Uk politics

As part of its preview of Tim Shipman’s keenly-anticipated Brexit book, the Sunday Times today reveals draft article written by Boris Johnson intended to make the case for his voting to stay in the EU. The existence of such an article was known, and a lot of his enemies thought it would expose him as a fraud. In fact, the article (full thing here) reads like an advert for Brexit with a pathetic “but I’m still going to back Cameron” bolted on to the end. It purports to balance both arguments, but weighs in far more favourably for Brexit. It’s not the first time he describes the case for remaining (he

A Brexit deal that would end free movement and see UK goods able to access the EU market without tariffs or the need to jump through any additional hoops sounds, superficially, attractive. These arrangements could also be in place by the 2020 general election, as I say in my Sun column. But this idea of leaving the EU single market, but staying in the customs union is a bad one—however keen some in the Treasury and Whitehall are on it. For if Britain remains in the customs union, then it can’t do proper trade deals with non-EU countries. Instead, it will have to continue to apply the EU’s Common External

Politics is a question of priorities. Push always comes to shove and that’s when you discover what a party really thinks is important. We’ve seen this repeatedly this year. The Labour party, for instance, has decided power is for other people. And the Conservative party has decided that leaving the European Union is something worth risking the Union for. If we have to break-up the United Kingdom to save the United Kingdom, then so be it. A price worth paying, you know. But don’t pretend you weren’t warned about this. Because you were. Repeatedly. There’s a reason, you know, why Ruth Davidson and most of her Holyrood colleagues campaigned for

People attack the whole business of having an EU referendum, but one of its pluses was that it invited millions of people who had never before been asked to form an opinion on the European question to do so. They responded thoughtfully — perhaps more thoughtfully than people do in general elections when a sizeable minority vote pretty much automatically for one party or another. We quickly developed a much more educated electorate. The idea, strongly touted immediately after the result, that the voters’ majority view could be set aside by Parliament because they didn’t know what they were talking about has almost completely vanished from political debate, with the

Jeremy Corbyn is taking Labour ever further away from its traditional working class voters in the north and the midlands. As I say in The Sun today, the party now has a leader who didn’t sing the national anthem at St Paul’s, a shadow Chancellor who has praised the IRA, a shadow Home Secretary who thinks promising ‘controls on immigration’ is shameful and a shadow Foreign Secretary who sneers at those who fly the English flag. This presents Ukip with an open goal and a chance to do to Labour in the north and the midlands what the SNP did to in Scotland following the independence referendum. Indeed, half of

Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet reshuffle is all about strengthening, and demonstrating, his control over the party. Jonathan Ashworth, a Corbyn-sceptic, has lost his place on the party’s National Executive Committee and is replaced by Corbyn backer Kate Osamor. The word in Westminster is that Ashworth was told he could take shadow Health and lose his seat on the NEC, or reject it and lose it anyway. Ashworth made the deal. In an email to Labour MPs, the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party John Cryer makes clear that the leader’s office started the reshuffle while talks on shadow Cabinet elections were still ongoing. Cryer complains that ‘the party leadership did not

Scottish jobs for Scottish workers. We’re going to stop foreigners from coming here and taking jobs Scottish people can do. We are going to make companies declare the nationality of their employees: those that do not employ a sufficiently high percentage of Scots will be ‘named and shamed’. They have a duty to this country; a duty to our people. If companies wish to employ foreigners they will have to prove they need to and demonstrate that they have tried, but failed, to fill the position with a native-born Scot. We understand the pain felt by those Scots who have lost their jobs to English migrants. We feel your anger

According to Theresa May, interviewed by Tim Shipman in today’s Sunday Times, Brexit will make the United Kingdom ‘a sovereign and independent nation‘ once again. I know we are all supposed to be impressed by our new Prime Minister and much enthused by her Matron Gragrind approach to politics that is, again, such a refreshing change from the soft-furnished Call me Dave years but, really, can we pause for a moment to note that this is twaddle. Because if it were true – and if it were true that Mrs May believes this – then we are asked to believe that Britain was not, before its blessed liberation in June, a sovereign or independent nation. And if she

Six years ago, Matthew Parris suggested in The Spectator that David Cameron’s first act of parliament should be the Blanket Repeal of Legislation (Failure of New Labour, 1997-2010) Bill. That would have been a repeal bill worthy of the name. Theresa May’s proposed ‘Great Repeal Bill’ is not. Brexit we know about: that decision was taken on 23 June. But beyond Brexit, the Bill won’t repeal anything. On the contrary, it will ‘convert existing EU law into domestic law’ so it is about continuity, rather than annulment. It should really be called the Great EU Regulation Continuity Bill. Nothing wrong in that; it’s necessary legislation. But why spin it as radical change? The main question is whether the

Brexit, they say, has emboldened the hateful. It has given people permission to spout their prejudices, to pollute public life with their weird, rash dislike of anyone who is different to them. And it’s true, Brexit has done this. Only not in the way they think. The most visible hatred in the three months since the EU referendum has been of the Remain variety. It has been demosphobia, a borderline Victorian agitation with the pig-ignorant pleb who is madly trusted with making big political decisions about things like the EU. The hate that’s really been emboldened by Brexit is that old, historic disdain for ordinary people and their allegedly irrational