Brexit

Thursday

Matthew Lynn

Brexit grifters are making a killing selling useless advice

Over the past three years, as we have torturously debated our departure from the European Union, we have heard a lot from the Brexiteers about the industries that might benefit from leaving the EU. Some of these predictions may materialise, others may not. There is one industry, however, that is already doing very well as a result of the referendum. Lots of consultants are making a shedload of money. In the past few weeks, it has become clear just how much. Brexit ‘grifters’, to borrow a phrase from the classic 1990 movie, are roaming the country, occasionally helping companies cope with a significant yet hardly earth-shattering change in trading relations

Wednesday

The Spectator

Full text: Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan

A FAIR AND REASONABLE COMPROMISE: UK PROPOSALS FOR A NEW PROTOCOL ON IRELAND/NORTHERN IRELAND There is now very little time in which to negotiate a new Agreement between the UK and the EU under Article 50. We need to get this done before the October European Council. This Government wants to get a deal, as I am sure we all do. If we cannot reach one, it would represent a failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible. Our predecessors have tackled harder problems: we can surely solve this one. Both sides now need to consider whether there is sufficient willingness to compromise and move beyond existing positions

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris Johnson’s threat to MPs and the EU: ‘Back me or sack me’

In setting the scene for Boris Johnson’s first and potentially historic speech as Prime Minister to Tory party conference, Downing Street made two statements that sounded a lot like threats, both to EU leaders and to opposition MPs. In tearing up the 2107 Joint Report that underlies the so-called backstop to keep open the border on the island of Ireland – that foundation of the Brexit deal agreed by Theresa May and ditched by Johnson – Downing Street said “officials have made it clear that if Brussels does not engage with the offer…then this government will not negotiate further until we have left the EU”. In other words, Johnson wants

Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott: My heart leapt when Boris Johnson became prime minister

If Britain is to be a free country, the difficulties of leaving simply have to be faced. Now, I know that many people here in Britain think that these are daunting times, but surely they are also stirring times ,because yet again a great country is grasping for freedom. If I can say one thing above all, it is that if there is any country on earth that should be capable of standing on its own two feet, it’s Britain. The mother of parliaments, the world’s common language and the industrial revolution, three of the greatest gifts to the modern world. So I just want to make a few fundamental

Tuesday

Charles Day

Why is the EU obsessed with forcing regulatory alignment on Britain?

I still don’t quite understand the position of some ardent Remain supporters. I do not understand why allowing the UK to leave, and then starting up a campaign to rejoin was rejected. After all, that is what the last line of Article 50 invites the state to do by invoking the process in Article 49 (the process to re-join). Doing so would allow Britain to honour the democratic vote, which, contra to common perception, is what a lot of genuine believers in the EU themselves want us to do. It would end the word ‘remainer’ entirely. A word now unfortunately synonymous with a very negative campaign and a dark time

Chris Daw KC

Corbyn’s cynical Brexit scheme will end in tears for Labour

My piece for Coffee House last week likened Boris Johnson to the naked emperor, puffed up with self-importance but devoid of real power. As the Tory party conference has got underway, I have become even more confident that Boris’s cabinet will soon be shown to be as denuded of power as their leader. But it isn’t just the Tories that are in a mess. Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit position is as untenable and, if anything, even more bizarre than Boris’s. Has there ever been a major party leader entering conference season and an election campaign, in short succession, while explicitly refusing to take a position on the most important issue of our times?

Monday

Alexander Pelling-Bruce

The Oliver Letwin speech that first revealed the Benn Act game plan

On Coffee House last week, I wrote that the judgment of the Supreme Court shows that the Benn Act is unconstitutional. It is more than that: it constitutes a revolution in the way in which Britain is governed. Oliver Letwin, who helped draft the Act, made this abundantly clear when speaking in the House of Commons on 14 February. His speech came in the run up to the first time Parliament took control to direct Government policy by legislation. But it also reveals the game plan that ultimately led to the Benn Act and the topsy-turvy situation we now find ourselves in. Letwin describes it as “astonishing turn of events”

Robert Peston Robert Peston

It’s now or never for Boris Johnson if he wants a Brexit breakthrough

There is only one speech that matters this week, here in Manchester at Tory party conference. It will be Boris Johnson’s on Wednesday and it will be significant – potentially historic – for what he has to say about how and whether he hopes to break the impasse with Brussels on negotiating an alternative to the Northern Ireland backstop and therefore strike a new deal to leave the EU. Intriguingly, perhaps weirdly, cabinet ministers are ebullient with optimism that Johnson is on the verge of striking a deal with Juncker and Barnier that is sellable to most Tory MPs, Northern Ireland’s DUP and even enough Labour MPs to carry it across the

Matthew Lynn

Here’s the flaw in the Boris hedge fund conspiracy theory

It is one of the most diabolical plots of all time, a conspiracy so vast, so deep, and so wicked it could have come from the pen of Dan Brown. A small cabel of powerful hedge funds have installed Boris Johnson at Number 10, paying for his campaign and his advisers. Once there, his task is to crash the UK out of the European Union without a deal, plunging the economy into chaos, and sparking a rout of sterling and a collapse in the FTSE. In the background, those same hedge funds will have ‘shorted’ the pound and the London equity market. In the process, they will make a few

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

How Brexit is winning over ‘never kissed a Tory’ voters for the Conservatives

Brexit is seen by some as the Conservative curse. The theory goes that David Cameron called the referendum to resolve the EU problem once and for all, only for this to blow up in his – and his party’s – face. Where this was once a Tory issue, now it is everyone’s problem. But might that view be wrong? And might Brexit actually be a big opportunity, rather than a hindrance, for the Conservatives to win over supporters who would never in their wildest dreams have even thought about voting Tory? That’s the view put forward by Esther McVey, who spoke of her experiences on the doorstep, and how she

