Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Monday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Brexit breakthrough? Lidington tries to woo MPs with ‘legally binding changes’

There’s long been a view among senior Brexiteers that the way the EU and UK would agree a deal would be by running the negotiations down to the wire and Brussels offering a last minute concession. This appeared to be the strategy in play on Monday night as Theresa May found herself locked in talks on changes to the backstop in Strasbourg with less than 24 hours to go until her deal is due to be voted on in the Commons. In turn, David Lidington was given the undesirable task of addressing frustrated MP in the Chamber. Theresa May’s de facto deputy adopted an apologetic tone at the despatch box

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The choice voters must be given if there is a second referendum

Of all the possible outcomes on Brexit one stands out as more unpleasant, more outrageous, more guaranteed to provoke mass anger in the country than any other. No, not Britain leaving the EU on 29 March with no deal – however much that would send some into their imaginary bunkers for fear of the sky falling in. It is Britain being made to vote in a second referendum – without the option of no deal on the ballot paper. Worryingly, this is exactly the outcome which a large part of the Labour party – including, crucially, the leadership – seem intent on achieving. Two weeks ago, the leadership produced a

Steerpike Steerpike

The mystery of Tom Watson and the ‘Future Britain Group’ website

When seven Labour MPs formally announced that they were leaving the party to form the Independent Group on 18 February, it didn’t take long for deputy Labour leader Tom Watson to release a video about their departure. In his statement, Watson lamented that his colleagues had decided to leave and suggested that there should be a reshuffle of Labour’s front bench, to accommodate the ‘Social democratic and democratic socialist traditions’ of the party. Three weeks later, on the 9 March, Watson changed tack and announced that instead he would form a new party for social democrat MPs within Labour, called ‘Future Britain Group’, which had its first meeting today. But, despite

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There may be a Brexit breakthrough on the backstop

There’s increasing chatter in Westminster about a possible Brexit breakthrough. The argument goes that if the Tusk / Juncker letter of the 14th of January was turned into a protocol—which would be legally binding, then there would be grounds for Geoffrey Cox to change his legal advice. Why, because the letter declares that: ‘The European Commission can also confirm our shared understanding that the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Do not affect or supersede the provisions of the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement of 10 April 1998 in any way whatsoever; they do not alter in any way the arrangements under Strand II of the 1998 Agreement

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There are no good options left for Theresa May

There are no good options left for Theresa May. Barring a remarkable turnaround (and there is more optimism on the government side than there was this morning), she is not going to get enough on the backstop to satisfy the DUP and so her deal will not pass on Tuesday. Her deal failing will trigger a series of events that will involve the Commons not only compelling the government to request an Article 50 extension but also seeking to take over the Brexit process. Over the weekend, the views of key Tories on how disastrous this would be have hardened up. One influential, loyalist backbencher told me earlier that it

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jo Coburn gives Paul Mason the death stare

On Friday we saw Will Self and Mark Francois have a huge stare-off on Politics Live. Monday has arrived, and this time it was the turn of businesswoman Michelle Dewberry, left-wing commentator Paul Mason, and presenter Jo Coburn to clash. The argument began after a short break in the programme, when Coburn suggested that there had been a heated discussion between Mason and Dewberry off-camera in the pause. Dewberry responded: ‘that’s a very diplomatic way of putting it,’ and then launched into a scathing attack on Paul Mason, saying: ‘You have been deeply rude to me in the break, you find that funny… when I just called you out on

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Will Theresa May pledge to quit to get her deal through?

