Brexit

Saturday

James Forsyth

What is Boris Johnson’s plan?

As Boris Johnson laid out his plan at political Cabinet on Thursday, it quickly became apparent how much of it was dependent on factors outside of his control. I write in The Sun this morning that he said that he still hoped that the EU would offer only the shortest of extensions, forcing parliament to get on with it. But he admitted that the EU was inclined to offer an extension to the end of January and that Emmanuel Macron was fighting a lonely battle against this. Earlier in the day, the Elysée had told Number 10 that the French President was too isolated on the issue in the EU

Anthony Browne

Heidi Allen’s confusing political odyssey

Update: Heidi Allen has announced that she will no longer stand at the next election. This weekend, Anthony Browne wrote about her confusing political odyssey: As I pound the streets of South Cambridgeshire where I am the Conservative candidate, the most common reaction I get from voters is “How did that happen?”. (That, at least, is an edited version to keep things family-friendly for Spectator readers). It is usually accompanied by a liberal dosage of decidedly unparliamentary language and the sort of words that if I repeated would lead to me being accused of inflaming passions in politics. But the passions among the public are already inflamed and the issue

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: David Cameron’s real referendum mistake

Cameron’s fatal error Sir: Jo Johnson’s otherwise informative review of David Cameron’s For the Record (Books, 12 October) suggests Cameron’s ‘mistake’ was to not call the referendum earlier, and his ‘fatal error’ was his failure to nail down the Leave campaign on how they ‘would actually deliver Brexit’. Not so. Cameron’s mistake was to assume the referendum would produce a Remain result. Cameron’s fatal error was to have taken sides in the referendum. Had he not taken sides, had he not allowed George Osborne to launch ‘Project Fear’, and had he encouraged the dissemination of practical information for both the Leave and the Remain sides, then after the result he

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: More Brexit chaos, royal complaints and Syrian fighting

Home The Commons voted by 329 to 299 for a Brexit Withdrawal Bill but then stymied progress by defeating a timetable for enacting it by 31 October. Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, immediately favoured a delay for Brexit. Downing Street called for a general election. Sir Oliver Letwin had torpedoed the government’s Brexit endeavours by amending a motion that had been intended to secure the Commons’ ‘meaningful vote’ for the withdrawal agreement triumphantly secured from the EU by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, only three days earlier. The Commons, sitting on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War of 1982, voted by 322 to

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Should we be blaming Balliol, rather than Eton, for our political woes?

In our house, the biggest source of tension is that I think there is an important difference between deferring a decision — ‘Do we need carpet on the stairs?’ — and making one. Charlotte argues that ‘Inaction is a choice; not choosing is a choice.’ One that can have consequences, she insists. Like when the house is freezing because the weather has turned. I saw her point on Super Saturday, when MPs voted not to decide — yet — on whether to back Johnson’s Brexit. The decision to delay (‘inaction’) may end up having more momentous consequences than approving the deal in the meaningful vote. Which is why I was

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Do I have a moral duty to allow Brexit chat at supper parties?

Q. I’ve been having friends to supper for many decades. Although I say it myself, these gatherings have often been hugely successful, with lots of laughter, people making new friends and guests regularly staying beyond 1 a.m. When Brexit started it was OK because talk of it didn’t dominate the evening. It now does. Last week I told my guests the subject was banned. They looked thrown but we went on to have an enjoyable evening. On the other hand I am also wondering, is it my duty — as someone with a venue and a good network of friends — to allow my guests to hold forth at this

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Caroline Flint: why I’m backing this Brexit deal

Nothing in Caroline Flint’s CV would have marked her out as someone who would end up marshalling 19 of her fellow Labour MPs through the ‘aye’ lobby to vote for Boris Johnson’s deal. One of the original ‘Blair babes’, she went on to become Gordon Brown’s minister for Europe. She campaigned for Remain in the referendum but this week she ended up telling MPs that ‘the EU is not God’ while fending off accusations that she is the devil. One commentator called her ‘a heroine for those seeking to turbo-charge Thatcherism’. He didn’t mean it kindly. When we meet in her office, on another one of the supposed Brexit make-or-break

