Politics

Theresa May (and I) are just back from Argentina. And she is about to enter the most important week of her political life and the most important week in this country’s political and constitutional history for decades. It starts tomorrow with the publication of a summary of the legal advice on the PM’s Brexit plan – which will expose an irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of the so-called backstop to keep open the border on the island of Ireland. On the one hand, if the UK were to trigger the backstop at the end of 2020, which would effectively take us into the EU’s customs union, the UK would never

Keir Starmer – Government may be in contempt of Parliament Sophy Ridge began the day by speaking to the Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer. Starmer authored an article for this morning’s Sunday Telegraph, in which he announced that Labour would work with other opposition parties to declare the government to be in contempt of Parliament. The row concerns the publication of legal advice that the government received from the Attorney General, Sir Geoffrey Cox, which it has since been ordered to reveal in full. The government is reluctant to release more than the summary. Ridge asked Sir Keir to elaborate: “With nine days left before the vote, we shouldn’t

You seemed to embrace the latest challenge – to supply seriously misguided love poems – especially wholeheartedly, and I admired your powers of invention in finding so many ways of making my toes curl. Even Brexit got a look-in: ‘Let me be your Brexit backstop/ I will never set you free…’ (Ian Barker). Dishonourable mentions go to Hamish Wilson and David Shields. The winners take £25 each. The extra fiver is Brian Murdoch’s. Brian Murdoch Let me compare thee to this bag of chips, For you are as desirable. They taste Just slightly salty, like a woman’s lips And steam invitingly, fresh, hot, and chaste. In shape each single chip

George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday at the age of 94, oversaw the end of the cold war. Together with Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, he helped to ensure that the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the reunification of Germany took place peacefully. Even as hawks in Washington, DC warned that Mikhail Gorbachev was simply a more nefarious version of his predecessors, Bush ended up embracing him. He represented a realpolitik, a mixture of caution and prudence, that was the obverse of what his son, George W. Bush, ended up practicing as president. Though the right has always awarded the credit for

Theresa May has sought to frame her deal as a battle between the forces of common sense and wreckers – either Brexiteers or Remainers. Sam Gyimah’s resignation complicates this narrative due to the type of politican he is. Not a firebreathing Eurosceptic allergic to the idea of compromise, not an Adonis-style hyperventilater who never recovered from losing the referendum. He’s a moderate, who tried his best to reconcile himself to Theresa May’s deal – and a young MP who, unlike her, will be around to deal with the consequences. She had hoped that the longer people had to reflect on her deal, the more people would see her deal as

No-go-day was meant to be yesterday, I say in The Sun. This was the moment when the Department for Exiting the EU wanted the principal purpose of government to become getting the country ready for leaving the EU regardless of whether there was a deal or not. Number 10 argued that a vaguer deadline of late November / early December was better. They thought that this would give more time to tell whether full on ‘no deal’ prep was necessary or not. But now, Number 10 is indicating that it wants to hold off until after the meaningful vote on the 11th of December. This is not a good idea,