Brexit

Friday

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon’s pandemic politics

Nicola Sturgeon had some choice words to say about Brexit last month. Speaking at one of Scotland’s daily coronavirus briefings, the First Minister said she was ‘deeply frustrated and depressed’ about the prospect of no deal in the new year, and suggested that to talk about Brexit in the middle of a pandemic was not only dangerous, but deeply irresponsible. The country doesn’t need ‘another big thing to be dealing with’ when the focus should be on coronavirus, the First Minister lamented. So you can imagine Mr Steerpike’s surprise when Sturgeon appeared to embark on her own political pet project yesterday. In an interview with the BBC, the First Minister

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Carole Cadwalladr should now return her Orwell Prize

A small but significant event has just occurred. This morning the legal case between Arron Banks and the journalist Carole Cadwalladr was due to start. The case came about because of Cadwalladr’s claim that Arron Banks – who was a founder of the Leave.EU campaign (the non-official Leave campaign) – was offered money by the Russians. Cadwalladr has been going around for years making these and other unfounded accusations in every forum and on every platform she can manage. It is not as though her campaign has been obscure. The Observer newspaper has supported her, and as her entirely unsubstantiated claims grew, she was shamefully awarded the Orwell Prize for

Paul Embery

Left behind: how Labour betrayed its base

I love the labour movement. I love its history, its traditions, its brass bands and banners. I love its rousing songs, anthems and festivals. I love its slogans and rallying cries, inspired, as they are, by an abiding faith in the collective spirit and the seductive vision of the New Jerusalem. For all that tribalism is given a bad name these days — sometimes with good reason — I feel tribal about my attachment to the labour movement. And I offer no apology for that. As it was for millions of others who grew up in working-class communities, tribalism in the cause of labour was for me less a matter

The Spectator

Letters: Solidarity is the best thing for Scotland

SNP sophistry Sir: Andrew Wilson (‘Scot free’, 21 November) poses the question: ‘What if the case for independence was a highly sophisticated position?’ If only. For the SNP position is one of sophistry rather than sophistication. Wilson states that Scottish voters want Scotland to return to Europe. He also states that an independent Scotland would retain sterling, but does not mention the two policies are incompatible. It would be impossible for an independent Scotland to join the EU using sterling. Wilson declares that staying in the Union is riskier than independence, but we should all reflect on the words of Ronald MacDonald, Adam Smith Professor of Economics at Glasgow University,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

China has a friend in Jesus

Last week, I wrote about ‘Frost & Lewis’ (David and Oliver), leaders of our country’s team at the Brexit negotiations, guarantors of our Brexit intentions. It is they who have throughout maintained the essential position — that we are becoming an independent state and therefore will not trade sovereignty for market access. It is them, therefore, whom the EU wishes to neutralise. Hopes have risen in Brussels after the Downing Street ‘Carrie coup’ against Dominic Cummings. Frost & Lewis now lack a close friend at the court of King Boris except, possibly, the King himself. So it may be a good thing that Covid isolation forced them to return to

Wednesday

Nick Tyrone

Why Boris should go for no deal

Boris Johnson has negotiated his way into a corner. With the naïve view that the EU would eventually buckle and accede to the UK’s desires, we are now just over five weeks away from the end of the transition period. The choices in front of Boris are to either cave in to the EU’s demands in order to sign a weak, thin, bad deal – or walk away without a deal. I think he should do the latter. Of course, there are obvious advantages for the Prime Minister in signing a deal (even a bad one) with the EU at this stage. It would cause slightly less disruption than no

Thursday

Charles Moore

Are our churches safe from Justin Welby?

