This week, the Wolfson History Prize announced its shortlist. It is always worth drawing attention to, precisely because it is not attention-seeking. Neither ‘woke’ nor stuffy, the prize is simply interested in serious history. This year’s list of six ranges in terms of subject from birds in the ancient world and building Anglo-Saxon England, through
In his famous speech to both Houses of Parliament in March 1960, General De Gaulle praised Britain: ‘Although, since 1940, you have gone through the hardest vicissitudes in your history, only four statesmen [Churchill, Attlee, Eden and Macmillan] have guided your affairs in these extraordinary years. Thus, lacking meticulously worked-out constitutional texts, but by virtue
There is a logic in Mrs May’s late move to Labour. It is the same logic by which both parties, at the last general election, put forward very similar policies about Brexit. They need to stay together (while feigning disagreement for party reasons) to frustrate what people voted for. Just as they both said in
There is an obvious solution to the Brexit problem. It is based on a recognition that we want out and that the EU leaders want the moral high ground. Give it to them. Get them to expel us from the European Union. It cannot be too hard for them to persuade the ECJ, or some
Angela Merkel says disdainfully, ‘I admit I was not on top of the British parliament’s 17th-century procedural rules.’ Her implication is that they are absurdly out of date. Yet the old rule invoked by Mr Speaker Bercow is surely one that can hold up its head in the 21st century. It is that the executive
I had forgotten, until I checked this week, that Mrs May timed the general election of June 2017 in order to have a mandate for the Brexit negotiations. They began ten days after the nation voted. She conveyed no sense, at the time, of how the election result had changed her situation. In her beginning is
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
Jeremy Corbyn never ceases to attack Mrs May for trying to run down the clock. She has certainly done that, but she is also quite capable of running up the clock. This she is now doing with her threat of an extension of Article 50. She is like the mouse in the nursery rhyme, with
The BBC reported on Tuesday that the proposed closure of Honda’s plant at Swindon was largely caused by the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. The collapse of ‘just-in-time’ procedures would do for the factory, it said. That’s odd, I thought as I listened: why would you close a whole factory because of something that might
On Tuesday, Le Monde published a piece it had commissioned from me to explain why, from a British point of view, Brexit is not mad. (I was told that all the paper’s readers think it is.) I enjoyed doing this for two reasons. The first was seeing how my English came out in French. Le Monde
I am in a small minority in turning off the news when it is not about Brexit. The slow, agonising process fascinatingly brings out what people in public life really think. Do they care about representative government, or not? My estimate is that 60 per cent of the House of Commons do — while differing
The House of Commons does work better than it seems to, I promise you. When a big subject comes up, it spends weeks, months, even years, posturing and sparring, but it has a way of working out when a choice is truly important. Brexit has taken years, and is truly important. We saw the first
This column has laughed before at the BBC’s satirical wit in having a slot called ‘Reality Check’ on Brexit. If ‘Reality Check’ were serious, it would ask every MP each time one appeared: ‘How do you intend to carry out parliament’s promise, both before and after the referendum, to implement its result?’ Orders from Davos
The scale of the government’s defeat on Mrs May’s deal is, as everyone keeps saying, amazing — yet also not. Mrs May had been told again and again by Tory MPs who were not natural rebels that they could not accept her plan, partly because of the money, but chiefly because of the backstop trap.
Behind the incident of Anna Soubry being called a Nazi by a small group of Leave yobs beside College Green lies a classic Brexit sequence of events. For many months now, Remain protestors have infested that area. Their numbers are small, but they are well trained to insert themselves and their banners into relevant live
Earlier this month, the Quorn and Cottesmore hunts took separate votes on merging. The Quorn voted for, the Cottesmore against. So the merger will not take place. The fact that the Quorn wants a merger is, given its history, astonishing. For a century and a half, it was the epitome of fast, grand hunting —
Inside the Dominic Grieve amendment carried on Tuesday is the embryo of a new political party. Any parliamentary majority for what Sir Oliver Letwin, who voted for the amendment, calls ‘something real’ (‘Norway plus’) if Mrs May’s deal falls would depend on the support of a good many Labour MPs. After three months’ work, the organisers
Theresa May, William Hague and others say that the EU will not want to trap Britain in the backstop because it is not in its interest. It will want to move to a free-trade agreement for its own benefit. If that is so, why is the backstop the thing above all others upon which the
It will be interesting to see whether the about-face of the Daily Mail on Brexit makes the slightest difference to anything. Paul Dacre was admirably consistent when he was editor and the paper did well. But on the whole, the history of the Mail is that it is happy dramatically changing sides on major issues.
‘It’s time for Bond — Basildon Bond,’ is the joke among pro-Leave MPs as Theresa May serves up her mess of pottage as Brexit. Market research, however, shows the joke does not work on MPs under 40 because they do not know what Basildon Bond is. So perhaps I should explain to the hip Spectator
