the friends of the City and big business, insists that we should remain part of the single market. So should you, if

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Coffee House shots: Tory turmoil, Jexit and Boris’ bid for No.10

As the spate of resignations from the Labour shadow cabinet continues this morning and the rival candidates in the race to replace David Cameron as Prime Minister step up their campaigns, politics shows no signs of slowing down today. Boris Johnson and Theresa May are the front runners in the upcoming Conservative leadership contest – but who will emerge on top? And amidst Tory turmoil, the crisis at the top of the Labour party continues this morning. On today’s edition of our Coffee House shots podcast, James Forsyth tells Isabel Hardman that: ‘One of the rules for politics at the moment is that however bad things are for the Conservatives

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The Brexit divide wasn’t between young and old, but Ponces and Non-Ponces

Ever since Friday’s Glorious Victory, one of the chief recreation activities of we Brexiters of a childish bent has been the Taunting Of The Remnants, mostly online. ‘How are you comforting yourself?’ one Facebook post asked. ‘In the usual way – with the tears of the vanquished,’ I replied. ONLY ONE LIKE! For self-proclaimed ‘progressives’, what a bunch of doom-mongering, curtain-twitching, tut-tutting stick-in-the-muds they’ve proved to be! For this Remnant Zombie Army, out to do in our brains with their bed-wetting ways and bleats for more referenda until they get the result they want, everything that goes wrong over the next few months – the weather, the football – will

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

No, Brexit wasn’t a defeat for humanist values – or for love

Perhaps the most important pundit to have emerged from the earthquake is Giles Fraser. As a left-wing vicar and longstanding anti-racism campaigner, he makes it harder for people to depict the Brexiters as closet racists. He disrupts the defeated Remainers’ assumption that they represent progressive values, humanism. The same applies to the handful of pro-Brexit Labour MPs, but MPs can be assumed to have murky motivations. On last night’s Question Time, Fraser quoted Galatians (one of the readings in churches yesterday): Love your neighbour as yourself. We need to get beyond our current divisions, and trust in this supra-political principle, he said. Contrast this with today’s offering from Zoe Willams,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

At least the howls of Remain cry-babies give us something to snigger at

A very good piece by Libby Purves on the petulance, whining and spite of our liberal elite. Libby got there before I did, annoyingly – and has some terrific examples in her column. I bought Saturday’s Guardian for the sole purpose of harvesting a bunch of tantrums from the letters page – and it did not disappoint. ‘Utterly ashamed to be English’ and ‘I’m moving to Scotland’ (good) and a hugely pompous encomium from an idiot called Michael Rundell, of Canterbury, about the ‘stupidity, mendacity and xenophobia’ of the Leave campaign. Long may they howl – these are somewhat fraught times and it’s nice to have something to snigger at.

Helen Nugent

Housing hyperbole: what’s next for house prices

Without wishing to add to the hyperbole over Brexit (from both sides), it’s fair to say that Britain is all over the place today. From the temporary suspension of trading in Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays shares and sterling’s continued slide against the dollar, to the slump in the return on government bonds and a profit warning from easyJet, the UK is beginning to digest its decision to leave the European Union. In the morass of doom and gloom was another profit warning, this time from Foxtons. The estate agent said concerns following the vote will depress London property sales and, in the first few minutes of trading, shares in the company dropped 18 per cent.

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

George Osborne ditches ‘Project Fear’ as he breaks his Brexit silence

George Osborne has turned his back on ‘Project Fear’ after finally breaking his Brexit silence. The aim of his speech this morning was all about reassuring the financial markets before they opened. To help him do that he reeled off a couple of sound bites about how Britain was open for business, how it ‘will not be plain sailing’ but that it was a good job we’d ‘fixed the roof’. The Chancellor also said that whilst this ‘is not the outcome I wanted or that I threw everything into campaigning for’, ‘the people have spoken’ and we must all accept that result. But what was more interesting was what wasn’t

Carola Binney Carola Binney

That Cameron is out while Juncker has stayed shows us just what’s wrong with the EU

According to Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, the Brexit vote was David Cameron’s fault: ‘If someone complains about Europe from Monday to Saturday then nobody is going to believe him on Sunday when he says he is a convinced European’, Juncker told the German newspaper Bild. Thursday’s vote brought with it the inevitable pressure on the leaders of the campaign for Britain to remain in the EU to resign: Cameron will be gone by October, as might Corbyn if the no confidence motion brought by two of his MPs succeeds. But there was also a sense of inevitability about three notable non-resignations: Juncker is remaining firmly in

Sunday

Steerpike

Sam Cam’s sister switches sides over Brexit – ‘how quickly can I join the Labour party?’

Ahead of the EU referendum, David Cameron’s sister-in-law declared that she would never vote Conservative again if Leave won. Now that Brexit is firmly on the agenda — and her brother-in-law set to stand down — Emily Sheffield is preparing to join the Labour party. Samantha Cameron’s sister has taken to Twitter to ask how quickly she can join, adding that she only ever voted Conservative for David: While this news doesn’t come as a huge surprise — given that she tweeted a Sadiq Khan campaign messages during the London mayoral election — it does beg the question of her sister’s voting preference. After all, back in 2010 Ed Vaizey claimed that Samantha ‘may have

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Reminder: the referendum was about leaving the EU, not blueprints for the future

It does seem to me that there’s been a misunderstanding about what, exactly, a referendum is about. It’s not a general election. It’s not about electing a party with a manifesto. It’s simply getting an answer to a specific question, in this case, whether to stay in or leave the EU. So when disgruntled Remainers complain that there is no blueprint for the future, no grand plan for the way ahead, no specifics about immigration reduction, no answers about getting access to the free trade area, all you can say is, that’s not what it was about, people. There was a coalition of disparate interests behind the Brexit side, from

Douglas Murray

Why is the government missing in action?

