brexit Archives

Thursday

17 Jan 2019

Brexiteers are destroying their own dream

Are some Brexiteers addicted to disappointment and frustration? Do they so crave the righteous indignation that flows from being thwarted that they are actively trying to sabotage their own project? How else to explain the extraordinary strategic incompetence of Tory MPs who say they want Britain to leave the EU yet behave in a way that makes it increasingly likely that Britain will not do so? Brexit-backing readers may well dismiss my thoughts on Brexiteer strategy because I am, of course, a dreadful Remainer. More accurately, I voted to remain and I believe that leaving the EU will give the UK a range of possible futures that are less economically

James Forsyth

How long can Corbyn hold out against a second referendum?

Jeremy Corbyn is no enthusiast for a second referendum. He wants to, as his speech today suggested, hold further motions of no confidence in the government to try and force an election rather than have to decide on what other option he is going to support. But having tried and failed in one confidence motion, this is a more difficult position for him to maintain. Vince Cable has now said that Corbyn can’t rely on Lib Dem support in future confidence motions and has suggested that other opposition parties will soon take the same view. The aim of this tactic, to make clear that Labour can’t force a general election

Michael Gove

Transcript: Michael Gove’s barnstorming speech in no-confidence debate

In the no-confidence motion today, Michael Gove gave one of the best speeches of his parliamentary career, praising Labour moderates and launching an excoriating attack on Jeremy Corbyn. Here’s an edited transcript. [This] has been a passionate debate characterised by many excellent speeches. Perhaps the bravest and the finest speech that came from the opposition benches was given by the member for Barrow-in-Furness. It takes courage – and he has it. Having been elected on a Labour mandate representing working class people to say that the leader of the party that you joined as a boy is not fit to be prime minister: he speaks for the country. And that

James Forsyth

The rebel alliance

Straight after the government’s epic defeat in the House of Commons on Tuesday night, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, the Business Secretary, Greg Clark, and the Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, held a conference call with business leaders to try to reassure them. The principal worry was about ‘no deal’. The Chancellor’s message of comfort was revealing of where power has shifted to. He emphasised how backbenchers are manoeuvring to stop no deal. In other words, they needn’t take his word that it wasn’t going to happen; they should take parliament’s. It was an admission that the government is no longer in control of Brexit. Further evidence of this power shift came

Martin Vander Weyer

Darkness looms as distracted ministers fail to address the widening energy gap

Transfixed as you were by Westminster chaos, did you also spot the news that Hitachi is about to cancel or suspend construction of the Wylfa nuclear power station in North Wales? The Japanese engineering giant has evidently failed to reach agreement on a guaranteed electricity price and terms for a UK government stake in the project; its decision follows that of its compatriot Toshiba, which in November pulled out of building a nuclear station at Moorside in Cumbria, largely because it disliked the Treasury’s favoured financing model that loads risk on to the contractor. These two projects between them were intended to keep the lights on in 11 million UK

Matthew Parris

Leavers don’t actually want to leave

When intelligent, informed and rational people make a choice that onlookers can see confounds their own declared interests, we are wise to look to psychiatry for an explanation. This is where my thoughts turn, now that Tory Brexiteers have conspired to block Theresa May’s road from Chequers to the deal the Commons so spectacularly rejected this week. Until the last minute, I hesitated to accept the Tories’ European Research Group would join this rebellion. Cautiously I inserted ‘probably’, ‘by all accounts’ and ‘apparently’ into every column I drafted. That hardline Brexiteers would in the end want to kill the Prime Minister’s deal didn’t make sense. We Remainers have been unable

Wednesday

16 Jan 2019

Isabel Hardman

Why did Theresa May bother giving a statement in Downing Street tonight?