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The question a second referendum must ask

Mostly I stay confident the Prime Minister’s team are playing a weak hand badly, but my confidence does occasionally falter. Then Downing Street does something really stupid (like expelling 21 of its own parliamentary party) and I’m reassured that these people aren’t clever at all. This happened last weekend when I opened my Sunday Times to find there a personal attack on Sir Oliver Letwin by ‘senior sources’. These sources had scoffed to journalists that when, before the Commons vote on his amendment, Letwin was at Downing Street to discuss it, he was taking ‘conspiratorial phone calls’ on his mobile phone, giving him ‘instructions’ from David Pannick. Lord Pannick is

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

For Remainers, Brexit is really about power

At the New Yorker Festival party in mid-October, my astute colleague hardly needed the caution. But you know how at a discombobulating bash you seize gratefully on something to talk about. So as Matthew Goodwin and I rubbed elbows with the East Coast elite at the Old Town Bar in Manhattan (‘Look! It’s Ronan Farrow!’), I warned him about the following afternoon’s audience for our panel on Brexit. They’ll be Democrats, I explained, and they’re hardwired to associate both the referendum and Boris personally with Trump. They’ve all been brainwashed by the New York Times, which portrays Brexiteers as a cross between the extras on The Walking Dead and the

Andrew Taylor

Brexit has at least inspired John le Carré — his thriller on the subject is a cracker

Since 1903, when Erskine Childers warned of the rising tide of German militarism that preceded the first world war in The Riddle of the Sands, spy fiction has enthralled and chilled its readers by holding a cloudy mirror to the murkier corners of international politics. During the Cold War, John le Carré’s novels were hugely influential in shaping popular perceptions about the private manoeuvres behind the public antics. His books have continued to explore the dark places of the world we live in, their subject matter evolving with the headlines. Agent Running in the Field — an intentionally ambiguous title, no doubt — is le Carré’s 25th novel. The first

Tuesday

Charles Day

MPs have plenty of time to read Boris’s Brexit bill

The Withdrawal Bill that has been published is pretty dull stuff – even by my standards. There are nonetheless rather frantic efforts to pretend it is in any way terrible. It isn’t. For one reason and one reason only. Like the 1972 Act, all the Bill does is bring the Withdrawal Agreement into UK law. I find that conceptually interesting. The way these treaties are only international law. The way that international law is irrelevant and pointless, unless and until it gets enacted into domestic law. These things comfort me as a reminder that nation states, democracy and the people still matter. It rather penetrates the confected pomp of those

James Snell

The Brexit party crack-up

At the start of the year, the Brexit party didn’t exist. When it roared to success a few months later in the European parliamentary elections, much was made of how unlike a normal party it was. Nigel Farage was fond of telling audiences that his MEPs included Tories and former members of the Revolutionary Communist party. What else could unite them, he would ask, but the need to leave the European Union? Yet that common cause is now proving to be the party’s undoing in the wake of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. While Theresa May’s agreement was panned almost instantly, reaction to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal has been mostly positive.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Voters are likely to turn their frustration on Parliament’s Brexit-blockers

Rumours of the Prime Minister’s death in a ditch have been greatly exaggerated. Parliament’s rejection of the Government’s programme motion for its withdrawal agreement bill makes it all but impossible for Boris Johnson to extricate the UK from the EU by 31 October as promised. It is an obvious defeat for a PM who got the job by swearing to Tory members that he would have us out by Halloween, no tricks, no treats, no last-minute scares. It is also, however, probably the optimal way for Johnson to break his oath. To the uninvested voter with only a passing interest in the goings-on at Westminster, tonight was not about the

