Brexit

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The shifting Tory dynamics behind the party’s Brexit deal dilemma

It is not currently looking hopeful that Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal will pass in the Commons. The Prime Minister will need to convince a good number of Labour MPs and independents in order to get over his lack of a majority and the DUP’s current refusal to support the government. There are also a number of internal Tory dynamics at play here. The European Research Group has not yet announced its official position on Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, but already there is a strong chance it could diverge from the DUP. The Brexiteer group was split at the third vote on Theresa May’s deal, with dozens of its members voting

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jean-Claude Juncker loses his temper

It looks as though it is all getting a bit too much for Jean-Claude Juncker. The EU Commission president snapped at Channel 4 News’s Matt Frei for asking him a question. ‘I’m speaking,’ Juncker yelled when he was quizzed on ruling out another extension. Oh dear.

Steerpike Steerpike

Five ways in which Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal is better than Theresa May’s

Boris Johnson managed to defy his critics today and reach a Brexit deal with the European Union. The new agreement updates the Northern Ireland protocol of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration, which deals with the future relationship. But while the rest of the deal appears to be unchanged, Boris has succeeded in winning some key concessions from the EU. Here are five reasons why Boris’s deal is better than May’s: 1. The backstop is gone Firstly, the backstop that Theresa May negotiated with the EU has been replaced by a new Northern Ireland Protocol and the UK-wide Customs Union in the backstop has been removed completely. Northern

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Nigel Farage’s withering verdict on Boris’s Brexit deal

‘Well, it’s just not Brexit’. That’s Nigel Farage’s withering verdict on Boris Johnson’s revised deal with the EU. The Brexit party leader waited all of an hour before telling the BBC that the new agreement was not up to scratch: ‘It should be rejected. The best way out of this would simply (be) to have a clean break’. This doesn’t look good for Boris but Farage’s reaction is, of course, predictable. The real test now will be whether Brexit party voters stick with Farage or decide to give Boris Johnson the benefit of the doubt…

Steerpike Steerpike

Six MPs who doubted Boris Johnson would do a Brexit deal

Boris Johnson has got a new Brexit deal. It’s true that the Prime Minister has some way to go if he is to get the agreement over the line, not least in trying to persuade the DUP to back it. But Mr S remembers a time not too long ago when plenty were claiming the PM wouldn’t – and didn’t even want to – get this far. Here are six MPs who claimed Boris Johnson was never serious about reaching a new agreement with the EU: Philip Hammond The former chancellor claimed last month that Boris Johnson was surrounded by ‘radicals’ who had no intention of doing a deal. On the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The EU might tell MPs: it’s this deal or no deal

Both the UK government and the EU are now saying that a Brexit deal has been done. There is both a revised withdrawal agreement and political declaration.  However, the DUP are not yet on board. This makes it very hard to see how this deal can pass the Commons. At Cabinet yesterday, Chief Whip Mark Spencer went through the numbers and his calculations suggested a majority of one. His assumption was that every Tory MP who still has the whip would back it, as would 15 of the 21 Tory rebels and the DUP. The government could also rely on the support of the nine Labour or independent MPs who

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A Brexit deal will completely change the electoral landscape

Expect the unexpected has been the rule in British politics these last few years. But even so, few would have predicted the events of the past week. Last Tuesday evening the Brexit talks seemed dead. Even the most mild-mannered figures in Downing Street held out little hope of a deal this side of an election. That all began to shift, though, after Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar met last Thursday. What changed was that they both realised that the other was serious about a deal. They stopped seeing each other’s proposals as a trap and began engaging with them. This doesn’t guarantee a deal, though. Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar’s

Wednesday

Sheila Lawlor

Boris Johnson must still keep no deal firmly in his mind

The Irish backstop and the arrangements to replace it are now the focus of the eleventh-hour Brexit talks. Their importance is not because of Ireland, but because of the battle for the UK’s constitutional freedom to decide the laws that govern this country’s economy and trade. Will the UK’s economic system break free of EU law allowing both an independent trade policy and the UK’s laws to diverge from the EU’s? ‘That is the point of our exit,’ as Boris Johnson told Donald Tusk in August. Or will there be continued subjugation or an eventual UK return to the bloc? All depends on whether Boris Johnson’s government, unlike Theresa May’s,

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris is going to have to delay Brexit

This I think is important. There may be an agreement between Brussels and London negotiators on a deal. But no detailed text has yet been shared with the 27 EU leaders and their respective governments – so, it looks way too late for EU leaders to endorse a formal Brexit deal with Boris Johnson at the EU Council tomorrow and Friday. Which means the best the UK PM can hope for is a political discussion that sends out a positive message on the prospects for a deal. Which in turn means that MPs cannot vote on a deal this Saturday, there can be no meaningful vote. Which in turn means

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds hold the key to a Brexit deal

Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds are currently the two most important politicians on the European continent. If the DUP is happy, there’ll be a Brexit deal between the UK and the EU. If it is not, it is hard to see how there can be—it is almost impossible to see how an agreement that they are opposed to can pass the Commons. At the moment, the DUP have not said they are happy. I understand that there was some movement from the Irish on consent this morning. But that softening hasn’t yet been enough to win around the DUP. They would like something that would enable them to say that

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Mark Francois rebukes ‘stop Brexit’ protester