Theresa May has just given a statement in Downing Street in which she apparently said absolutely nothing. The Prime Minister walked out to the lectern outside No.10 and offered the sort of update on her diary that is normally sent out by email from the Downing Street press office. She said that she had held talks this evening ‘with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and the Westminster leaders of the SNP and Plaid Cymru’, adding that ‘I am disappointed that the leader of the Labour Party has not so far chosen to take part’. After a day of complaining that the Prime Minister hadn’t yet picked up the phone

Steerpike

Watch: ‘Shame on you’: Labour MPs shout down Michael Gove

Michael Gove ended the no confidence debate in the Commons by denouncing Jeremy Corbyn. But perhaps unsurprisingly his criticism of the Labour leader did not go down well with those on the opposite benches. His comments about Corbyn were shouted down by Labour MPs, who yelled ‘shame on you’. Here’s what Gove said to rile them up: ‘If the leader of the opposition won’t stand up against Putin when he attacks people in this country…if he will not stand up for this country when the critical national security questions are being asked, how can we possibly expect him to stand up for us in European negotiations?’ Mr S thinks Gove

Robert Peston

The impossible choice Theresa May now faces to get her Brexit deal through

What can we expect from the prime minister’s decision to speak with senior parliamentarians to gauge the kind of Brexit deal, if any, that might get through the Commons? I have been talking with members of the cabinet and those close to her – and they are divided on whether this is a genuine attempt to find a workable consensus or simply more Micawberish delay in the hope that unknown events will bail her and her government out. First things first. In the motion the PM will lay before the House, probably on Monday as she is obliged to do under the Grieve Amendment, don’t hold your breath for a

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn’s incompetence remains a reassuring certainty

It looked exciting on paper. A massive defeat for the government. Their flagship policy not just sunk but blown to smithereens. And a Prime Minister facing a no-confidence motion for the first time since Sunny Jim Callaghan was unseated in 1979 by Margaret Thatcher. And yet PMQs lacked sparkle. The mood was footsore, hungover, whimpering with fatigue. A historic day felt entirely unhistoric. Everyone wanted a break. May, her throat hoarse, looked knackered and bored, like Mick Jagger at the fag-end of a world tour. She gasped out some of her answers without grammatical ornaments. When Robert Goodwill sought her congratulations for a Scarborough firm that flogs fertiliser to China, she managed

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn gives May an easy ride at Prime Minister’s Questions

Jeremy Corbyn decided to re-release his greatest hits at Prime Minister’s Questions today, starting with Brexit but then moving on to poverty, education, police cuts and ‘burning i justices’. We’ve heard these questions many times before, and often in the same sequence, but today the Labour leader was using them once again to try to underline that Theresa May’s government is failing not just on Brexit but on everything else too. This didn’t work, though, because Corbyn only tried to tie the topics together in his very last question, and that question was particularly rambling. Last night the Labour leader’s spokesman delivered a crisp line about the government being unable

Alex Massie

Who can spare us from this Brexit disaster? | 16 January 2019

God help us all, because no-one else can or will in these present circumstances. If you wished to apportion some blame for the shambolic state of British politics these days you will not be short of candidates to bear some measure of the opprobrium they all, to one degree or another, deserve. Spare us from Theresa May whose definition of Brexit hemmed her in from the very beginning. Spare us from a Prime Minister who learnt nothing from David Cameron’s failures and continued to prize Tory unity above almost everything else and continued to do so long past the point at which it became obvious to everyone else that Tory

Tom Goodenough

How the world’s papers reacted to May’s Brexit vote defeat

Theresa May appears as a dodo on the front page of today’s Sun. Unfortunately for the beleaguered Prime Minister, the verdict isn’t much better in the foreign press. Last night’s disastrous night in the Commons makes the front pages of newspapers around the world. The New York Times describes the Prime Minister’s defeat as ‘bruising’ and the paper says last night’s result ‘underscores how comprehensively Mrs. May has failed to hold consensus behind any single vision of how to exit the European Union’. For the Times, the PM largely has herself to blame for making history by notching up the largest defeat for a government in modern British political history:

