Brexit

Gavin Barwell was Theresa May’s chief of staff between 2017 and 2019. He was the MP for Croydon Central between 2010 and 2017 and served May as secretary of state for housing. He was made a life peer last year. This is a transcript of a speech he gave to the Institute for Government last night. I became chief of staff to the prime minister in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 election. I had lost my seat, the result was declared in the early hours of Friday morning. I went back to bed because I’d been up for about 30 hours at that point. And then I did a media

‘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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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