It is now almost three days since David Cameron announced his resignation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been in hiding ever since. And the Parliamentary Labour party is revolting against its own leader and members. It is one thing for the whole political class to be in disarray. It is quite another for the government to be missing in action. Obviously we are waiting for the Conservative party leadership contest to get going and swiftly resolve itself. But that will take months. In the meantime the country is still here. And a number of things need to happen fast. Since Mark Carney’s intervention early on Friday there has been

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The howl against democracy

There’s a delicious irony to Remainers’ branding of Leave voters as confused individuals who have simply made a desperate howling noise, whose anti-EU vote was a ‘howl of anger’ (Tim Farron) or a ‘howl of frustration’ (JK Rowling). Which is that if anyone’s been howling in recent days, it’s them, the top dogs of the Remain campaign. They are howling against the demos; raging against the people; fuming about a system that allows even that portly bloke at the end of your street who never darkened the door of a university to have a say on important political matters. That system we call democracy. In all the years I’ve been

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brexit won’t hand victory to the SNP. A unionists’ breakdown just might.

Over the last few years, Scots have had to get used to Nicola Sturgeon telling them what they think. When the SNP had its majority (one the voters stripped away in the recent Holyrood election) she was keen to present herself as the voice of the country: l’Ecosse, c’est moi. If the SNP wants X, then Scotland wants X. She’s at it again, saying that the UK has voted out of the European Union and Scotland has voted in – so the UK was voting ‘against the interests of the Scottish people’ and finally provided the provocation needed to launch a new referendum. In fact, two-in-five Scots – and even a

Nicola Sturgeon

The UK that Scotland voted to remain within ‘doesn’t exist anymore’

The First Minister gave an interview on Scotland’s position in the UK after Brexit on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. Here’s what she said: Andrew Marr: Can I ask first of all, is it your priority to have a negotiation as Scotland with Brussels to allow Scotland to more or less seamlessly stay inside the EU? Nicola Sturgeon: My short answer to that is yes, but let me perhaps expand on the position that I find myself in. Marr: Please do. Sturgeon: You know, the first thing I should say is that I didn’t want to be in this position this weekend. I hoped very much and campaigned to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why can’t we have an amicable divorce with the EU?

Just when you were beginning to wonder whether we have done the right thing, along comes Jean-Claude Juncker to remind you exactly why Britain voted for Brexit. It is ‘not going to be an amicable divorce’, he tells us. Why can’t it be amicable? We’ve decided that we’ve grown apart, not run off with the milkman. There’s no need to put the car keys down the drain and upload some naked photos onto the web. It isn’t so much Ukip who are exploiting the politics of hate; it is Juncker. In his desire for revenge he is demonstrating the contempt for democracy that has been the bane of European Commission

Saturday

James Forsyth

Jonathan Hill’s resignation is an act of gross irresponsibility

The UK’s EU Commissioner, Jonathan Hill, has resigned today saying that he couldn’t carry on as ‘though nothing had happened.’ This strikes me as an act of gross irresponsibility. Britain has not yet invoked Article 50, the two-year process for leaving the EU, and Hill staying on would have provided some continuity at a time of uncertainty. Supporters of his argue that his resignation was the honourable thing to do as Britain is no longer part of the team in Europe. It might have been right that Hill should have volunteered to move to another portfolio. But an outright resignation seems excessive and an over-reaction. Even Jean-Claude Juncker tried to persuade Hill to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Boris, Gove and the Brexit band of brothers run for No 10 together?

Westminster is still digesting what happened on Thursday night. But before Britain can turn itself to the big question of how to leave the EU, a new Prime Minister has to be chosen by the Tory party. Nearly every Tory MP I’ve spoken to since Friday morning is of the view that the new PM will have to be an Outer. They argue that the public would find it find odd to vote for Britain to leave, and then have a new PM chosen who was on the losing side in the referendum. There are, as I report in The Sun this morning, Cabinet Ministers who want Michael Gove to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Did referendum rage get the better of David Cameron?

I suspect a lot of people who voted out have mixed emotions this weekend, especially given how emotional the debate became. People on both sides did go a little bit mad. My Twitter feed reminded me of that Danny Boyle film 28 Days Later: you watch with horror as friend after friend (on either side of the debate) is infected with the Human Rage Virus. All of a sudden, it’s not possible to have friendly disagreements: you turn into The Enemy for them. And it’s not just a social media thing: there are still people, this weekend, afraid to tell their friends and family how they voted. Alex Massie’s piece warning

John Osullivan

Unlike the EU, Brexit isn’t a theory

In June 1975, I was given the heavy responsibility of writing the Telegraph’s ‘light’ op-ed on the conduct of the first Euro-referendum campaign, which duly appeared on the day of the vote. My theme was that it had been the nicest possible stitch-up. ‘From the establishment and the respectable anti-establishment, from the Economist and the New Statesman, from the Lord Feather [of the TUC] and Mr Campbell Adamson [of the CBI], from Mr Wilson and Mr Heath, from the Royal Commission Volunteers to “Actors and Actresses for Europe”, the same advice, the same dire predictions of life outside the Market…’ It rings loud bells today. ‘Mr Barrie Heath told the

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Brexit was a harsh political awakening for young people

Since Brexit became a reality early on Friday morning, my Facebook feed has been filled with mournful posts written by friends who voted Remain. Those who voted Leave seem to be staying quiet. This is understandable. Most of my friends are in their twenties. They tend to be educated and globalist in their outlook. They have enjoyed the freedom of movement that the EU offered them, and feel they have benefitted overall from Britain being a member. It is painful to see the comity of the EU suddenly stripped away, and I sympathise on many counts. The vote for Brexit will no doubt be a defining political moment for my age group.