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs on ‘red standby’ to leave snoozy conference for Brexit vote

The Tory MPs who’ve bothered to turn up to conference this week are torn between two places. They’re on a three-line whip in case anything kicks off in Westminster, where parliament will continue sitting this afternoon. Solicitor General Michael Ellis joked this morning that he was on ‘red standby’ to return to the House of Commons if there is a vote. The Labour party is on a two-line instruction, though many of its MPs are attending the sitting to try to make a point about holding the government to account while the government is away. It’s not yet clear whether they will hold any votes, though there is a need

Sunday

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson won’t surrender the metaphor

In a feisty interview on The Andrew Marr Show, Boris Johnson defended his use of the term ‘surrender act’, calling it a ‘martial metaphor’ of the type that has long been used in British politics. He said that he had been a ‘model of restraint’ in his own language. He did, however, express regret for sounding so dismissive of the Labour MP Paula Sherriff’s concerns about death threats. It was clear that Boris Johnson had three intentions in this interview. First, to ram home his message that the Benn Act is a ‘surrender act’ – I lost count of the number of times he used the phrase. Second, to try

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

When Brexit is done, this is the party to vote for

We may still be small, but we have better speakers at our conferences than the major parties. At the Social Democratic party AGM on Saturday in Leeds we heard from, among others, Brendan O’Neill, Ben Cobley, Mo Lovatt, our leader William Clouston and the excellent Patrick O’Flynn. And me obvs, with the usual tirade of bile ((co) Emily Maitlis). Attendance for the AGM tripled on last year. We will be the focus on campuses for anti-woke students, the party of freedom of speech and we will continue to be the only party which wishes to reduce immigration, disavows all this gender fluidity nonsense and fights against identity politics and in

Saturday

Robert Peston

We will find out in a few days whether Brexit will happen

There is probably now just a week or so from the end of the Tory conference for Boris Johnson to make a breakthrough on a Brexit deal, or for talks to end. Why? Well, government sources tell me the EU Commission has been told by British negotiators in no uncertain terms that Johnson will not quit to avoid being forced by the Benn Act to ask for a Brexit delay. And Brussels was also told that if Johnson is still prime minister on October 19, he will find a way to get round the law and refuse to ask for a delay. So Barnier and Juncker have literally no time to decide

Steerpike Steerpike

13 times David Cameron’s book makes the case for Brexit

David Cameron’s autobiography was supposed to be a chance for the former prime minister to settle scores and have his say on his time in office. But Cameron’s book is also something that he didn’t intend: a convincing case for Brexit. ‘For the Record’ is littered with examples of EU officials and council members undermining UK interests and reneging on promises. Here are 13 times David Cameron’s book makes the case for Brexit: Jean-Claude Juncker frustrating British interests:  ‘Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, was particularly dismissive of British concerns. As a finance minister, he’d been there at Maastricht when the journey to monetary union began. He’d been there when we

Thursday

Melissa Kite

The rise of the Brexitainers

The Union Jack is flying on the front of my house. After a long discussion with the local council, planning officials confirmed that anyone can fly the national emblem on their home, so long as they don’t use a flagpole, which requires planning permission. I was advised by an official to drape the flag from an upstairs window, so that is what the builder boyfriend has done. It looks beautiful. I do hope lots of us will out ourselves as patriots in this way — a 5ft by 3ft flag is only £4.99 on eBay, free P&P. The next four weeks is a battle for the idea of the nation

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A Supreme Court ruling, Labour’s messy conference and Donald Trump’s ‘impeachment’

Home Eleven justices of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that in advising the Queen to prorogue parliament ‘the Prime Minister’s advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect’. This was because the prorogation had ‘the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions’. The court was not ‘concerned with the Prime Minister’s motive’. The court cited the Case of Proclamations (1611) to show that the limits of prerogative powers were determined by the courts. The judgment overturned the decision of the High Court that the prorogation should not even be considered by the courts. Lady Hale, the

Peter Jones

Would the Athenians have held a second referendum?

The Athenians invented the referendum: after debate in the citizens’ assembly, they voted through all political decisions by a show of hands. They could also demand a revote, as happened on a famous occasion in 427 bc, after Athens put down the revolt of the city-state of Mytilene. Does this justify the proposed second Brexit referendum? The Athenian assembly, angered by the revolt, initially voted to execute all adult males and sell the women and children into slavery. A ship was sent to see to it. But next day, as the contemporary historian Thucydides reported, ‘the people began to think how excessively savage it was to destroy everyone, not just

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The rule of law has become the rule of lawyers

Is that enormous silver spider that Lady Hale wore her badge of office? If so, it is appropriate. The Supreme Court has decided to tie up the government in a web of legal reasoning so tight that it can no longer govern. In his dissenting judgment in the earlier Miller case about Article 50, Lord Reed warned that ‘the legalisation of political issues is not always appropriate and may be fraught with risk, not least for the judiciary’. Unusually — as if to compensate for these words — his name was joined with that of Lady Hale in giving the judgment on Tuesday. He would have done better to heed his

The Spectator

The balance of power in our constitution has been lost

Until recently, we used to comfort ourselves with the thought that the United Kingdom’s uncodified constitution was a great national strength. We didn’t need guidance laid down in one document because precedence, compromise and common sense were enough to ensure the smooth operation of power. As soon as a document is written, power passes from democratic institutions to courts where activist judges can interpret these documents in a political way. In Britain, this is not meant to happen. Our legal system has been seen, world over, as politically neutral, one of the most trustworthy in the world. So what are we to make of a Supreme Court granting itself powers