‘Frost & Lewis’. It sounds like a programme amalgamating two of the most famous TV detectives. The former diplomat, Lord (David) Frost, is our chief Brexit negotiator and Oliver Lewis, an expert on the Irish aspects, is his right-hand man. Until recently, they were simply considered the two best men for the job. Since the departure of Dominic Cummings, they have acquired a political role too. Close colleagues of Cummings who did not walk out with him, they stayed to Get Brexit Done, so they act as reassurance to anxious Brexiteers that the government will not throw in the sponge. Their staying also implies a threat. Dom has said he

Andrew Wilson

Scotland can’t afford to remain part of the Union

Tony Blair’s biggest achievement was delivering a referendum that unified Scotland behind devolution and gave all parties a stake in its success. Boris Johnson is wrong to say it was ‘a disaster’, but in being wrong is helping precipitate the logical next step: independence. The opinion polls that show a growing majority for Scottish independence will mystify those who believe the lazy, metropolitan idea that independence is an emotional fantasy — all Braveheart, Bannockburn and bagpipes. How, they ask, could a band of Caledonian romantics ever convince the canny Scots to opt for such a thing? But what if the case for independence was a highly sophisticated position advocated by

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The march of the fascist mushrooms

It has been too long coming. While conscientious and decent liberals have tried to explain why, to their horror, millions of people in Europe and the USA have embraced populist causes in recent years, none has really got near the nub of the issue, dug down to the very core. For example, I have long been of the opinion that the Brexit vote, along with the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the continued popularity of right-wing governments in Poland and Hungary, are almost entirely the consequences of the malign influence of fungi. I have attempted to advance this argument in political debates but am never taken seriously. Now at

Wednesday

Greg Rosen

History shows why voters often back ‘no deal’

As the UK approaches the end of the Brexit transition period, ministers have made it clear that businesses and Britain must ready themselves for ‘no deal’. But will Britain be ready? Almost every day, there are new concerns from the road haulage industry, not just about Kent and access permits for lorry drivers, but about the system’s operability and the viability of any back-up plans. The government does have an ‘oven ready’ response to the no deal naysayers – which Michael Gove used with evident relish against Theresa May in October – and can say that: ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’. Ultimately, however, the judgement about no

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Brexit deal could fall down over fishing

Simon Coveney – Internal Market Bill could mean no trade deal Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney returned to Sophy Ridge’s show this week to make clear his objections to the government’s Internal Market Bill. The bill, which famously threatened to break the EU Withdrawal Agreement in ‘a specific and limited way’, has recently been watered down by the House of Lords. However, it is expected that the government will reinsert the offending clauses, which would keep Northern Ireland’s market aligned with Britain in the event of no trade deal. Coveney warned that this move could derail the prospective trade deal altogether: SC: If the British government is determined to continue

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Vaccine hopes up, Zoom shares down and Biden calls Boris

Home Pfizer and BioNTech announced a vaccine against Covid-19 of 90 per cent efficacy from two injections three weeks apart. It was not known if it prevented transmission of the virus. The vaccine has to be stored at an ultra-low temperature of minus 80˚C. In July, the British government had bought 40 million doses, enough for a third of the population, with ten million available by the end of the year (along with access to five other vaccine candidates, totalling 340 million doses in all). The army and police planned vaccination centres. Shares in air transport went up; shares in Zoom went down. Asked whether we could say with confidence

The Spectator

Boris won’t be forgiven if his No. 10 chaos makes him cave on Brexit

Mayhem has once again engulfed 10 Downing Street with the dramatic resignation of Lee Cain, Boris Johnson’s communications chief. He was with the Prime Minister on the Vote Leave campaign — as had Dominic Cummings, Oliver Lewis and others who have formed a band of brothers in No. 10. Cain’s departure put a question mark over the future of the others, which comes at an odd time because the Brexit they all campaigned for is weeks away from a conclusion. There are huge issues facing the government: a second lockdown, due to end on 2 December. The procurement and rollout of a potential vaccine. But another deadline, just weeks away,

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Racists will love it: National Theatre’s Death of England – Delroy reviewed

