Politics

Since Boris’s thumping general election win in December, I’ve lost count of the number of people – both Remainers and Leavers – who tell me that no deal just won’t happen. Boris needs a deal, they insist, and the EU will bend a little here and there to give the Prime Minister a ladder to climbdown. Yet I’ve always been convinced that no deal is far and away the most likely outcome of the EU negotiations in 2020. Today’s warning from the PM – in which he talks down the prospects of a deal – make me even more sure this is the case. Why am I convinced no deal is so likely? Firstly, the

In recent months, Boris Johnson and his team have been keen to suggest there is a hard deadline when it comes to agreeing a Brexit deal. The Prime Minister argued last month that both sides ought to walk away from the talks and prepare for no deal if there was no agreement by the EU summit on October 15. With last night’s summit coming and going with no agreement made, the chances of a deal appear on the surface to have fallen significantly. With EU leaders calling for the trade talks to continue, Johnson has this morning offered a rebuke. Speaking from Downing Street, the Prime Minister said that after little progress at

Test and trace, according to the leaked minutes of Sage’s meeting on 21 September, has had a ‘marginal’ impact on the infection rate of Covid-19. But let no one say it has not achieved anything. It has succeeded in the virtually impossible: making HS2 look relatively good value for money. Documents revealed to Sky News have shown that consultants from the Boston Consulting Group who have been working on the scheme have been paid day rates of up to £7,360 – which if annualised would work out at a salary of £1.5 million. It makes them the highest-paid public sector workers in the country, earning ten times as much as

Boris Johnson probably thought he emerged from Prime Minister’s Questions this week having maximised his freedom of manoeuvre in the battle against coronavirus. Indeed, at one point he made it explicitly clear that he was not promising that there would be no second national lockdown, declaring: ‘I rule out nothing.’ While that may be the formal position, the politics of the issue now make it much less likely that the Prime Minister will go down this track. That should be a cause for optimism among all of us who believe further nationwide lockdowns will do immense economic harm while securing little if any lasting public health advantages. The Prime Minister is

The UK’s negotiating efforts with the EU this year have been dramatically better than under the May administration. But a bad deal is still a real risk as a result of political and time pressures.  Some recent reports suggest the UK may be flirting with dangerous compromises in key areas. The temptation to give ground just to get a deal over the line must be avoided. The government needs to remember that its key aim – re-establishing the UK as a genuinely independent state – can be met by simply leaving the transition period without a deal. Moreover, the government should bear in mind how limited the benefits of a thin