Brexit

Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds are currently the two most important politicians on the European continent. If the DUP is happy, there’ll be a Brexit deal between the UK and the EU. If it is not, it is hard to see how there can be—it is almost impossible to see how an agreement that they are opposed to can pass the Commons. At the moment, the DUP have not said they are happy. I understand that there was some movement from the Irish on consent this morning. But that softening hasn’t yet been enough to win around the DUP. They would like something that would enable them to say that

The Brexit talks are at a critical stage as we approach this week’s European Council summit. The rumoured landing zone for a deal – essentially a version of the ‘Chequers’ proposals for customs, but applied to Northern Ireland only – is promising. But to get there, both sides will need to compromise – and that applies to the EU as much as it does to the UK. In the Brexit debate, both politicians and governments in the UK are routinely accused of putting forward ‘unrealistic’ or ‘non-negotiable’ proposals. The word ‘unicorn’ is thrown around and often, the criticism is fair. Simplistic demands from UK politicians to ‘simply take out the

Sadiq Khan has got some front. He is complaining about the government’s voter ID plans, claiming it will lead to ‘voter suppression’. And yet he is engaged in the most explicit and awful act of voter suppression in the living memory of this country — the elitist effort to suppress the votes of the 17.4m people who backed Brexit. Sometimes you wonder if the Remain-leaning elites can even hear themselves. These people have spent almost three years agitating against the largest democratic vote in UK history. Some of them want the vote to be revoked entirely (the ‘Liberal’ ‘Democrats’) while others, like Sadiq, want a second referendum to override the

Boris Johnson is now in what’s known in cricket as the ‘Nervous Nineties’, when a batsman becomes so anxious about reaching his century that he takes unusually conservative decisions – or is so nervous he accidentally gets himself out. We are now in what could be the final few days of the Brexit negotiations, and the Prime Minister is trying to be unusually cautious about what’s said and done. Ministers are being urged to hold their nerve rather than make comments which could push the talks off course, and No. 10 is remaining very tight-lipped. In a cabinet call this afternoon which a number of ministers described as ‘businesslike’, Johnson

It is one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent political history. On Wednesday afternoon, the Brexit talks seemed pretty much dead—hence my piece in the magazine this week. Even the optimists in Downing Street were struggling to see anyway through. But by Friday lunchtime, the UK and the EU were agreeing to intensify negotiations as they searched for a deal. As I say in The Sun this morning, the negotiations going on in Brussels this weekend are serious: they aren’t just for the show. This doesn’t, though, mean that a deal will definitely be done. But things are on the move. Now, the sheer pace of this turnaround is

The fate of Boris Johnson’s premiership will be determined by Nigel Farage and the Brexit party. Even if a Brexit deal can be agreed, another extension to the deadline of 31 October still seems possible. If the can is kicked down the road, the question of how Farage’s voters will react is key. Without the support of Brexit party voters, Boris Johnson could wake after the next election to find himself and his party still trapped in a hung parliament. But if he wins over half of Farage’s supporters, while the Remain camp is divided between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, then he could land nearly 350 seats and a comfortable

Members of the One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs met with Boris Johnson this afternoon over concerns the party could shift to a no-deal platform if an election takes place after a Brexit delay. No. 10 sources have suggested such a policy could be the best electoral route for the Tories in this scenario – as they would need something to prevent frustrated Leave voters moving to the Brexit party. However, attendees at the meeting say they left reassured this was not the case – with Johnson suggesting that a policy of only accepting no deal was unlikely to make its way into the Tory manifesto. But as these MPs worry

This feels very big: Boris Johnson spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at 8am this morning, and according to a Downing Street source, she told the prime minister that there will be no Brexit deal with the UK unless Northern Ireland is in the customs union “forever”. The source says she repeated “forever” on “multiple occasions”. So what she is saying is there can be no time-limited backstop. And of course it is a wholesale rejection of Johnson’s offer to replace the backstop. “France is saying the same thing”, according to the source. The government’s conclusion is that EU leaders have decided to make an example of the UK –