James Forsyth

How tonight’s no confidence vote could help Theresa May

Another day, another big vote in the Commons. But as with yesterday, there is a sense in Westminster that tonight’s vote is a foregone conclusion. Theresa May is expected to win it as the DUP are still backing her, as are the ERG and no Tory second referendum types have come out against her. Now, it might seem odd that the Commons can inflict the biggest defeat on a government of the modern era, on the defining issue of the parliament on Tuesday and then affirm its confidence in that government on the Wednesday. But that is British politics right now. If this no confidence vote goes as expected, it

Steerpike

Watch: Richard Burgon turns nasty

When he first came to power, Jeremy Corbyn promised a ‘kinder’ politics and told Labour supporters to ‘treat people with respect’. But did Richard Burgon get the message? Mr S. only asks because he suspects the Labour MP and arch Corbynite won’t have won many new fans when he popped up on Channel 4 News yesterday evening in the aftermath of May’s thumping defeat in the Commons. Burgon told Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson that she would be ‘judged by history’ as a result of her party’s past coalition with the Tories: ‘The real enemies are the Conservatives. And you have aided and abetted them. to hurt working class communities

Tuesday

15 Jan 2019

Steerpike

Watch: Matt Hancock’s disastrous attempt to defend Theresa May

Theresa May made history tonight by notching up the largest defeat for a sitting government in British political history. But despite 118 Tory MPs rebelling against the Government, May can still count on some of her colleagues to try and defend her. Step forward, Matt Hancock. The health secretary popped up on the BBC to trot out the PM’s Brexit plan B: go back to the Commons and listen to MPs on what they do want. Unfortunately for Hancock, his attempt to explain what happens next didn’t inspire Mr S with much confidence: Andrew Neil: They’re ruling out reopening the agreement. What do you do now? Matt Hancock: There are two

Robert Peston

May’s disastrous defeat makes a Brexit delay inevitable

There is no coming back for the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal from the scale of a defeat by 432 to 202, the worst defeat by a Government for more than a century. In all normal circumstances a Prime Minister would resign when suffering such a humiliation on their central policy – and a policy Theresa May herself said today would “set the future of this country for generation”. But these are not normal times and Theresa May is not a normal prime minister. She said tonight she would fight on – subject of course to the Commons not in effect turfing her out if it backs Jeremy Corbyn’s motion of

Tom Goodenough

Theresa May’s Brexit deal rejected by MPs by 432 to 202 votes

Theresa May’s Brexit deal has been decisively rejected by MPs who voted 432 to 202 against the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement. The Prime Minister had told MPs to back her deal or risk “letting the British people down” but politicians voted down her deal in the biggest government defeat in the Commons in British history. The previous record was by a margin of 166 votes in 1924, when the Labour minority government lost a vote by 364 votes to 198. A total of 118 Tory MPs rebelled against the Government in the crunch vote tonight. Jeremy Corbyn responded to the PM by confirming that he would table a vote of no

Isabel Hardman

Has Theresa May just revealed her Brexit plan B?

Theresa May has just finished a speech in which she made clear – without using those words – that the Government is going to lose tonight’s meaningful vote and that she is now planning for the next Commons confrontation on Brexit. She managed to get one MP, Sir Edward Leigh, to withdraw his amendment on the basis that she was happy to work with him on ‘creative solutions’ to the backstop. She also promised that ‘the government will work harder at taking Parliament with us’ on Brexit. But this harder work doesn’t seem to include any moves towards working with Labour on some kind of national unity movement to stop

Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs threaten to push Corbyn into supporting a second referendum

Labour MPs who want a second referendum are threatening to table their own motion calling for one next week if their frontbench fails to do so. Jeremy Corbyn is expected to call for a vote of no confidence in the government once Theresa May’s deal is defeated in the Commons this evening. The Labour leadership has refused to do this until now because it doesn’t want to hold a vote it is certain to lose, but the pressure has now grown so great for a vote that it will be extremely difficult for Corbyn to dodge it, even though the DUP have said they will stop the government from falling