Uk politics

Imagine the industrial levels of brass neck it must require for EU-supporting MPs to present themselves as defenders of parliamentary sovereignty. That’s what they’re doing today, on ‘Brexit Super Tuesday’, as they start voting on the Lords’ amendments to the government’s Brexit Bill. They say they are backing the amendment that would give MPs a ‘meaningful vote’ on the final Brexit deal because they love parliamentary sovereignty that much. Pull the other. These are people who for years happily handed over huge swathes of law-making to Brussels bureaucrats and would still like EU law to enjoy supremacy over UK law. They support parliamentary sovereignty like an electric chair supports your

Tomorrow marks a year since Theresa May sat her dejected parliamentary party down and promised that ‘I got us into this mess and I’ll get us out of it’. She was speaking amid the chaos of the snap election that she’d called, and it wasn’t clear whether the Prime Minister was going to be able to form a government, let alone survive as leader for very long. Tonight, she’s still here but still appealing to Conservative MPs for unity as the ‘crunch stage’ of the EU withdrawal bill arrives in the Commons. The briefing over the weekend did suggest that the Prime Minister was probably going to be ok, though

Unity is the buzzword in the Conservative party this week. With a series of crunch votes due on Tuesday and Wednesday over the EU withdrawal bill, senior Tories have been at pains to tell unruly colleagues it’s time to put their differences aside and come together. Over the weekend, Amber Rudd and ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith warned that any Commons rebellions would be a win for Labour – and therefore bring Corbyn closer to entering No 10. It was a message echoed by David Lidington on the Andrew Marr show. No 10 are increasingly confident that this new comradely spirit will prove contagious. Within government, concerns have eased over the two

Theresa May’s cabinet is divided and her MPs increasingly worried over the government’s Brexit plans – or lack thereof. Yet despite all this, the latest Times/YouGov poll puts the Tories seven points ahead of Labour. With many in Westminster left scratching their head over the apparent disconnect, could a clue be found in ITV2’s Love Island? Mr S only asks after Friday’s episode saw contestants on the popular reality show – in which twenty-somethings attempt to find their perfect match – discuss the issue of the day. Only, rather than talk backstop options, customs arrangements, the Irish border or post-Brexit immigration systems, the conversation centred around what Brexit was and

Could Brexit talks soon be heading for the ‘meltdown’ that Boris Johnson predicted? Michel Barnier’s press conference just now hardly inspires confidence that things are going to plan. The EU’s chief negotiator said that Britain was playing a ‘blame game’ in Brexit talks and that it had to accept the consequences of its decision to leave the EU. He went on to call for the British government to have something of a reality check over the way things were going. Today, that reality check came in the form of his rejection of Britain’s backstop proposal to solve the Irish border problem. Theresa May had put forward the suggestion that the

After a morning of high drama in Westminster, the UK government now has a backstop proposal to put to the EU. Last night, the backstop text said that it was time limited but didn’t specify an end date. In two meetings with the Prime Minister this morning, David Davis demanded changes. He has got some concessions: the text now talks about how ‘The UK expects the future arrangement to be in place by December 2021’. But there is no hard cut-off date in the text. Theresa May was acutely aware that if one had been included, the EU would have rejected it out of hand. We now wait to see