Death of England: Delroy is a companion piece to Death of England, which ran in February at the NT and examined the white working classes. Here the focus is on a successful black Briton, Delroy, who votes Tory and feels at home in multicultural society. The charismatic Michael Balogun plays him as a complex, shrewd and humane figure. He likes to mock white people who judge others according to superficialities like accent and pronunciation. And he recalls his horrified excitement when a white girl at school calmly placed her finger inside his boxer shorts. Delroy has plenty of white pals including his girlfriend, Carly, who is expecting their child. The

Thursday

Rod Liddle

The infantilism of locking down to ‘save Christmas’

It seems, then, that this latest lockdown has been instigated simply to protect two very questionable institutions — the National Health Service and Christmas. Both have a certain historicity about them and were widely liked. Both, too, have become bloated and hideous caricatures of what they once were. There is a certain infantilism about the repeated demands to ‘save Christmas’ which conjures up the image of serious adults — Chris Whitty, for example, or Sir Patrick Vallance — hanging up their stockings on Christmas Eve and jumping up and down on the bed in excitement at five o’clock the following morning. There is no Santa Claus, Patrick. There is no

Thursday

Benedict Spence

12 items to stockpile for a No-Deal Brexit

When you hear the word ‘stockpiling’, the first thought that pops into your head is probably the image of forest-dwelling folk in remote reaches of the US, usually bearded, always armed, with hunting vests, baseball caps, a few tonnes of canned food buried beneath their shack and enough kerosene to defrost Svalbard. Yet with the prospect of a hard Brexit edging ever closer, stockpiling has become a major pastime of businesses across the UK. The Economist have set aside 30 tonnes of paper to print their magazine, whilst Majestic have secured up to 1.5 million bottles of wine (should the worst happen, I know which warehouse I’ll be looting). Medicines

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

My Covid risk assessment

Classes of people at moderate risk from Covid-19. Addenda to current NHS guidelines. Those at risk from coronavirus now include people who: • Are 70 or older. • Have a lung condition that’s not severe (such as asthma, COPD, emphysema or bronchitis). • Have heart disease (such as heart failure). • Have diabetes. • Are a London property owner, or buy-to-let landlord. You’re at particularly high risk from Covid if you’re an epidemiologist in an open marriage • Are running a university as a highly lucrative property and real-estate business (with a small pedagogical business attached); i.e. 90 per cent of higher education. You’re now just the Open University with

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Has Spitting Image ever been funny?

Thank you, Spitting Image, for the nostalgia trip! Your new series on BritBox has rekindled with almost Proustian fidelity those feelings I used to get every single time I watched the show back in my lost 1980s youth: the bathos; the disappointment; the frustration; the despair; the perpetual astonishment that puppet caricatures full of such satirical promise should so unfailingly and relentlessly be let down by such a leaden, insight-free script. Yes, we all remember the puppets: Margaret Thatcher in her chalk-stripe business suit; Norman Tebbit in his leathers; the hacks represented by wolves. But can anyone recall a single line from any episode that made them laugh, ever? I

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

The generosity of French doctors

My last NHS scan showed a shadow on a rib. The scan report couldn’t decide between a new cancer metastasis or scarring from an old injury. The first would mean the cancer had moved into my skeleton and was on a winning streak. I have fractured ribs in sharp collisions with steering wheels more than once and cling strenuously to the old-scar hypothesis. The image showed a second suspicious blur. Something, possibly a tumour, was putting pressure on my left kidney. Since then I’ve been going around with a length of plastic tube inserted in my urethra to drain it. Until that point my cancer was just a word. Now

Thursday

Robert Tombs

Only a ‘good’ Brexit can stop Scottish independence

Victimhood has always been the core of nationalism. We are oppressed by Them: if We were free, our problems would be solved. This has been the lure of nationalism, and the reason why it is invariably disappointing once achieved. Scottish nationalists have their own myth of victimhood, but it has to go way back into the mists of time: to William Wallace (died 1305), Robert the Bruce (died 1329) and the Declaration of Arbroath (1320). More recent and relevant history does not so easily fit the victimhood bill. After all, the Stuarts had their eyes on the throne of England at least as much as the Tudors fancied theirs. Mary