Boris johnson

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Sorry, sir, we only stock books we agree with

I was on my way to the pub the other evening, about seven o’clock, rain lashing down on my head, when I saw that there was a dim, yellowish light on in the bookshop. Peering closer through the downpour I could see five women sitting on a circle of chairs around either a table or a cauldron, talking animatedly to one another. Or perhaps chanting, I don’t know. I crossed the road and stood directly outside the shop window with my arms outstretched, mouthing at those inside: ‘Where’s my book? Where’s my book?’ Six weeks previously I had wandered into the shop to see if they were stocking The Great

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why Downing Street still hasn’t named a new Bank governor

Private secretary: ‘The Bank of England governorship, Prime Minister… opposition MPs have been saying it’s a political stitch-up and calling for the shortlist to be made public. Have you had time to look at the file?’ Boris, distracted: ‘Stitch-up piffle! I thought we’d picked my economist chum Gerard Lyons — very sound on Brexit.’ ‘Treasury wouldn’t have him, Prime Minister. They’re trying to fix it for one of their own, Sir John Kingman, former second permanent secretary, now chairman of Legal& General.’ ‘And weren’t we going to pad the list with women and, ah, minorities? Like Baroness Wossername?’ ‘You mean Labour peer Shriti Vadera, chair of Santander UK, Prime Minister?

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Why did Boris Johnson bother giving his conference speech at all?

What was the point of Boris Johnson’s speech? It didn’t contain any announcements for Tory activists to clutch as they left the hall. Details of his proposals to resolve the Brexit stand-off were missing, and will instead be unveiled to parliament later today. It even finished on a strangely low-energy note, rather as if Johnson had ended up emulating the electric cars he had been praising by running out of battery sooner than expected. Yes, there were jokes, but many of them, particularly his fish-themed mocking of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, have turned up in conference speeches of years gone by. So why bother? Before he appeared to run

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson’s weapons-grade speech

This was not just the best speech that Boris Johnson has given since becoming Prime Minister, it’s the first proper weapons-grade speech that he has given since running for the job. It showcased his gift of communication, his ability to mobilise language to uplift, enthuse and motivate. To convey a sense of cheerful mission – even when it comes to Brexit and correct the tone: seek to replace the acrimony with optimism.   To say that we love Europe but after 45 years of constitutional change we need a new relationship with it. It showed use of comic metaphor. ‘If parliament were a laptop, the screen would be showing the pizza

Sunday

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson won’t surrender the metaphor

In a feisty interview on The Andrew Marr Show, Boris Johnson defended his use of the term ‘surrender act’, calling it a ‘martial metaphor’ of the type that has long been used in British politics. He said that he had been a ‘model of restraint’ in his own language. He did, however, express regret for sounding so dismissive of the Labour MP Paula Sherriff’s concerns about death threats. It was clear that Boris Johnson had three intentions in this interview. First, to ram home his message that the Benn Act is a ‘surrender act’ – I lost count of the number of times he used the phrase. Second, to try

Saturday

Robert Peston

We will find out in a few days whether Brexit will happen

There is probably now just a week or so from the end of the Tory conference for Boris Johnson to make a breakthrough on a Brexit deal, or for talks to end. Why? Well, government sources tell me the EU Commission has been told by British negotiators in no uncertain terms that Johnson will not quit to avoid being forced by the Benn Act to ask for a Brexit delay. And Brussels was also told that if Johnson is still prime minister on October 19, he will find a way to get round the law and refuse to ask for a delay. So Barnier and Juncker have literally no time to decide

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the Tories intend to avoid a repeat of the 2017 manifesto disaster

The Tory plan was to fight the 2017 election as a Brexit election. But that strategy was derailed by a disastrous manifesto that alienated the Tory base and allowed Labour to change the subject to domestic policy. One of the problems with that manifesto was that it was written by a very small clique, meaning that problems weren’t spotted or ignored. To try and avoid a repeat of this, Boris Johnson has put a committee of Cabinet ministers in charge of overseeing the manifesto, I report in The Sun this morning. In line with the Pickles Review into what went wrong at the 2017 election, the Chancellor, the Home Secretary,

