uk politics Archives

Thursday

24 Oct 2019

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson calls for December 12 election – will he succeed?

Boris Johnson will make his third attempt to call a general election. In an interview with the BBC, the Prime Minister unveiled his new offer to opposition MPs: he will bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons on the condition that there is a general election on 12 December. Explaining his decision, Johnson said that he believed the UK was heading for an extension – something he regretted. He said he was willing to bring his Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons so long as MPs agree that a general election will follow. The reason? ‘In order to create a deadline that is credible in everybody’s mind

Wednesday

23 Oct 2019

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson is dodging scrutiny – but so are MPs

Boris Johnson has cancelled his appearance before the Commons Liaison Committee tomorrow morning, arguing that he feels he should devote himself to trying to secure a Brexit deal. In a rather last-minute cancellation, the Prime Minister has written a personal note to the Committee’s chair Dr Sarah Wollaston in which he argues that it would be much better for the MPs to question him when he has been in the job for five to six months, as it did with his predecessors. This is a valid argument, but it would carry more weight if Johnson had made it from the outset, rather than at the sort of time that students

Tuesday

22 Oct 2019

Charles Day

MPs have plenty of time to read Boris’s Brexit bill

The Withdrawal Bill that has been published is pretty dull stuff – even by my standards. There are nonetheless rather frantic efforts to pretend it is in any way terrible. It isn’t. For one reason and one reason only. Like the 1972 Act, all the Bill does is bring the Withdrawal Agreement into UK law. I find that conceptually interesting. The way these treaties are only international law. The way that international law is irrelevant and pointless, unless and until it gets enacted into domestic law. These things comfort me as a reminder that nation states, democracy and the people still matter. It rather penetrates the confected pomp of those

James Snell

The Brexit party crack-up

At the start of the year, the Brexit party didn’t exist. When it roared to success a few months later in the European parliamentary elections, much was made of how unlike a normal party it was. Nigel Farage was fond of telling audiences that his MEPs included Tories and former members of the Revolutionary Communist party. What else could unite them, he would ask, but the need to leave the European Union? Yet that common cause is now proving to be the party’s undoing in the wake of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. While Theresa May’s agreement was panned almost instantly, reaction to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal has been mostly positive.

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s Halloween deadline drifts further away

Will the UK leave the EU on the 31 October? Barring the highly unlikely event of the EU refusing an extension, the answer to that question is no. This evening, MPs voted against the government’s programme motion to push the Withdrawal Agreement Bill through the Commons at breakneck speed – at 308 to 322. This means it is hard to see how the bill can pass the Commons without an extension being agreed with the EU. On hearing the result, Boris Johnson told MPs that he would now put the bill on ‘pause’ and speak to EU leaders about the extension. He was at pains to say that this was parliament’s

Steerpike

Watch: John Mann heckles Anna Soubry: ‘It’ll get rid of you’

‘A general election will solve nothing,’ Anna Soubry has just told the Commons. But it seems not all of her parliamentary colleagues agree. Labour MP John Mann responded to Soubry by repeatedly yelling out: ‘It will get rid of you’ It’s safe to say Soubry was not impressed: ‘Can I just say actually, I don’t mind losing my job but I do care about the jobs of my constituents…and that’s why this matter must now go back for that people’s vote now we have the clarity on Brexit and we see what a disaster it is.’

Steerpike

Watch: David Lammy checks his phone during Brexit debate

David Lammy has said Boris Johnson’s bid to fast track his Brexit bill through Parliament means MPs won’t have enough time to scrutinise it properly. Lammy said ‘giving MPs so little time to scrutinise one of the most consequential pieces of legislation we’ll vote on is as transparent as it is cynical’. But while fellow Labour MP Kate Hoey was quizzing the Prime Minister on what reassurances he could give to the people of Northern Ireland, Mr S couldn’t help but notice a certain MP busily tapping away on his phone. Mr S hopes that the MP for Tottenham was making notes on the withdrawal bill… Update: David Lammy has

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s election threat to wavering Labour MPs

The key Brexit vote tonight is on the programme motion. The sense is that the government has the votes to carry the second reading. But that wouldn’t guarantee the UK leaving on 31 October, as the committee and report stages could take weeks and see a slew of amendment added to the bill. If Boris Johnson is to meet his 31 October deadline, he’ll need to carry the programme motion which would see all the Commons stages of the bill done in the next 60 hours or so. Right now this vote is, as us nervous journalists like to say, ‘too close to call’. In an attempt to pressure MPs into approving

Stephen Daisley

What Caroline Flint’s Brexit critics fail to understand

It must feel pretty lonely being Caroline Flint right now. The Labour MP has made herself unpopular with her comrades by backing Boris Johnson’s deal to leave the EU. Flint campaigned for Remain but accepts that her Don Valley constituency voted 68 per cent Leave. In the former mining towns of her South Yorkshire seat, Flint points out, the figure was closer to 80 per cent. ‘The voices in our mining villages remain unheard, despite their support for Labour over many decades,’ she records in her Labour case for respecting the outcome of the 2016 referendum. Both Flint and her case have now felt the ire of the progressive Brexitariat,

Brendan O’Neill

Let’s be honest about what a second referendum means

A second referendum would be a political abomination. And it’s about time more of us said so. We need to get real about what a second referendum would mean. If we have another referendum in which Remain is an option on the ballot paper, it will be one of the few times in the history of British democracy that the British people voted for something and it didn’t happen. It will be the first time we made a clear, mass democratic choice and the political class turned around to us and said: ‘Sorry, you can’t have that. You have to vote again.’ The precedent this would set would be dreadful.

