Brexit

John Bercow ditched Parliamentary precedent when he allowed a vote to take place on Dominic Grieve’s Brexit amendment yesterday. His decision caused uproar among Tory MPs, but Bercow defended the decision by saying that precedent didn’t count for everything when it comes to setting the rules in the Commons. He told MPs: ‘I am not in the business of invoking precedent, nor am I under any obligation to do so. I think the hon. Gentleman will know that it is the long-established practice of this House that the Speaker in the Chair makes judgments upon the selection of amendments and that those judgments are not questioned by Members of the House. I am clear in my mind that I

PMQs began with tributes to the late Paddy Ashdown. The philandering man-of-action was the closest thing the Liberal Democrats ever got to James Bond. And though he was often ridiculed by MPs as a self-important windbag, today they hailed him as one of the greats. In this respect the House truly reflected the people. Death brings out the hypocrite in all of us. May offered a few respectful words. The Lib Dems were represented by the weirdly pompous Sir Edward Davey whose knighthood has swollen his head without affecting the capacity of his brain. At least his tribute seemed genuinely heartfelt. The most sincere effort came from Jeremy Corbyn. ‘He

Before Brexit: The Uncivil War is allowed to drift off into the ether, there is an important point which needs to be made, and yet which has not been addressed in all the reams of comment which have written about it. There is a gaping hole in its narrative. That narrative seems straightforward enough: Vote Leave won the referendum because its leader, Dominic Cummings, and his team of geeks realised that they could tap into a vast, lost constituency of Britons with whom politicians and traditional political campaigning methods had lost touch. This they did by analysing Facebook and other social media data and then hitting the lost voters –

Martin Selmayr, the so-called ‘monster’ of Brussels, has reacted angrily to claims that he set out to punish Britain over Brexit. Selmayr, controversially elevated last year to become secretary general of the European Commission, was said to have told a meeting in Brussels in November that ‘the power is with us’ in Brexit trade talks. The claim was repeated in a detailed article by Tory MP Greg Hands, who sets out allegations that Selmayr and Sabine Weyand, another top EU official, crafted the Brexit deal in order to inflict maximum pain on Britain. Needless to say, Selmayr isn’t happy. This morning, he shared a link to Hands’ Conservative Home piece

Brexit: The Uncivil War makes a big claim right at the start: to show us what really happened in the EU referendum two years ago, and to give us insight into the inner workings of the Vote Leave campaign. It’s an enticing offer but (ironically for a film about allegedly dodgy campaign pledges) I’m not really sure it ever really delivers on this promise. Now, I admit that I’m as far away as possible from a ‘neutral’ or ‘impartial’ reviewer. Having campaigned for Brexit long before ‘Brexit’ was even a word, and having served as the Research Director of Vote Leave, I realise it’s pretty much impossible for me to approach this

Will Straw hasn’t had much joy when it comes to politics. In 2015, Straw tried – and failed – to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a Labour MP, losing out to his Tory rival Jake Berry in Rossendale and Darwen. A year later, Straw’s luck hadn’t improved: in his role as executive director of Britain Stronger in Europe, he led the official Remain campaign to defeat in the EU referendum. But now, it seems, Straw may have finally found the recipe for winning. In an article in the Guardian under the headline ‘I was part of the remain campaign. Here’s how to win a people’s vote’, Straw offer

Here is what I have learned about this morning’s cabinet meeting: 1) The Prime Minister is still refusing to rule out a no-deal Brexit, in spite of pressure to do so from a number of ministers – but most notably from the Work and Pensions Secretary of State, Amber Rudd. In respect of May’s attitude to no-deal, the PM was “inscrutable as always”, according to one of those in the meeting. But another has told me that Theresa May confirmed she would make a statement if her deal is – as expected – rejected by MPs next week. No minister expects her to announce at that juncture that the UK