Uk politics

Thursday

Matt Kilcoyne

Why I won’t miss Britain’s ‘chief nanny’ when she’s gone

It’s time to say goodbye to Britain’s so-called Chief Nanny, Dame Sally Davies. In her final report as Chief Medical Officer, Davies shows why she won’t be missed. She proposes a ban on eating or drinking anything other than water on trains and buses. Davies also suggests that nothing fatty or sugary should be available to buy at certain sports stadiums. Goodbye matchday pies or a pint at the rugby. Dame Sally’s job is to focus on a narrow idea of health. But this remit is blind to a simple reality: most of us want to live a life that we think is worthwhile. Sometimes that means throwing caution and kale

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Johnson and Varadkar: It’s not over yet

Is all hope lost that a Brexit deal can be agreed before 31 October? That’s been the mood music coming from both the UK and Brussels in recent days. However, Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar have this afternoon made a joint statement making clear that they haven’t given up on agreeing a deal just yet. After holding two hours of talks in a Cheshire countryside bolthole, Johnson and Varadkar released a joint statement in which they said that they could both ‘see a pathway to a possible deal’: ‘The Prime Minister and Taoiseach have had a detailed and constructive discussion. Both continue to believe that a deal is in everybody’s

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Tories fret over further election delay

Members of the One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs met with Boris Johnson this afternoon over concerns the party could shift to a no-deal platform if an election takes place after a Brexit delay. No. 10 sources have suggested such a policy could be the best electoral route for the Tories in this scenario – as they would need something to prevent frustrated Leave voters moving to the Brexit party. However, attendees at the meeting say they left reassured this was not the case – with Johnson suggesting that a policy of only accepting no deal was unlikely to make its way into the Tory manifesto. But as these MPs worry

Tuesday

Katy Balls

The voters who will prove pivotal at the next election

As the prospect of a Brexit deal drifts further away and a blame game ensues between Downing Street and Brussels, the UK is on course for a volatile general election. As James reveals on Coffee House, No. 10’s attention has moved to how to position the Conservatives in an election in during a Brexit extension. A senior Downing Street source tells him: ‘Those who pushed the Benn Act intended to sabotage a deal and they’ve probably succeeded. So the main effect of it will probably be to help us win an election by uniting the leave vote and then a no deal Brexit. History is full of such ironies and tragedies.’

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Angela Merkel rejects Boris Johnson’s Brexit offer

This feels very big: Boris Johnson spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at 8am this morning, and according to a Downing Street source, she told the prime minister that there will be no Brexit deal with the UK unless Northern Ireland is in the customs union “forever”. The source says she repeated “forever” on “multiple occasions”. So what she is saying is there can be no time-limited backstop. And of course it is a wholesale rejection of Johnson’s offer to replace the backstop. “France is saying the same thing”, according to the source. The government’s conclusion is that EU leaders have decided to make an example of the UK –

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Thwarting Brexit probably won’t stop Brexit

What if they succeed in thwarting Brexit? The odds seem weighted against Boris Johnson delivering his do-or-die (-in-a-ditch) promise to get the UK out of the EU by Halloween. The Benn Act has tied the government’s hands so there is no need for Brussels to budge. Donald Tusk can wait until Johnson cracks and complies, or until the Remain Parliament ousts him and installs a prime minister who will hold a second referendum or revoke Article 50 altogether.  Because MPs have no commonly agreed position, we can’t be sure which eventuality we’re heading for, but we can agree that Britain’s membership continuing on November 1 would represent a big defeat

Monday

Steerpike

Boris Johnson takes on Extinction Rebellion at book launch

To the launch of the final volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher at Banqueting House. A mix of cabinet ministers, government aides and hacks descended on the Policy Exchange bash to hear both Moore and Boris Johnson speak. With the climate change Extinction Rebellion protests shutting down Whitehall, a number of ministers arrived via an underground tunnel to minimise disruption. Taking to the stage to pay credit to his former boss Charles Moore for his work on the biography, the Prime Minister said that he had been advised against attending by his own team: ‘I am afraid that the security people didn’t want me to come along tonight

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Number 10 view the state of the negotiations

Earlier today, I sent a message to a contact in Number 10 asking them how the Brexit talks were going. They sent a long reply which I think gives a pretty clear sense of where they think things are. So, in the interest of trying to let people understand where Number 10 reckon the negotiations are, here is their response: ‘The negotiations will probably end this week. Varadkar doesn’t want to negotiate. Varadkar was keen on talking before the Benn Act when he thought that the choice would be ‘new deal or no deal’. Since the Benn Act passed he has gone very cold and in the last week the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Scottish court: ‘no doubt’ that Boris will abide by law on Brexit extension

Is Boris Johnson on course to request an Article 50 extension within the fortnight? The Court of Session, Scotland’s highest court, has today dismissed a legal effort to force Johnson to comply with the law (dubbed ‘surrender act’ in No. 10) aimed at making the government seek a Brexit extension in the event of a no deal. Only the reason the judge in question ruled that there was no need for ‘coercive orders’ against the UK government is that he said there could be ‘no doubt’ that the prime minister had already agreed to abide by the law – after government documents submitted to the Court of Session said the prime minister would

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Can Boris Johnson survive if he breaks his Brexit promise?

