Politics

The prime minister’s frantic last attempt to persuade Northern Ireland’s DUP to back her third meaningful vote on Tuesday involves a promise that if the controversial backstop is ever triggered, Great Britain would adopt any new food and business rules that could be forced by the EU on Northern Ireland. This is a high risk offer by Theresa May to NI’s unionist party – which has huge clout with her because without its votes in parliament her government would collapse. As a minister told me, for the DUP to accept the offer it would have to trust that a future prime minister and government would honour the pledge – which

Philip Hammond: Leaving the EU on 29 March ‘now physically impossible’… This morning, the Chancellor sat down with Andrew Marr following a week in which his Spring Statement was overshadowed by other events, including a series of critical Brexit votes in the Commons, and an appalling terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. With the government suffering another heavy defeat on its withdrawal deal, this time by a margin of 149 votes, Marr expressed the widespread concern that Brexit may never happen: AM: When are we going to leave the EU? PH: If the Prime Minister’s deal is able to muster a majority this week and get through,

A besetting sin in this process has been over-cleverness. As so often in our history, the ‘stupid’ people are right. The Brexit question is a classic example of something which is simple but not easy. It is ‘Do you want to be ruled by those you can choose, or by those you can’t choose?’ Voters understood this, and gave a clear answer. Clever people keep complicating it. Three leading examples of this, I am afraid — Oliver Letwin, Nicholas Boles and Michael Gove — are good friends of mine. Precisely the qualities which endear them to me in private conversation are proving a menace to the public weal. Their ability to

The relationship between Tory MPs who want a softer Brexit and local Conservative members has been strained for some time. This morning things came to a head. The backbench MP Nick Boles, who has been campaigning to stop a no-deal Brexit, announced that he was resigning from his local Conservative association. Boles will still remain as the MP for Grantham and Stamford until the next election, and hopes to keep the whip as a Conservative during that time. In a letter to his local party, Boles set out the reasons for his decision to leave. He remembered how he had been at odds with his association over other issues in

This weekend all eyes are on the DUP. As I say in The Sun this morning, if the government can satisfy them, then Theresa May has a chance of winning the vote on Tuesday because of the domino effect that them coming across will set off. But if the DUP won’t come over, there’s no point holding a third meaningful vote. The DUP spent yesterday in intensive talks with senior government figures. I understand that these talks were broadly positive. One Cabinet Minister close to the process tells me that the chances of the DUP backing the deal are ‘a bit better than 50:50. I’d put it at 60:40.’ What

Obviously the Prime Minister herself bears chief responsibility for Brexit mistakes, but she must have been terribly badly advised throughout, not only by political staff — who always get it in the neck when things go wrong — but by the professional civil service, which tends to escape censure. I have been genuinely surprised by the bureaucrats’ uselessness in the negotiations. In my Thatcher studies, now drawing peacefully to their close, I find that the mandarinate, though out of sympathy with Mrs Thatcher, did, on the whole, do its best for her. It was excited by the possibilities she opened up, and enjoyed surmounting the various crises. People like Anthony