Forget Brexit (I dare you!). The game now, in the Tory Party, is positioning for the looming leadership election. Because I can find no one in the Cabinet or on the backbenches who still believes Theresa May will be PM for longer than a few weeks, such is their fury and agony that we’re 18 days from Brexit and we still don’t know the how, the when, or even the whether we’ll leave (OK, so it was impossible to forget Brexit – sorry!). Even those who think the petard that’s hoisting her was made in Brussels say she had a choice about attaching herself to it. Here is the voice

James Kirkup James Kirkup

MPs have failed on a grand scale over Brexit

A Commons defeat for Theresa May’s proposed EU withdrawal agreement this week is priced in. Westminster has shrugged and accepted another Commons drubbing as a given. MPs’ refusal to back the deal is just another fact of life, something mundane and barely worth commenting on; all the action is in considering reactions and responses to that defeat: will Mrs May cling on? Who might follow her? But that assumed Commons refusal deserves more attention because it represents failure, failure on a grand scale. Failure of leadership and failure of courage. MPs’ failure to do their jobs. I think MPs should back the deal. I don’t think it’s a very good

Sunday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Women With Balls podcast: the Jess Phillips edition

When Jess Phillips first entered parliament in 2015, she quickly made the headlines after she told Diane Abbott to ‘f— off’ when they had a disagreement over whether Jeremy Corbyn had appointed enough women to his shadow cabinet. Since then, Phillips is frequently in the news for speaking up on the political issues she cares about – recently going viral for a speech on olives in which she lambasted the government for earnings caps on immigrants. I’m delighted to have Phillips as a guest on The Spectator‘s Women With Balls podcast. When we spoke last month, we discussed what it’s like to go viral, growing up in a political family

Matthew Taylor

Sunday Shows Round-up: Sir Keir Starmer – Three month Brexit extension is ‘doable’

Jeremy Hunt – We face risk of ‘losing Brexit’ Andrew Marr was joined by the Foreign Secretary ahead of a critical week for the government. Although the Brexit deadline day has been enshrined in law as the 29th of March, the difficulties in securing a viable withdrawal agreement have prompted calls for the UK government to seek more time for negotiations. With the Commons soon set to vote on whether the UK should seek to extend the Article 50 process, Hunt told Marr what he felt this could mean for the future of Brexit: JH: This is a very important moment for us. There is a risk, and a possibility,

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Killer-Heels Tess and Boris the Johnson – Westminster hard-boiled

Your latest challenge was to submit a short story in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction set in the corridors of power. Raymond Chandler cast a long shadow over an entry bristling with stinging one-liners, dames, black humour and grandstanding similes laid on with a trowel. The mean streets of Westminster were the most popular setting, though there were glimpses of Brussels and the Oval Office too. Commiserations to unlucky losers Bill Greenwell, D.A. Prince and Alan Millard. High fives to the winners, printed below, who trouser £25 each. Adrian Fry Down these dull corridors a man must go who is not himself dull. Besides, I was expected in Committee

Nigel Lawson

The purpose of Article 50 was to make it as hard as possible to leave

I read Paul Collier’s article in your 23 February issue, which has just reached me in la France profonde, with interest. The principal author of Article 50 was John Kerr, aka Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. I have known John for quite a long time, and enjoyed his company: when I became chancellor in 1983 he was my principal private secretary. He explained to me some time ago, before the referendum, that the purpose of Article 50 was to make it as difficult as possible for a country to leave the European Union. A clever man, he did a good job. Nigel Lawson House of Lords, London SW1 This letter appeared in this week’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Anna Soubry and the Independent Group don’t make a good fit

What does the Independent Group actually stand for? We know what they are against: Brexit and anti-Semitism. But so far the fledgling group has been somewhat shy about coming up with policies. With TIG MPs this week reportedly entering talks with the Electoral Commission about become a political party, they had better get a move on. Only Mr S. suspects the task won’t be an easy one, given that one of their members – former Tory MP Anna Soubry – seems to take a difference stance to the bulk of their colleagues on most issues. To help out, Steerpike has compiled a list of where Anna Soubry stands compared to her

Saturday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The death of Shamima Begum’s baby is a tragedy – but not Sajid Javid’s fault | 9 March 2019

It would take a heart of stone – and occasionally I possess just such an organ – not to feel sympathy for Shamima Begum after she lost a third baby, her son Jarrah, barely three weeks old, in a Syrian refugee camp. But should we feel guilt as well as compassion for leaving the child – all unbeknown to him, a British citizen and possibly Dutch too – to fester in the camp occupied by IS refugees? More precisely, how responsible should the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feel, having deprived Miss Begum of her British citizenship? The BBC news all day long has linked him to the death: criticism of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is there any way that May’s deal could pass on Tuesday?

