Brexit

The Brexit drama to come

This week has shown how much the election has changed. The withdrawal agreement has sailed through the Commons and in Northern Ireland, there has been an agreement to get the assembly and the executive back up and running. As I say in The Sun this morning, ministers were struck by how Brexit got only the briefest of mentions at Cabinet this week despite the legislation being before the House. Pre-election, the whole conversation would have been about whether the government had the votes and what it should do if it did not. Boris Johnson is very keen that this year isn’t dominated by Brexit. Sat Cabinet this week, he again

Brendan O’Neill

Why people who hate Brexit love Megxit

It is actually fitting that Harry and Meghan’s decision to leave the UK is being referred to as Megxit. Because this royal temper tantrum, this flouncing out of the UK by the most painfully PC couple in monarchical history, has much in common with Brexit. Like Brexit, it has exposed the vast moral divide that now separates the new elite, of which H&M are key figureheads, from ordinary people. Like Brexit, it has confirmed that this nation is now split, in David Goodhart’s words, between ‘Anywhere’ people and ‘Somewhere’ people. ‘Anywheres’ are post-national, geographically mobile and often sniffy about those old, apparently outdated values of community life and familial loyalty.

A big Tory majority. So where are the Conservative policies?

What is the point of a Conservative majority? The answer might once have been to implement Conservative policies. But now it’s not so clear. Budgets are normally the way to judge a government, but we didn’t have one last year. On 11 March, we will learn how Sajid Javid intends to govern the public finances and just how far the Tory government is able to take advantage of the unprecedented political opportunity. It will become clear whether the government sees this moment as a time for boldness, or caution. Leaving the European Union is a radical act, but its effect is mainly political. It will remove a constraint, but will

Britain after Brexit: it’s time to decide on our place in the world

‘Global Britain’: a phrase that provokes mockery and even indignation. As an alternative to EU membership many consider it impossible and worse, undesirable. Are we capable of true independence, or is this an illusion? Does ‘global Britain’, as its bitterest critics accuse, draw on imperial nostalgia and nationalistic arrogance? Or is it a rational response to a changing world? It is certainly not a new response. Britain has been a global player since the 1730s. Since the early 1800s we have had to be: with a population of 14 million we were no longer able to feed ourselves, and Britain’s enemies looked forward to the day when it would starve.

Lionel Shriver

For cod’s sake, don’t sacrifice the fish

One of the more dispiriting experiences of the British supermarket is a visit to the fish counter. On a  historically seagoing island, the selection is often abysmal, frequently imported, and always expensive: farmed Norwegian salmon, farmed Vietnamese basa (blech), cod gone a suspicious taupe and priced like its weight in saffron (83 per cent of the cod consumed in the UK is also imported; why?) and maybe a few locally sourced mackerel or sardines, depending on the day. Otherwise, vinegary cockles, leathery kippers and smoked haddock the garish colour of a child’s toy substitute for a fresh catch from British waters. Worse, at my nearest Tesco, as of two months

Matthew Parris

My fellow Remainers should not aim for a ‘soft Brexit’

‘I like to write when I’m feeling spiteful,’ remarked D.H. Lawrence. ‘It’s like having a good sneeze.’ A perennial challenge for a Fleet Street columnist is how to walk the fine line between writing as though your opinion mattered, and writing as though it were just an entertaining sneeze. My fellow Spectator columnist, Rod Liddle, has developed a very marketable pitch in the columnar sneeze. I perhaps err on the other side: writing with the implicit suggestion that the nation waits upon my verdict. I know, of course, that nobody does, but have to pretend to myself (and inhabit the pretence) that I’m a kind of prime minister-in-waiting, and my

Three ways Britain should refuse to stick to the EU’s rules in trade talks

It is hard to imagine there will be much of a meeting of minds. As the new president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen meets with the newly re-elected British Prime Minister Boris Johnson today the pleasantries will quickly give way to a strong clash of views. With our departure from the EU set for the end of the month, trade talks are about to open. Brussels is desperate to lock the UK into its regulatory system. But quite rightly, the government is resisting that. After all, there was no point in leaving only to accept all the EU rules and regulations, except this time with no say

Give Nigel Farage a peerage

Almost half of Tory supporters think that Nigel Farage deserves a peerage, according to a new poll. And while some 53 per cent of the overall public are said to oppose the elevation of Farage to the Lords, if anyone does deserve to become a peer the Brexit party leader should certainly make the shortlist. Elevation to the Lords is meant to be an exceptional honour for exceptional people. This, of course, isn’t always the case. Over recent decades it has all too often been a reward for reliable placemen who have done a party leader’s bidding with such obsequiousness that not sending them down the corridor to wallow in

Don’t worry, Frans, Britain loves Europe back

As a lifelong Europhile, I rather liked the love letter to Britain from Frans Timmermans, vice president of the new European Commission. We in this country do love Europe, its people, its culture, its quirks, its diversity. Never has Britain been integrated more closely with the rest of Europe, never have we done more trade, never have more Brits lived in Europe and vice versa. The links between our peoples have never been stronger – and, after Brexit, will become stronger still. The idea of a union of governments, however, was not a model that worked for the UK: that much was decided in a referendum and reinforced in two

Nine lessons from the election: Boris was lucky – but he also played his hand right

