Uk politics

Today MPs are working themselves into a bother over the government’s Brexit impact reports. Although David Davis has handed them to the Brexit select committee – as ordered by the Speaker – MPs have been left disappointed given that the document in question is rather sparse on details as it does not include anything the government has deemed market sensitive or damaging to the UK’s negotiations with the EU27. With Keir Starmer to ask an Urgent Question on the issue, Labour is expected to criticise the government for keeping out relevant information. However, Mr S suspects the Labour party ought to tread with caution before going on the offensive. When Hilary Benn,

The zombie company concept was developed in Japan, to suggest that persistent low interest rates allowed heavily indebted companies (who might, at more normal rates of interest, have been liquidated) to stay in business, thus preventing the Schumpeterian creative destruction that allows the business sector to innovate and improve. It has since been applied to the UK as a possible explanation of low productivity, most recently by Liam Halligan in the Sunday Telegraph. There are three problems with the claim. The first is that in the UK stagnant low productivity companies tend not to be heavily indebted but instead sit on cash. So low interest rates hinder, not help, them.

Given that most think tanks and universities are heavily against Brexit, the recent arrival of the Legatum Institute into the arena of trade policy mattered. It was filling a a gap in the market: proper research into potential trade relationships, on the basis that Brexit might not be a disaster. It has also acquired the services of Shanker Singham, an experienced trade lawyer. Both he and Legatum have come under the microscope today with a Mail on Sunday splash suggesting that the Kremlin might be behind it all. Its headline: ‘Putin link to Boris and Gove Brexit “coup”’. Did this relationship go too far, and did Singham end up advising Michael

‘It’ll be curtains for the process’ if the Brexit talks don’t move on to trade and transition in December, according to one of those familiar with the UK government’s negotiating strategy. In Downing Street, there is a feeling that Theresa May has twice made significant compromises—in the Florence speech and the enhanced financial offer the inner Cabinet agreed on Monday—and if the EU again pockets the concession and says still more is needed, it’ll be hard to see how the UK can stay at the table. Even one of the Cabinet Ministers most keen on a deal with the EU says that ‘we have to get through in December’. It

In his column this week, James Forsyth reports there is ‘mounting anger’ inside the government at the way the Irish government are behaving over Brexit. I am sure there is, though it still surprises me that people are surprised to discover that the Irish government is defending its own interests. Doubtless this is why you will sometimes find exuberant Brexiteers suggesting that the answer to the Irish problem is for the Irish to leave the EU too. That might work in theory; it doesn’t do so in practice. I’m afraid things are a little more complicated than that. Now it is, of course, tiresome that Brexit is being complicated by