The government’s efforts to get changes to the backstop have run into a brick wall in Brussels. The EU thinks, with justification, that MPs won’t allow no deal and so feels under no pressure to make significant concessions. As I write in The Sun this morning, one minister fully briefed on the negotiations says ‘we’re at what the hell do we do time’ But without a change to the backstop, Theresa May’s deal is going down to another heavy defeat on Tuesday. That won’t be the end of the matter, though. For the next day, parliament will vote against leaving on March 29th with no deal. Parliament will then almost

Ross Clark Ross Clark

It would be a mistake for Tory rebels to back May’s Brexit deal

How unsophisticated can Theresa May get in her efforts to persuade MPs to back her crumbling Brexit deal? Earlier this week we had her £1.6 billion bribe for “left behind” constituencies of Labour MPs who might just be tempted to back her deal. Yesterday, in Grimsby, she turned to her own backbenchers, telling them: “Reject [the deal] and no-one knows what will happen. We may not leave the EU for many months. We may leave without the protections a deal provides, we may never leave at all.” She is of course right: no-one knows what will happen on Tuesday nor in the coming three weeks before 29 March. It does

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why I’ll be avoiding London on the day after Brexit

A kind billionaire called Jeremy Hosking, whom I do not know personally, has invited us to join the Britannia Express, a steam train, on 30 March, the day after Brexit. The train will traverse Wales and England, starting at Swansea and ending in Sunderland. In an unspoken rebuke to the metropolis, it will not travel via London. The train will, says the invitation, commemorate ‘the UK’s exit (or non-exit) from the European Union’. This is the opposite, I suppose, of the European train which people like the late Sir Geoffrey Howe constantly exhorted us to climb aboard. What to do? The most likely situation on the day is that we still

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brexiteers may miss their best chance to take Britain out of the EU

Theresa May was only ever going to win approval for her Brexit deal by persuading MPs that it was the least worst option. Remain-supporting MPs, she hoped, would come to believe that her deal was the only way of preventing no deal. At the same time, she hoped that Tories worried about ‘no Brexit’ would see her agreement as the best way of ensuring that Britain actually left the EU. But with the Commons vote on May’s Brexit deal just days away, both parts of this strategy are in trouble. Little wonder that the Chief Whip sounded downbeat about the prospects of winning next Tuesday’s vote at cabinet this week.

Friday

Alastair Benn

The Tories have a problem with anti-Muslim prejudice

The Tories have a problem with anti-Muslim prejudice. There is a pathology there. It’s not hard to see. And it runs from the vulgarised dog whistle stuff, like Conservative councillors and activists who feel comfortable sharing crude Islamophobic content, right up to the CCHQ campaign tactics which led to Zac Goldsmith’s ill-thought through targeting of Sadiq Khan’s links to his local mosque. And it reflects what makes the Corbyn anti-Semitism stuff so alarming – an intellectual basis for making one community a menace to the whole fabric of UK society. Understanding why anti-Semites seem to feel comfortable in the Labour Party gives us a good indication why there appears to be space in the Conservative

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Barnier offers May a non-concession on the backstop

After weeks of speculation, Michel Barnier has finally revealed the concession Brussels is willing to grant Theresa May on the backstop. The only problem is one could argue it’s not actually a concession. Instead, it’s the Northern Ireland-only backstop the UK negotiating team previously vetoed. This afternoon the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator told ambassadors the EU is willing to give Britain a unilateral exit from the UK-wide parts of the backstop plan for Northern Ireland. He has since taken to social media to set out exactly what the EU is offering: 4/5 EU commits to give UK the option to exit the Single Customs Territory unilaterally, while the other elements of the