The 2019 general election will be remembered as one of the most consequential elections in Britain’s recent history. Aside from rejecting a more economically radical Labour Party, the British people used the election to provide what their elected representatives had been unable to provide: an answer to Brexit. For Boris Johnson and the Conservative party, the election was a triumph. They won their largest majority since 1987 and the largest majority for any party since New Labour’s second landslide in 2001. Remarkably, and despite older arguments about the ‘costs of ruling’, a Conservative Party that had been in power for nearly a decade attracted nearly 44 per cent of the vote; this was not

Spectator competition winners: ’Twas the night before Brexit…

This year’s Christmas challenge was to compose a poem entitled ‘’Twas the Night Before Brexit’. That seasonal classic ‘A Visit From St Nicholas’, more usually known as ‘The Night Before Christmas’, was published anonymously in 1823 and written by Clement Clarke Moore — or at least he claimed it was. The family of gentleman-poet Henry Livingston Jr later contended that he was the author, and the controversy rumbles on. Despite the potentially uncheery theme, you came up with some pleasingly diverse crackers, which are printed below and earn their authors £30 each. All that remains is to thank you all, veterans and newcomers alike, for your terrifically witty and well

How the Tories plan to hold together their new electoral coalition once ‘Brexit is done’ and Corbyn gone

The thumping majority by which both the second reading and the programme motion for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill passed yesterday, confirmed that Boris Johnson will have no problem taking the UK out of the EU on January 31st. This sums up the remarkable position that this government is in. It will have done the main thing that it was put in power to do within less than two months of taking office. The danger for the Tories, as I say in The Sun this morning, is that their new electoral coalition was held together by a desire to ‘Get Brexit Done’ and fear of Jeremy Corbyn, and both of those

Patrick O'Flynn

The Tory war over Europe is finally over

Happy Christmas (War Is Over). John Lennon probably didn’t have the decades long Conservative dispute over Europe in mind when he wrote that, but the message seems very apt this year after almost the entire Tory parliamentary party trooped through the lobbies in support of its leader’s plan to take Britain out of the EU. It was back in 1971 that Lennon released his blockbuster Christmas single. At the time, the Conservatives were largely united behind the idea of joining the European Economic Community. So few could have anticipated that an internecine political war lasting almost half a century was taking hold. In the key Commons division of that year,

Brendan O’Neill

Stormzy is the new Bono

Stormzy has a song called Shut Up. ‘Oi rudeboy, shut up’, he raps. I wish he’d take his own advice. His predictable political musings are getting boring. His Corbyn cheering went down like a cup of cold sick with the populace. And his chattering-class views are just embarrassing for someone who claims to be grime. It’s time for a temporary vow of silence, Stormzy. His latest ‘controversial’ utterance came at his former primary school. He told a bunch of seven-year-olds there that their new PM, Boris Johnson, is a ‘very, very bad man’. In response to one of the kids who asked him why he doesn’t like Boris — one

Why splitting the Home Office up makes sense

We won’t see the full scope of what Boris Johnson plans to do for life after Brexit until the new year. There will be a few appointments this afternoon to replace gaps in the government, and then the Queen’s Speech will introduce the legislative agenda on Thursday. But the full launch of the new government won’t be until February. What we do know is that Johnson and his senior aide Dominic Cummings have got Whitehall in their sights, and are hoping to reshape government departments to make them work better. One of the biggest changes is carving up the Home Office so that it loses its responsibility for immigration and

Boris Johnson couldn’t have done it without the Brexit party

Dear Boris Johnson, Friday felt like June 2016 all over again. The electorate voted Leave; in their droves. Remain reacted by lashing out at the voters (far too many examples but see this for starters:) This was no ordinary General Election: it had another purpose of wresting back control from a gridlocked parliament that had defied popular sovereignty. Although every vote didn’t count in the same way as a referendum (let’s get rid of FPTP), nonetheless millions of voters reminded us all just who owns democracy, by grabbing the levers of power to reaffirm that they had not changed their mind about leaving the EU. So congratulations on winning. As

What Donald Trump must learn from Boris Johnson’s triumph

Donald Trump has reason to feel good about the British election. The success of the Brexit referendum in June 2016 was the harbinger of Trump’s own sensational victory against Hillary Clinton five months later. Will history now repeat itself, with Boris Johnson’s triumph heralding Trump’s re-election? What connected Brexit to the Trump-Clinton race was the stagnation of conventional left-right politics on both sides of the Atlantic. In each country, a critical mass of voters on the right were sick of leaders who embraced a neoliberal version of conservatism — soft on immigration, accommodating toward liberal cultural values, and more concerned with maximising returns to globalisation than with strengthening the bargaining power

Today is an exciting and nerve-wracking day for Brexiteers

It’s tense for us Brexiteers, isn’t it? We know that if the Tories don’t secure a Commons majority today then our country probably won’t end up leaving the EU at all. Almost certainly, an alliance of pro-Remain parties would put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street. They would keep him there just long enough for Remain to win a low-turnout second referendum. Many Leave voters would boycott such a vote on the grounds of it being a stitch-up that offers a choice between actually staying in the EU and virtually staying in it, just without any political representation. So it is quite understandable that our nerves are frayed just now. But

Four key questions that will decide who wins this election

In the end it probably comes down to four things, most of them momentous, about the power of the people, and the very structure of the country. First, this is your only chance to decide whether the UK leaves the EU at the end of January or whether you want a referendum next year that could reverse the result of the previous Brexit referendum. Second, if you are north of the border, this is an opportunity to signal whether you want another referendum on whether Scotland remains part of the UK. Third, if you believe that the power of the private sector has increased excessively since the 1980s, this is your chance