Thursday

The Spectator

The balance of power in our constitution has been lost

Until recently, we used to comfort ourselves with the thought that the United Kingdom’s uncodified constitution was a great national strength. We didn’t need guidance laid down in one document because precedence, compromise and common sense were enough to ensure the smooth operation of power. As soon as a document is written, power passes from democratic institutions to courts where activist judges can interpret these documents in a political way. In Britain, this is not meant to happen. Our legal system has been seen, world over, as politically neutral, one of the most trustworthy in the world. So what are we to make of a Supreme Court granting itself powers

Alexander Pelling-Bruce Alexander Pelling-Bruce

Has the Supreme Court handed Boris Johnson a Brexit escape route?

The Supreme Court’s judgement is the latest constitutional perversion after the Benn act. But ironically it may assist the Government in achieving its objective of Britain leaving the EU by 31 October, without having to seek an extension to the Article 50 process. In paragraph 34, the Supreme Court states that its ‘proper function’ under our constitution is to give effect to the separation of powers (which justifies court intervention in relation to prorogation). Then, in what appears to be an innocuous sentence in paragraph 55, it says that it is to be “remember[ed] always that the actual task of governing is for the executive and not for Parliament or the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Has Boris Johnson ruined his chances of passing a Brexit deal?

Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the Commons last night was clearly part of his strategy to set up a ‘people vs parliament’ narrative ahead of an election. We can debate the rights and wrongs of telling MPs that the best way to honour Jo Cox would be to get Brexit done, but there are also political implications of this. The Prime Minister’s team has, over the past few weeks, been making contact with Labour MPs to try to persuade them of the merits of supporting a Brexit deal should one come before the Commons. Many of them have been sympathetic: they regret not supporting Theresa May’s deal and are fearful of

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The torture chamber: how opposition MPs plan to humiliate Boris

When Jeremy Corbyn declared at Labour conference that his party would only allow an election once no deal had been taken off the table, MPs began to wonder if it could be put off until the new year. The Prime Minister’s tormentors can’t agree when exactly they would like to go to the country, but all agree that there are plenty of ways to torture Boris Johnson. It’s as good a way as any to pass the time. The Tories no longer have a working majority, so these opposition MPs — aided by activist Speaker John Bercow — now hold the power. What will they do? Well, the Conservatives are meant

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson has shown a worrying lack of emotional intelligence

The House of Commons has just turned very ugly indeed, after Boris Johnson dismissed a Labour MP who was complaining about the abuse and threats she and other colleagues are receiving as ‘humbug’. Paula Sherriff – who has had a particularly sustained campaign of abuse against her, including swastikas being left at her office – made an angry appeal to the Prime Minister to consider his language, and referred to the murder of her colleague Jo Cox as she did. This is what happened: Paula Sherriff: I genuinely do not seek to stifle robust debate but this evening the Prime Minister has continually used pejorative language to describe an Act of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn clash spectacularly in the Commons

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just clashed spectacularly in the House of Commons. Boris Johnson repeatedly goaded Jeremy Corbyn over his refusal to go for an election now.  This was not a Prime Minister acting like one who had been chastened by the Supreme Court’s decision, but one determined to set himself up as the man determined to deliver Brexit against a parliament that was trying to stop him. One of the most striking features of his speech was how frequently he declared that the public could tell what was really going on, that MPs were trying to block Brexit. In response, Jeremy Corbyn was not at his best.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Can New York give the Brexit negotiations some momentum?