The Spectator

Full list: The nine ex-Tories who rejected Boris’s Brexit bill timetable

Boris Johnson’s bid to fast track his Brexit bill through Parliament has been defeated in the Commons. These are the nine ex-Tory independent MPs who voted against the Government: Guto Bebb; Ken Clarke; Justine Greening; Dominic Grieve; Philip Hammond; Richard Harrington; Anne Milton; Antoinette Sandbach; Rory Stewart And these are the five Labour MPs who sided with the Government tonight: Kevin Baron; Jim Fitzpatrick; Caroline Flint; Kate Hoey; John Mann (Abstained: Ronnie Campbell; Rosie Cooper; Derek Twigg)

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: John Mann heckles Anna Soubry: ‘It’ll get rid of you’

‘A general election will solve nothing,’ Anna Soubry has just told the Commons. But it seems not all of her parliamentary colleagues agree. Labour MP John Mann responded to Soubry by repeatedly yelling out: ‘It will get rid of you’ It’s safe to say Soubry was not impressed: ‘Can I just say actually, I don’t mind losing my job but I do care about the jobs of my constituents…and that’s why this matter must now go back for that people’s vote now we have the clarity on Brexit and we see what a disaster it is.’

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: David Lammy checks his phone during Brexit debate

David Lammy has said Boris Johnson’s bid to fast track his Brexit bill through Parliament means MPs won’t have enough time to scrutinise it properly. Lammy said ‘giving MPs so little time to scrutinise one of the most consequential pieces of legislation we’ll vote on is as transparent as it is cynical’. But while fellow Labour MP Kate Hoey was quizzing the Prime Minister on what reassurances he could give to the people of Northern Ireland, Mr S couldn’t help but notice a certain MP busily tapping away on his phone. Mr S hopes that the MP for Tottenham was making notes on the withdrawal bill… Update: David Lammy has

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s election threat to wavering Labour MPs

The key Brexit vote tonight is on the programme motion. The sense is that the government has the votes to carry the second reading. But that wouldn’t guarantee the UK leaving on 31 October, as the committee and report stages could take weeks and see a slew of amendment added to the bill. If Boris Johnson is to meet his 31 October deadline, he’ll need to carry the programme motion which would see all the Commons stages of the bill done in the next 60 hours or so. Right now this vote is, as us nervous journalists like to say, ‘too close to call’. In an attempt to pressure MPs into approving

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The clumsy whipping operation playing out in parliament

The debate on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is as noisy as you might expect, given how high emotions are on both sides. What is less predictable is whether MPs will be debating the legislation tomorrow, or whether the government will pull the bill after losing its programme motion vote tonight.  It’s not clear where the numbers are for this vote on the timetable for scrutinising the legislation. But the Tories have made the threat of pulling the legislation after a defeat and moving to an election. Behind the scenes, whips and No. 10 aides are working feverishly to try to shore up their support, not just from Tory MPs but

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

What Caroline Flint’s Brexit critics fail to understand

It must feel pretty lonely being Caroline Flint right now. The Labour MP has made herself unpopular with her comrades by backing Boris Johnson’s deal to leave the EU. Flint campaigned for Remain but accepts that her Don Valley constituency voted 68 per cent Leave. In the former mining towns of her South Yorkshire seat, Flint points out, the figure was closer to 80 per cent. ‘The voices in our mining villages remain unheard, despite their support for Labour over many decades,’ she records in her Labour case for respecting the outcome of the 2016 referendum.  Both Flint and her case have now felt the ire of the progressive Brexitariat,

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Meet Dominic Slack-Oxley: the biggest source of fake news in Britain

Allow me to introduce Dominic Slack-Oxley. Never heard of him, I hear you cry. Oh but you have. You hear from him every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news. Slack-Oxley is everywhere. More than Facebook or Vladimir Putin, he is the most reliable source of fake news in Britain. When you read about ‘Downing Street sources’ saying with absolute authority that Boris Johnson would never send a letter to Brussels to extend the Article 50 deadline, only for him to do just that, Slack-Oxley is to blame. When political correspondents boast of their exclusive access to ‘Number 10 sources,’ ‘Government sources’ and the ‘Prime