We’re still waiting to hear what Mark Francois – and the rest of the ERG – make of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. But while Westminster waits with bated breath, Francois has delivered a withering verdict on SW1’s noisiest inhabitant: the ‘stop Brexit’ protester. Francois was about to give his answer during an interview on the BBC only to be loudly interrupted with yells of ‘stop Brexit’ and ‘revoke Article 50’. The Tory MP’s response? ‘If we leave it will be delightful that this idiot will shut up’. Mr S isn’t so sure that will happen…

Ross Clark Ross Clark

‘Remain or Leave?’ is no longer the key Brexit question

In an astonishing interview on the Today programme this morning, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson tried to explain why she was tabling an amendment which would force a referendum on any deal the government presents to the House of Commons on the grounds that we should ‘let the people decide’. She then asserted that the country had changed its mind since the 2016 referendum and now wanted to remain. It had to be pointed out to her that her party has, in fact, just adopted a policy of reversing Article 50 without a referendum – so much for letting the people decide. The truth is that like so many Remain

Tom Slater Tom Slater

What Extinction Rebellion and the People’s Vote campaign have in common

Extinction Rebellion (XR) has announced it will finish its ‘Autumn Uprising’ earlier than planned in order to make way for the People’s Vote march on Saturday. The two groups have been in informal discussions for some time aimed at avoiding getting in one another’s way, according to a report in the Times. Even if the Metropolitan Police’s draconian city-wide ban on XR may have made such a deal unnecessary, it reminds us how much the groups have in common. It’s not exactly a stretch to say these two predominantly bourgeois movements may have some crossover in support. Talking to the Times, People’s Vote comms chief Tom Baldwin said: ‘I don’t

Tuesday

Dominic Walsh

The EU’s Brexit unicorns

The Brexit talks are at a critical stage as we approach this week’s European Council summit. The rumoured landing zone for a deal – essentially a version of the ‘Chequers’ proposals for customs, but applied to Northern Ireland only – is promising. But to get there, both sides will need to compromise – and that applies to the EU as much as it does to the UK. In the Brexit debate, both politicians and governments in the UK are routinely accused of putting forward ‘unrealistic’ or ‘non-negotiable’ proposals. The word ‘unicorn’ is thrown around and often, the criticism is fair. Simplistic demands from UK politicians to ‘simply take out the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Nicola Sturgeon’s Brexit bounce

There was a fairytale quality to Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the SNP conference this afternoon. On the one hand, she demanded a second referendum on independence next year; on the other, almost no-one in Scottish politics really believes there will be a referendum next year. In tandem with this rallying call for national liberation – an emancipation made ever more urgent by the looming Brexit fiasco – there ran another line of argument: conference delegates, like the wider nationalist movement, must be careful and canny and patient. Which is another way of saying that, whatever the headlines suggest, it’s probably not happening. At least not yet. For the last few

Toby Young Toby Young

Is hate crime really on the rise?

The Guardian ran a story on its website today headlined: ‘Hate crimes doubled in England and Wales in five years.’ Alarming if true, but is it? The story is based on some data released by the Home Office today which, on the face of it, does appear to show the number of hate crimes increasing. The number of hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2018-19 was 103,397, up from 94,121 in 2017-18, a rise of ten per cent. But drill down into the report, and the picture becomes more hazy. The word doing most of the work here is ‘recorded’. Yes, the number of recorded

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Emily Thornberry accused of sexism for Commons jibe

Emily Thornberry has had a busy day in the Commons. Labour’s shadow foreign secretary heckled her counterpart Dominic Raab this morning after he claimed Jeremy Corbyn wanted Britain to withdraw from Nato. Now, she’s been at it again: apparently yelling the word ‘bollocks’ at international development secretary Alok Sharma during a testy exchange. John Bercow then stepped in to calm things down. Only for Tory MP Hugo Swire to accuse Thornberry of being sexist. Mr S wonders whether Boris Johnson might have been right to prorogue parliament after all…

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

A People’s Vote is no substitute for an effective opposition

Sympathetic journalists covering the Remain movement are stuck by how far away it is from the ugliness of politics. Its activists are, to use a word that damns with faint praise, ‘nice’. It is better to be nice than vicious, of course. It is better to be nice than mendacious and unscrupulous and so criminally irresponsible you would burn down the whole country rather than admit to a mistake. But, we liberal reporters flinch at the sight of all the niceness. The nice never win a war, we think. Nice gets you nowhere in modern Britain. When we ask how they will deal with thugs and manipulators of the calibre

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris Johnson’s humiliating Brexit options

We should know on Wednesday night whether Boris Johnson has his Brexit deal proper, or whether he has an outline deal that will require a few more weeks of technical talks, or whether the gap is unbridgeable. Why? Because Donald Tusk has made it clear there will be no serious negotiations at the EU council itself on Thursday and Friday, just a rubber stamping exercise. But Johnson knows that if he wants an actual deal this week, he’ll have to sign up to something very like a Northern Ireland-only backstop, which would represent a massive eating of humble pie – not cake – for him. It would also be hard

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

Sadiq Khan’s selective concern about ‘voter suppression’

Sadiq Khan has got some front. He is complaining about the government’s voter ID plans, claiming it will lead to ‘voter suppression’. And yet he is engaged in the most explicit and awful act of voter suppression in the living memory of this country — the elitist effort to suppress the votes of the 17.4m people who backed Brexit. Sometimes you wonder if the Remain-leaning elites can even hear themselves. These people have spent almost three years agitating against the largest democratic vote in UK history. Some of them want the vote to be revoked entirely (the ‘Liberal’ ‘Democrats’) while others, like Sadiq, want a second referendum to override the