Brexit

Thursday

Patrick O’Flynn

Today is an exciting and nerve-wracking day for Brexiteers

It’s tense for us Brexiteers, isn’t it? We know that if the Tories don’t secure a Commons majority today then our country probably won’t end up leaving the EU at all. Almost certainly, an alliance of pro-Remain parties would put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street. They would keep him there just long enough for Remain to win a low-turnout second referendum. Many Leave voters would boycott such a vote on the grounds of it being a stitch-up that offers a choice between actually staying in the EU and virtually staying in it, just without any political representation. So it is quite understandable that our nerves are frayed just now. But

Wednesday

Robert Peston

Four key questions that will decide who wins this election

In the end it probably comes down to four things, most of them momentous, about the power of the people, and the very structure of the country. First, this is your only chance to decide whether the UK leaves the EU at the end of January or whether you want a referendum next year that could reverse the result of the previous Brexit referendum. Second, if you are north of the border, this is an opportunity to signal whether you want another referendum on whether Scotland remains part of the UK. Third, if you believe that the power of the private sector has increased excessively since the 1980s, this is your chance

Tuesday

Claire Fox

Boris’s ‘oven-ready’ Brexit deal isn’t what all Leave voters want

Whatever the results on Thursday, there have been aspects of this election campaign not revealed by polling. My experience of speaking and campaigning in my MEP patch in the North West has been revelatory. I am in awe of a layer of new activists who have been inspired to want more fundamental change than that offered by the establishment parties. Many are new to politics, have found their voice and have discovered the power of being actively engaged. It reminds me of a far earlier experience of the miners’ strike, when miners’ wives groups sprang up nationally and formidable women started to take control.  It’s exhilarating to be with people for

Patrick West

What Ireland can teach Brexiteers about ‘taking back control’

The Brexit party and Conservatives have more in common than they might like to admit. Yet their similarities haven’t stopped the bickering, as Claire Fox argues on Coffee House this morning. On the one hand, we have a party which believes it more important to have some form of exit deal from the European Union. On the other, we have those who believe the UK should pursue total secession. The internecine warfare between soft and hard Brexiteers has been rehearsed many times, as immortalised in Monty Python’s Life of Brian with the feuding between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front. And the current clamour over which kind of

Monday

Bruce Anderson

Why I’m still convinced Boris will win a majority

Everyone seems agreed. Although the numbers may not have moved much, this election is still wide open. So anyone who tries to predict the outcome in the final days risks looking very stupid. Even so, I will take that risk. The campaign has been simultaneously tense and dull. There have been no dramatic errors: no real excitements. From the outset, the polls have not moved much, generally showing a Tory lead of between ten and fourteen per cent. So is that a clue to the likely outcome? The answer is probably ‘yes’, for a number of reasons. First, why should anyone who voted Tory in 2017 desert the party now? After all,

Saturday

James Forsyth

There are only two likely outcomes to this election

There are, as I say in the Sun this morning, two possible outcomes to this election: a Tory majority or a hung parliament. The seats where Labour are now concentrating their resources show that they don’t think they can win outright. Instead, their hopes rest on stopping Boris Johnson from getting to 326 seats. Right now, the Tories are on course for a majority. I understand that their own internal numbers indicate a working majority. But these margins are very fine, and victory could slip away if voters don’t turn out. If Boris Johnson does win a majority next week, it will be because he has presented himself as change.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Only Brexit voters can save Nigel Farage from himself now

Nigel Farage last painted himself into a corner at the end of the 2015 general election. Now he has done it again. And Farage’s only hope is that Brexit voters can save him from himself. In the lead-up to that election, Farage foolishly spiced up a serialisation of his autobiography by declaring it would be ‘curtains’ for him – and that he would quit as Ukip leader – if he failed to win in South Thanet. Of course, he didn’t win. And early the next day, Farage duly called a clifftop press conference to declare that, being a man of his word, he was indeed standing down as Ukip leader. The irony

Thursday

Robert Tombs

This election will change Britain – and Europe – for good

This election campaign feels unreal. Commentators focus on spending plans and personal foibles, but what will make next week’s vote historic is something else, something so momentous that we draw back from discussing it seriously. The Lib Dems boast of Stopping Brexit, knowing that as things are now they will never have to try. Jeremy Corbyn pleads neutrality: the first leader not sure which side he was on since poor Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses. The Conservatives, whose hopes of office depend entirely on this issue, downplay its importance: ‘Get Brexit Done,’ ministers repeat, as if it were a tiresome distraction from real politics. Perhaps it is,

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

I’m calling it: the Tories will win a majority

It’s time to stick my neck out. What follows is anecdotal and my hunches have often been wrong. But I think that though Boris Johnson will get his overall majority, Tory strategists’ hopes of surfing a tidal wave of new support from ‘tribal’ Labour voters in the English Midlands and the North will not be fulfilled. Mr Johnson will win this time, but there will be no substantial and enduring shift northwards of Tory support. I live in the north Midlands. The two closest constituencies to that (safe) Conservative seat of Derbyshire Dales neatly fit the description political pundits offer of the sometimes struggling Midlands and northern seats where Johnson’s

Tuesday

Patrick O’Flynn

Nish Kumar and the anti-Brexit comedy club

When I was interviewed a long time ago for admission to one of our ancient universities, a don used the phrase “the maintained sector” to describe my educational background. He meant that I was a state school lad and I suppose his implication was that independent schools were somehow more free-thinking, reliable bastions of excellence. At the time I could only see the other side of that particular argument, but the phrase has come to mind again now in a different context. The disastrous reception given to comedian Nish Kumar at yesterday’s Lord’s Taverners’ lunch is a sign that the maintained sector of British comedy has fallen victim to lazy groupthink