Three events will dominate next week. The Supreme Court’s decision on the legality of prorogation, Labour conference and the UN General Assembly. As I say in The Sun this morning, Boris Johnson’s address in New York will be more ‘Green Giant’ than ‘Incredible Hulk’. He’ll stress the UK’s environmental credentials; announcing a new biodiversity fund designed to help save the African elephant, the black rhino and the pangolin. But more important than the speech he’ll make is the meetings that will take place in the margins. He’ll see most of the key players in the Brexit talks in New York, including a meeting with the Irish leader Leo Varadkar on

Thursday

Toby Young

David Cameron is more authentic than Boris Johnson

I don’t recall exactly when I first met David Cameron, but it must have been in Oxford in 1985 shortly after the beginning of Michaelmas term. I was a third year at Brasenose studying PPE and he was a first year, also doing PPE. I remember him being friendly and down to earth and canny enough to keep his political views to himself. At the time, Brasenose was dominated by a group calling itself the ‘left caucus’ and while it wasn’t social suicide to be identified as a Tory, it was a bit infra dig. After Cameron twigged that we were both ‘in the closet’, so to speak, he confessed

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why there’s still a chance of a deal

One of the reasons why Boris Johnson is Prime Minister is that he is an optimist. After the negativity of the May years, the Tory party yearned for some can-do spirit, which he was able to provide. But his relentless positivity has made it difficult to assess how realistic a Brexit deal is. At cabinet on Tuesday he made very bullish noises about the prospects of an agreement being reached. How realistic is this, though? Johnson told the assembled ministers that he’d had a ‘good lunch’ with Jean-Claude Juncker. There were chuckles. More seriously, he pointed out that the EU had shifted from its prior position, which was that the

Robin Oakley

My puppy-training advice for Boris Johnson

President Harry Truman once observed: ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’ Boris Johnson, as Prime Minister in the unfriendliest era British politics has known, and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds have taken on a Jack Russell puppy called Dilyn. They and I are therefore among the 24 per cent of UK citizens who are dog-owners, with nearly nine million animals in our national ownership. Taking on a puppy in retirement, said our friends, was madness — especially in a house full of antiques and with a carefully tended garden. Certainly, the game has changed since we last raised a puppy 40 years ago. So have the overheads.

Tuesday

Robert Peston

Revealed: The Brexit deal Boris Johnson wants

The shape of the Brexit fix that Boris Johnson wants from the EU’s 27 leaders is now clear. Here it is: In place of the dreaded backstop – that insurance policy for keeping open the border on the island of Ireland hated by most Tory Brexiters and Northern Ireland’s DUP – Johnson is suggesting: a) A unified single market for agriculture between Northern Ireland and the Republic (a single set of what are known are sanitary and phytosanitary rules), so that cross border flows of livestock and food is not hindered; b) Customs and limited unintrusive goods standards checks on the island but away from the border itself; c) No customs union with the EU for either the whole

Monday

Steerpike

David Cameron makes life awkward for Boris Johnson and Michael Gove

Oh dear. Relations between Boris Johnson and Michael Gove could become a bit awkward this week after an extract from David Cameron’s memoirs published today in the Times revealed that the current PM asked Cameron whether Gove was “a bit cracked”. Johnson apparently inquired about the mental wellbeing of his now close cabinet colleague after Gove jumped ship and decided to mount his own leadership campaign following Cameron’s resignation in 2016. Cameron has not held back in targeting his former friends and colleagues in his autobiography which will be published later this week. In other extracts published by the Times, he said Boris only backed Leave to help his career and he

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: A Lib Dem government would revoke Article 50, says Jo Swinson

Steve Barclay – Boris Johnson ‘believes in Brexit’ David Cameron’s memoirs are due to be released this Thursday, with some of the more explosive highlights already seeing serialisation. The Sunday Times has published an extract today that argues that Boris Johnson did not believe in Brexit, and only backed the Leave campaign to win over the Conservative rank and file. The Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay joined Sophy Ridge and immediately refuted the former Prime Minister’s claims: "The prime minister was committed to leave" – Brexit secretary @SteveBarclay tells Sky News that Boris Johnson does believe in #Brexit, following the criticism from former PM David Cameron.#Ridge For more, head here: https://t.co/wp1ylDj7vu