It gives me no pleasure to report this of my former Daily Telegraph colleague, but some people who know Boris Johnson don’t trust him. Whatever the Prime Minister’s other virtues, he is not seen by some acquaintances as a man who will always keep his word, who always does the things he says he will do. Polls appear to suggest that the public isn’t much more impressed with Johnson’s integrity. YouGov reckons just 24 per cent see him as “trustworthy” and the same proportion rate him as “honest”. That should be a problem, given that so much of Johnson’s political strategy (and possibly Britain’s future) now rides on his ability

Ross Clark Ross Clark

An inheritance tax cut would backfire on the Tories

Just when you thought that the Tories were getting into a position where they might be capable of winning the formerly Labour-leaning seats in the Midlands and the North – which they will need to snatch in order to survive after next election – along comes a minister to chuck a spanner in the electoral works.  Housing minister Robert Jenrick has suggested that the government might be minded to cut or even abolish inheritance tax, complaining about its ‘fundamental unfairness’ and claiming that it amounted to ‘paying tax twice’. Disturbingly, Sajid Javid also made a hint about cutting inheritance tax at Tory conference, suggesting that it might be emerging party

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Why Boris Johnson’s Brexit offer is probably dead

The word habitually used by EU negotiators to characterise Boris Johnson’s Brexit offer is “uncertainty”. They talk of “uncertainty” about how the new customs border on the island of Ireland would work, about whether all the necessary checks could really take place away from the border. They say there is “uncertainty” about whether this new customs border would undermine the principle of sustaining an all-island economy. They talk about “uncertainty” around the VAT regime for Northern Ireland and the EU. They talk about “uncertainty” about the operation of the single market for goods and food on the island of Ireland, and the proposed new checks on goods and food flowing back and

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jennifer Arcuri refuses to deny Boris Johnson affair six times

Jennifer Arcuri has just broken her silence on the nature of her relationship with Boris Johnson. When quizzed on whether she had an affair with the future PM by Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain, Arcuri refused to deny it six times. Instead she told Morgan: “I’m not going to be put in a position where you weaponise my answer…What a bunch of churlish little guttersnipes”   Mr S doesn’t think this story will be going away anytime soon…

Sunday

Katy Balls

Is a Brexit deal now off the table?

Is a Brexit deal agreed before October 31st a realistic possibility? Technically talks between the UK and EU are ongoing – with Emmanuel Macron saying the EU will decide by the end of the week whether a Brexit deal is possible. Meanwhile, the weekend papers have been filled with op-eds from government ministers on the need for both Brussels and MPs to get behind Boris Johnson’s proposed Brexit deal. However, while Johnson appears to have made some progress with the latter group (a mix of MPs from across the spectrum have suggested they could vote for the proposal), the mood music in Brussels is gloomy. The differences between the two sides remain

Saturday

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson will have to win a majority to get the EU to engage with his Brexit plan

The Brexit talks between the UK and the EU are making very little progress. Number 10 say that there is the ‘potential for some meetings next week’. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, there is little optimism about what will come from them. There is doubt as to whether the process will even make it into the tunnel, the EU’s term for intensive serious negotiations. One Number 10 source tells me, ‘Not going to get into the tunnel without more compromise but we’re getting to the limit of what we can do.’ There are two essential problems. The first is that Theresa May gave away so much

Friday

Douglas Murray

What Michael Gove really said at the German embassy

In the magazine cover piece this week I describe how institutions as well as individuals are having a hard time making it through this deranging age. Bishops call for restraint but then have outbursts of ungodly anger. MPs and peers talk about the need for civility and then are found jabbering like street-corner lunatics. But something that happened yesterday evening provides almost a case-study of the era. There is no reason why most people should have heard of Peter Neumann. A minor left-wing pundit, he is currently a professor of ‘security studies’ at King’s College London. As it happens, King’s is fast-becoming a home for insignificant polemicists masquerading as academics.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is Boris really going to ask for a Brexit extension?

Boris Johnson will seek an extension to Article 50 if there is no Brexit deal by 19 October, documents read out in court today have revealed. This contradicts the Prime Minister’s assertion that he would rather be ‘dead in a ditch’ than delay Britain leaving to after the current deadline of 31 October. So what’s going on? The revelation comes in the government’s written case for a hearing on whether the Prime Minister will be in contempt of court if he doesn’t send the letter to the European Union asking for the extension which he is mandated to do by the Benn Act. The document says that ‘he cannot act

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Rory Stewart stands down – but says he’s staying in politics ‘in another part of the country’

Rory Stewart has announced that he will not be re-standing as an MP at the next election and that he is also resigning his membership of the Conservative party. That Stewart is going underlines how much things have changed in the party since the leadership election. He was one of the contenders, and stayed in that contest far longer than many had expected. Having pitched to lead the party, he has now left it just months later. And he is not the first to leave: Sam Gyimah defected to the Liberal Democrats after having the Conservative whip removed, though Gyimah was never considered a serious contender in the race (in

Thursday

Steerpike

Green MEP: Boris’s proposal is no good…but I haven’t read it

Vice President of the European Parliament Heidi Hautala has made her mind up about Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposal: it’s no good. The Finnish MEP said ‘it’s not a very serious proposal’. But has she actually read the Prime Minister’s letter to Jean-Claude Juncker? Err, no. ‘But I am more or less aware of the proposal,’ she said. Unsurprisingly Hautala got short shrift from Iain Dale, who was interviewing her on LBC. ‘Can I suggest you actually read the letter? It does contain detailed proposals, it protects the integrity of the single market,’ he told her.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why the Tories are talking tough on crime

Although Brexit remains the top of the news agenda, the Conservatives believe they will need to talk about more than just leaving the EU if they are to triumph in an early election. Boris Johnson used his conference speech to push a domestic agenda beyond Brexit. The areas he focussed on were the same ones that Downing Street has repeatedly pushed since the summer: the NHS, law and order, education and investment in the north. Johnson singled out tackling crime as a priority: ‘The first thing we must do in spreading opportunity is to insist on the equal safety of the public wherever you live to make your streets safer