Theresa may

Theresa May’s snap election, scheduled for 8 June, was unlikely for three big reasons. Holding off until 2020 would allow the Tories to take advantage of boundary changes that come into force in 2018. There’s a fixed-term parliament act, which is a major complicating factor (Labour will probably have to back a vote in the Commons to allow this election to take place at all). Most of all, she staked a large chunk of her credibility on not U-turning on her decision that there wouldn’t be one. Until this morning, her reputation for unwavering unflappability looked justified. Here are five occasions on which the Prime Minister personally, or her staff, denied

Theresa May has just announced that she’ll move a motion in the Commons tomorrow calling for a general election on 8 June. This is despite May and her team having repeatedly ruled out going to the country early. Much of the May brand, and her appeal, is built on the idea that she is a grown-up who gets on with the job and doesn’t play political games. By going for an election, and especially when the Tories have a record poll lead over Labour, she endangers that. May is clearly aware of this danger. In her statement outside Downing Street, May tried to pitch herself against Westminster. She said that while

Theresa May has called a general election for June 8th. Making the announcement on the steps of Downing Street, the PM said that an early election is the ‘right approach’ and ‘in the national interest’. Here’s her full statement: ‘I have just chaired a meeting of the Cabinet where we agreed that the government should call a general election to be held on the 8th June. I want to explain the reasons for that decision, what will happen next, and the choice facing the British people when you come to vote in this election. Last summer, after the country voted to leave the European Union, Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership.

Two of the top tips in Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal, of which I wrote last week even though he allegedly didn’t write it himself, are ‘Think Big’ and ‘Maximise the Options’, also expressed as ‘I keep a lot of balls in the air’. How should Theresa May apply that advice in response to Spain’s opportunistic bid to raise the issue of sovereignty over Gibraltar as a potential Brexit hurdle? She could, of course, offer a repeat of the 2002 referendum in which Gibraltarians voted 99 per cent ‘No’ when asked whether Britain and Spain should share the Rock’s sovereignty. But the ‘balls in the air’ gambit I

Is Theresa May’s media honeymoon over? The bungled Budget might have led to a raft of bad headlines for the Government, but these were mostly aimed in Philip Hammond’s direction. Today, the Sun turns its fire on the Prime Minister. The paper says May has ‘shown she understands what most Brits want’ from Brexit. But it adds a crucial caveat: ‘until now’. The Sun says that while it agrees with her plan to leave the single market behind, it is ‘deeply concerned by suggestions that free movement may apply for a further three years’ after Brexit. Most Brits who wanted out of the EU did so to tighten up Britain’s

The decision by Conservative MPs to walk away from the Commons Committee on Exiting the EU is one of the most unintentionally revealing abdications of duty I have seen. The report they refused to endorse was polite to the point of blandness. The necessity of securing cross-party approval meant that its restrained language bore little relation to the chaos in Whitehall the committee’s hearings had uncovered. In March, the committee’s chair, Hilary Benn, showed its extent when he submitted David Davis to a tough cross-examination which the Brexit Secretary was lamentably unable to withstand. Although ministers were parroting the line that ‘no deal was better than a bad deal’, Benn

As the events of the last few days show, the increasingly toxic issue of Gibraltar means the UK’s Article 50 talks with Spain might become more fraught than either party would like. It’s not just that Spain wants to share sovereignty of the Rock with Britain; more dangerous is the fact that Brussels can exploit this dispute to punish the UK for Brexit. In fact, this weekend’s fracas over Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status shouldn’t have caused the uproar it did. True, the document distributed to EU member governments on Friday by Donald Tusk highlighted Spain’s ability to veto Gibraltar’s inclusion in any EU-UK deal; but as part of the soon-to-be 27 member bloc, Spain already possessed that ability. After all, every other member state would have a veto too.

Theresa May says the way to deal with the row over Gibraltar is ‘jaw-jaw’ rather than war. And there is plenty of chatter on the subject in today’s newspapers: Of course we don’t want a war with Spain, says the Sun. But ‘nor will we sit quietly’ and let Madrid ‘launch its latest ridiculous attempt to claim the territory’. Some have said that Theresa May brought this mess upon herself, by failing to namecheck Gibraltar in her Article 50 letter to the European Union last week. This isn’t the case, says the paper, which points out that the PM is right to say the Rock’s ‘future is settled and its