Uk politics

As Theresa May promises to bring her Withdrawal Agreement back next month for a fourth vote, few in Government believe it has much – if any – hope of passing. However, May’s decision to announce its return has increased speculation that she will be forced to stand down next month – whether her deal passes or not. When that time comes, the contest to find her successor will begin. Cabinet ministers have been minded to put off that contest for as long as possible, in part due to the fact that a Brexiteer like Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab is likely to fare best if the contest occurs before the

A Labour activist – since elected a councillor – sharing neo-Nazi material declaring that ‘the Jews declared war on Germany in 1933’. A video of a Labour MP rousing a rabble with the incendiary suggestion that ‘Zionism is the enemy of peace’. An activist for the self-proclaimed anti-racist party suggesting a march on their local synagogue. The secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour telling a crowd of pro-Palestinian marchers that Jews are ‘in the gutter’. In isolation, all of these are jaw-dropping and deeply alarming. That they all happened – or emerged – in a short period of time following years of similarly scandalous behaviour means that a certain ennui

Three decades after the fall of the Berlin wall, Europe is once again at a crossroads. In 1989 and the years that followed, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and Germany was unified. The newly independent, once Communist states – including my home country of Poland – embarked on the road to democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Poland was welcomed back into the European family, and we joined the ranks of Nato. But Europe now faces a threat to its hard-won unity. The threat can be seen in the imminent departure of the United Kingdom, violent protests in France, and the rise of insurgent political parties across the continent

Nigel Farage: This BBC is ‘in denial’ Andrew Marr was joined by Nigel Farage, whose Brexit party is in strong contention to win the European elections that are now required to take place on 23rd May. One poll has even put the fledgling party polling higher than the Conservatives for elections to the UK Parliament. With this in mind, Marr chose to pursue Farage on a number of other areas, which led to the interview rapidly becoming extremely heated. Katy Balls has more on ‘the most ridiculous interview ever’: #Marr asks the Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage if he’s changed his views on the NHS, climate change, gun control and

I see that the Lib Dems were also involved in trying to put up a joint candidate with the Greens, Renew and the ludicrous Change UK for the Peterborough by-election. This really is the tail wagging the dog. Leave the Greens aside for one moment, Change and Renew are not parties in the accepted sense of the word. Change want to change nothing and its (arriviste) members – as Rachel Johnson brilliantly demonstrated – disagree with nothing in the Lib Dem manifesto. Renew, meanwhile, scarcely exist at all. A more muscular party than the Lib Dems would have told these vaulting, arrogant dilettantes to get stuffed and hammered them at

As I walked through central Oxford at the weekend, an unfamiliar sight greeted me from the top of one of the university’s central buildings: the flag of the European Union had found its way amongst the spires. It fluttered gently in the breeze on the Clarendon Building, only yards from the Bodleian Library in the heart of the city. The flag’s arrival looked like a statement. After all, it is not customary for the university to represent a political entity on its flagpoles. At a time of continued debate across the country, the flag has been widely read as the university taking a stance on an ongoing and fractious national

The Brexit Party has had a further boost in the polls today, but as Nigel Farage’s fledgling group continues to hoover up support from both main parties, the story on the other side has been rather different. Start-up pro-remain party Change UK has been locked in a rivalry with its doppelgänger, the Lib Dems, achieving exactly nothing in terms of progress but creating a healthy groundswell of remainer exasperation on Twitter. Even the Change UK activists’ networks have been infected with a creeping feeling of futility, with many struggling to name a good reason to not vote for the Lib Dems or give a solid defence for why their new