Boris johnson

For me, last night provided the defining moment of the campaign. I was in the audience of 6,000 or so at the Wembley Arena listening to the final major debate, hosted by David Dimbleby. As far as I could tell, the evening was turning into a win on points for Vote Leave. Ruth Davidson, for the Remainers, had some moments of real success. She banged out a long list of military people who maintained that Britain would be safer within the European Union. She said she was going to take the words of these experts seriously even if the Leave speakers did not. But Andrea Leadsom, for the Leave side,

As many as eight million people are expected to tune into tonight’s BBC Brexit debate, where Boris Johnson, Sadiq Khan and Ruth Davidson will battle it out in their final attempt to win over voters ahead of the referendum. The last time Boris appeared in a TV debate, Remain’s ‘Operation batter Boris’ was mobilised in a misguided attempt to discredit the former Mayor of London. So can we expect more of the same tonight? On today’s Coffee House Shots, James Forsyth tells Fraser Nelson: ‘Ruth Davidson is a fierce debater. She is combative, she goes for people. It would be very surprising if she didn’t go for Boris. The one

The murder of Jo Cox was a moment that leaves you numb; an MP paying the ultimate price for the open society we live in. For the fact that our representatives live and work among us. Despite this tragedy, democracy must go on. By this time next week, the EU referendum will be over. The country will have made up its mind. Whether it is Leave or Remain, the UK will need a period of stability. This means David Cameron staying on as Prime Minister and, as I reveal in The Sun today, plans are already well advanced to ensure that this happens. Boris Johnson has signed a letter saying

All sides of the Remain campaign are turning their fire on Boris Johnson at the moment. But these attacks are, I argue in The Sun today, a mistake by the Remainers. First, it makes Boris, the most popular politician in the country, the face of the Out campaign when the IN campaign’s strategic aim is to make voters think that Nigel Farage embodies the Out case. Second, it means that the whole referendum is seen through the prism of the Tory leadership. This is not only bad for Tory party unity post-referendum, but also makes it harder for IN campaign to get the support of Labour party voters as it

The only arguments that matter in politics today are the arguments on the right. The only futures that are possible to imagine are those offered by the different strands of right-wing thought. The right’s arguments are not good to my mind. Nor are the futures it offers desirable. It is just that the right’s opponents are all but absent from the debate. The future of the country is up for grabs, but only the right hand of England is reaching up to seize it. The journalist in me almost hopes that the ‘leave’ campaign wins. The lies it has told will then be clear, and the liberal press will have

This week the Prime Minister devoted a speech to what he regarded as six lies being told by his opponents in the EU referendum campaign. He later confessed that the idea for the speech had come to him while watching the news at 9 p.m. the previous evening. It would have been better if he had contented himself with shouting at the television, rather than adding yet more rancour to what has become a slanging match. Most voters tune into an election campaign only in its final few weeks; those who do so now will find nothing but hysteria, hyperventilation and obloquy. Where, it is often asked, are the facts?

Momentum in the ‘Leave’ campaign seems to be growing after Brexit took the lead in two polls out today. There are, however, still several weeks until the actual day of the EU referendum and the gap between the two sides remains marginal (four per cent). But ‘Remain’ still seem shaken by these polls. Here’s how they spent the day fighting back: David Cameron said Brexit would put a bomb under Britain’s economy, going on to say that ‘the worst thing is, we would have lit the fuse ourselves’: The PM was backed up Lib Dem leader Tim Farron. In a joint event, Farron said the argument for ‘Leave’ was built

Although George Osborne is currently lagging behind Boris Johnson in favourability polls, he can take heart that an intervention by an unlikely figure could hamper his rival’s leadership appeal in certain Tory circles. Caitlin Moran — the Times columnist who led a 24-hour boycott of Twitter in 2013 — has pledged to run for Parliament if BoJo ever becomes Prime Minister. Yes, Moran, who was one of Russell Brand’s loudest cheerleaders — describing his turn on Question Time as ‘brilliant’ — during the comedian’s ‘revolution’, has her sights set on the Commons if Boris is successful in his leadership bid. Speaking at the Hay Festival, she said that while she prefers to work from the sidelines

This has been another fine week for EU deceits, lies and misrepresentations. The chutzpah of the week award must go to Nicky Morgan who earlier this week ‘slammed’ Boris Johnson. Last month the former Mayor of London had urged gay people to vote to Leave the EU and specifically not to believe the lie that gay rights only exist in Britain because of the EU. As Boris pointed out, such rights come from ‘our courts and Parliament’ and not from Europe. Although this is a sectional argument, Boris was responding to an argument that can be heard across wider society. That argument claims that if Britain left the EU all

Westminster has a tendency to get ahead of itself. MPs want to discuss the aftermath of an event long before it has happened. They play never-ending games of ‘What if?’ At the moment, the political class cannot stop discussing, in great detail, what the post-EU referendum political landscape will look like. The speculation is, in and of itself, part of the political process. Much of the talk of the post-vote challenges facing David Cameron is intended to persuade him to pull his punches in the final weeks of the campaign. What no one disputes is that the Prime Minister will find governing even harder after 23 June. His majority is

Boris Johnson took in a car factory as part of his day of campaigning for Vote Leave in Yorkshire. The former Mayor did the usual politician’s thing of touring the workshops of Ginetta, pointing at various pieces of equipment and asking the workers what it was that they were doing, before hopping in one of the carmaker’s vehicles – branded with Vote Leave insignia – for a spin. He drove it out of the factory before handing the wheel over to a proper driver, who proceeded to whizz him around in tight donuts in the car park outside, sending up a large amount of smoke from the burning rubber. ‘We’re