Monday

21 Oct 2019

David Gunnlaugsson

Why the EU should listen to Boris Johnson – not Parliament

Boris Johnson has been criticised for sending the European Union a letter conveying his real opinion about a Brexit extension along with a photocopy of the letter Parliament dictated and forced him to send. Yet the Prime Minister was entirely justified – and right – in doing so. Parliament certainly can – and should – decide what a Government is allowed to do. But no parliament can tell a prime minister what to think, what to feel or what to believe. And the consequences of MPs attempting to do that could quickly backfire. Take the European Union. Dealing with the EU is the role of the executive. When my government decided

Robert Peston

This will be the make-or-break day for Boris Johnson’s Brexit

The important vote today will be on the timetable, or programme motion, for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the law that must pass before Brexit. The government wants it on the statute book by 31 October. Labour will try to humiliate the PM by forcing a delay. One minister tells me that the programme motion is therefore the ‘real meaningful vote’. Tory rebels say they will probably back Boris Johnson’s timetable if he enshrines the protection of environmental standards and workers’ rights in the bill and if the bill transfers to parliament power to decide whether transition to full Brexit is to last 14 months, 26 months or 38 months. But

Isabel Hardman

Will MPs block the government’s mad dash to get the Withdrawal Agreement Bill through?

Appropriately, given the length of time it has taken politicians of all colours to continue putting off taking any sort of decision on Brexit, the government has decided to try to break the legislative speed record this week by rushing through the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in just a few days. Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the timetable for the legislation in a business statement to the Commons this afternoon, telling MPs that they will be rattling through the second reading tomorrow, as well as starting the committee stage, which will continue the following day, with all Commons stages wrapping up by Thursday. There are threats to make MPs

Isabel Hardman

Why everyone benefitted from Bercow’s refusal to allow today’s meaningful vote

It was hardly a surprise that this afternoon John Bercow ruled out allowing the government to bring back its meaningful vote on Brexit. Still less of a surprise that this ruling took up nearly an hour in the Commons of points of order from MPs on all sides making points which changed the minds of no-one, and certainly not the Speaker. The Speaker’s argument was as the one the Tories had been preparing for over the weekend: he ruled that it would be ‘repetitive and disorderly’ to hold a second vote on the same motion. What they perhaps hadn’t prepared for was the Speaker doing a series of impersonations of

Katy Balls

Tories buoyed by response to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal

Is this the week Boris Johnson passes his Brexit deal? As ever with Brexit, there is a chance that what is meant to be a decisive week in terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union ends up leading to more delay and confusion. However, whatever happens in the coming days, senior Tories are increasingly relaxed. It’s not that ministers are confident they will be able to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill unscathed. Instead they believe Johnson’s deal puts the party in a good position for whatever comes next. The risk to Johnson agreeing a deal before a general election was that senior Brexiteers in his own party would

Saturday

19 Oct 2019

Isabel Hardman

The question for wavering MPs: do they really trust Boris Johnson?

Boris Johnson is still pursuing today’s vote as a decisive moment for the Brexit deal, rather than the start of yet another delay, with the Letwin amendment meaning the real meaningful vote could be moved to Tuesday. His opponents are speaking in a similar vein, framing the choice facing those MPs yet to make up their minds as being one concerning how trustworthy the Prime Minister is. Perhaps the most powerful argument against trusting Johnson came from DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds, who told the Chamber that: ‘It was once said that no British prime minister could ever agree to such terms and indeed those who sought the leadership of

James Forsyth

With ‘glutinous emollience’, Boris Johnson tries to win the House round

Boris Johnson is in ‘glutinous emollience’ mode today. His opening statement in the debate was not combative but an attempt to cajole and persuade. He said that he would draw on the talents of the whole House in the next stage of the negotiations. In response to Philip Hammond, he accepted the Nandy / Snell amendments which would enable parliament to set the government’s approach to the next stage of the negotiations with the EU. Even when calling on Oliver Letwin not to move his amendment—which threatens to muddy the waters today as Katy explains—he stressed that he thought Letwin was motivated by good intentions. But if the Letwin amendment

Katy Balls

Letwin amendment threatens to derail ‘Super Saturday’

Those expecting MPs to finally make a decision on Brexit today may be left disappointed. This afternoon MPs are due to vote on a government motion – on what has been dubbed ‘Super Saturday’ – to signal their approval of the Prime Minister’s deal. The numbers are tight but there is optimism on the government benches that they could do it. This morning Steve Baker told his European Research Group colleagues that they ought to back the deal (for further updates see The Spectator‘s list of MPs backing the deal). However, MPs may not even get to this vote. John Bercow has this morning accepted Oliver Letwin’s amendment to the

James Forsyth

Will the Brexit deal get a majority?

The numbers will be tight today. As I say in The Sun this morning, one minister believes that things are so close that there is a real chance that the Speaker John Bercow may end up having to break a tied vote. Though if the Letwin amendment passes, the vote this afternoon will lose some of its clarity. It is remarkable that Boris Johnson is so close to getting a majority for his deal despite having lost the support of the DUP. Cabinet Ministers are increasingly optimistic that the government might just pull this off. When Cabinet met yesterday afternoon, the Chief Whip Spencer ‘scrupulously avoided giving any numbers’, according

Douglas Carswell

I’d vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal in a heartbeat

As the only person ever to have been elected for Ukip in a General Election, if I was in the House of Commons today I would not just vote in favour of Boris Johnson’s deal. I would do so cheerfully in the knowledge that this is pretty much what I have spent much of my adult life campaigning for. Firstly, UK law will become supreme in the UK. No longer will we be under the jurisdiction of the EU courts. Nor will we be bound by EU regulation. There’s none of Theresa May’s nonsense about a ‘common rule book’. We will be free to determine our own standards. Who knows,