Friday

James Kirkup

Boris’s ‘Buy British’ plan shows how Brexit has changed the Tories

Where to start with the Conservatives’ “Buy British” promises to end EU state aid rules? The obvious point is that dumping rules that prevent governments subsidising domestic firms will make it much harder to strike a trade deal with the EU after Brexit. Limiting state aid is pretty much fundamental to the EU’s very existence and operations; arguably the story of the EU since the late 1980s is a story of trying to drag European politicians away from protecting favoured sectors and firms and opening their economies up to cross-border competition. Of course, that story isn’t much told in the UK where, thanks not least to the sort of journalism

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

When Brexiter meets Catalexiter

After the hostel breakfast, I stood on the tropical grass lawn smoking the first fag of the day and mulled things over. For the past three days I had been pedalling my electric power-assisted bike up and down Rwanda’s green hills. I was bruised from falls, physically and mentally tired, and prone, as I always am in Africa, to mood swings. Today I was not depressed exactly but overwhelmed with pessimism. Now, after breakfast, for example, the conviction struck me that before my mother died I thought I knew everything, and since her death I’ve realised that I don’t know anything. Lying on the grass a few yards away was

Wednesday

Yosef David

My plan to boot Jeremy Corbyn out of Parliament

For the first time in living memory, the Jewish community is deeply afraid of one of our two main parties. What makes matters worse is that this is the very party that, until recently, had felt like a natural home for many in the Jewish community. Labour is a party that is supposed to protect the interests of workers, ensure care and dignity for the vulnerable and advocate for marginalised groups. What has become clear is that the Labour party no longer considers that Jewish people require this support. And this is why I am standing against Jeremy Corbyn in Islington north. There is a left-wing idea that power structures must

Sunday

Steerpike

Watch: Angela Rayner continues Labour’s Brexit confusion

Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner took to the Andrew Marr Show this morning to discuss her party’s Brexit position. The veteran BBC interviewer questioned Ms Rayner on whether her party would campaign for their newly renegotiated Brexit deal if a future Labour government was to put it to the people. The Labour frontbencher decided to dodge the question, calling it a ‘hypothetical’. Is the party now rowing back on Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to stay neutral during any future referendum? A clip from the discussion can be found here:

Saturday

Matthew Lynn

Chaos and capital controls: the first 100 days of PM Corbyn

The morning of 13 December. A series of salacious revelations about his private life have sunk Boris Johnson’s campaign. A re-energised Nigel Farage has led a Brexit party surge in the north, splitting the Leave vote. The ousting of Jo Swinson in a coup organised by refugees from the People’s Vote campaign led to Remainers flocking back to Labour. The SNP has swept Scotland. Plaid Cymru and the Greens have picked up a dozen seats where they co-operated. And a couple of Tory rebels have managed to hang on as independents. After the dust settled on the most chaotic election campaign in memory, Jeremy Corbyn had just enough votes to

Thursday

Alastair Campbell

How a PR guru hijacked the People’s Vote campaign

I have enough self-awareness to know that the public are unlikely to care too much about a spat between a multi-millionaire ‘PR guru’ and what someone called a cabal of washed-up spin doctors. But I also know that millions and millions care about Brexit, and the fight for a Final Say referendum — which is why the spat matters. The multi-millionaire ‘PR guru’ is Finsbury boss Roland Rudd, brother of the former cabinet minister Amber. The has-been spin doctors are me and Peter Mandelson, Tom Baldwin, who was a press adviser to Ed Miliband, and James McGrory, who did likewise for Nick Clegg. If you have never heard of McGrory

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Remain’s last stand: the collapse of the anti-Brexit campaign

Ever since the referendum, the two strongest political forces in Britain have been Leave and Remain. Loyalty to political parties has faded, but feelings about the referendum result are almost stronger now than they were on 23 June 2016. For Remainers, these are tense times: for years, there has been the hope of a second referendum and stopping Brexit. But if the Tories win a majority next month, then the UK will leave the European Union on 31 January and our future relationship with the EU will be negotiated by the man who led the Leave campaign. By the time of the next general election, Brexit will be a settled

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Jeremy Corbyn- There will be a great deal of movement

Jeremy Corbyn – ‘I want a close relationship’ with the EU The Labour leader was Andrew Marr’s chief guest of the day. Marr began by asking for Corbyn’s personal stance on Brexit, something which has proved highly elusive since the referendum result in 2016. Corbyn happily gave the Labour party’s position, but once again refused to be drawn on the issue:   AM: Do you want this country to leave the EU or not? JC: We’re going to put that choice to the British people, and they will make that decision… I want a close relationship with the EU in the future. ‘You don’t know’ who I’m going to negotiate with If

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn refuses five times to answer Brexit question

On the Marr show this morning, Jeremy Corbyn was asked – and refused to say – five times whether he would campaign for Leave or Remain in a second referendum. Referring to himself in the third person, Corbyn said the only thing Corbyn could reveal was that we would have a close trading relationship with the EU. Mr S. says that Mr S. thinks this is a bit of a cop out. Here is a clip of part of the discussion: Andrew Marr: If you become prime minister, when you become prime minister, do you want this country to leave the EU or not? Jeremy Corbyn: We’re going to put

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The Troubles with Brexit

At times, it can be hard to avoid the preachy style of reviewing that talks to readers in the tone of a teacher ordering you to eat your greens. This, I’m afraid, is one of them. If you know what’s good for you, watch Spotlight on the Troubles: A Secret History on BBC iPlayer and wonder, not only at the quality of the journalism, but about what Brexit will do to Ireland and Britain. It is an education and not just for the ignorant. For me and those like me who thought they knew a little Irish history, it shows we knew next to nothing. The 30-year war and the