Brexit

Tuesday

James Kirkup

Donald Trump has done Britain a favour with his NHS grab

“Everything with a trade deal is on the table…so NHS or anything else, a lot more than that”. That was Donald Trump talking about a possible UK-US trade deal after Britain leaves the EU’s common trade policy. Cue political drama, headlines and Conservative leadership contenders trying to work out what to say when someone asks them if they would be willing to include NHS procurement in any future trade talks. (Not for the first time, Matt Hancock was first off the blocks, tweeting to rule it out.) There will doubtless be a great deal of good analysis of what this comment means for the Tory leadership race: does it harm

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why have Brexiteers stopped making the case for Brexit?

For at least a year the Brexit debate has been conducted almost entirely on negative ground – arguing over how harmful it might be if we leave with no deal, or whether leaving the EU is already threatening the economy. There has been rather less discussion of the benefits of Brexit – what Britain will be able to do in the future which it can’t do as a member of the EU. It was this, after all, which won the 2016 referendum for Leave, so why have leavers been so shy about continuing to make the case for Brexit? This week, though, comes one positive contribution in the shape of

Monday

Stefan Boscia

Could the Lib Dems’ anti-Brexit stance backfire?

The timing of the Liberal Democrats’ leadership hustings on Friday could not have been better for Jo Swinson and Ed Davey. The two leadership hopefuls took to the lectern on an historic day when YouGov recorded the once floundering party as leading in its latest polling. This, along with the party’s recent success in the EU elections, provided an exciting backdrop for Swinson and Davey to outlay their future vision for the party. While the party’s current surge is attributable to its strong support for a second Brexit referendum, the party’s next leader must be able to craft a coherent vision and identity beyond this issue. When the dust settles,

Sunday

Stephen Daisley

The Conservative Party need to look beyond Brexit if they are to survive

The Conservative Party was founded 185 years ago and may not survive the next five. YouGov and Opinium both put the Tories in third place and on less than 20 per cent of the vote. They managed just 8.8 per cent in the European election, coming fifth behind the Greens and losing all but four of their MEPs. The primary cause of la crise actuelle is the government’s failure to deliver Brexit and it is to this which much of the Tory leadership conversation is addressed. However, there are other factors, structural and social, which have depressed the Tory vote and candidates to replace Theresa May are keen to prove they can win voters back to

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: This country needs another referendum and I’d vote Remain, says Sam Gyimah

Sajid Javid – Our priority ‘must be law and order’ The Tory leadership race is becoming a crowded field, with thirteen candidates now setting out their stalls as they aim for the premiership. Andrew Marr spoke to two of the hopefuls, including Home Secretary Sajid Javid. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Javid wished to talk about boosting resources for the police if he attains the country’s highest political office: On #Marr, Home Secretary and Conservative Party leadership contender says that if he had got his way in cabinet there would be more police officers on the streets now https://t.co/OakG0Gu6Ro pic.twitter.com/4d1GnNbcKI — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) June 2, 2019 AM: If you’d had your own

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Sam Gyimah joins Conservative leadership contest to “broaden the race”

Sam Gyimah, the former Minister for Universities who quit in protest at Theresa May’s deal, has become the thirteenth Conservative leadership candidate, announcing his decision live on air on Sky today. When asked by Niall Paterson if he would like to be the next Conservative leader, Gyimah replied “Well, yes. I will be joining the contest to be the next Conservative leader and prime minister to broaden the race.” He wishes to be the champion of that cause the Tory members are crying out for: a second referendum. “There is a wide range of candidates out there, but there is a very narrow view on Brexit being discussed” he said.

Steerpike Steerpike

Trump pledges to “go all out” for a UK-US trade deal if Brexit talks fail

The message from the EU is clear: there will be no improvement to the deal rejected by Parliament. And if talks fail? Donald Trump today makes an offer: that the United States, the UK’s No 1 customer, is standing by with its own free trade deal. It needn’t take even a year, he says, as he’d go “all out” so Britain can do a lot more trade with the world’s largest economy. The EU’s deal, he says, is anyway ludicrous: the £39bn is too much money. And why, he asks, would the UK government agreed to a two-year moratorium on signing free trade deals? In an interview with the Sunday

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Modern Britain isn’t fit to honour the memory of D-Day

Throughout 2002 and 2003 I travelled the country, and further afield, interviewing wartime veterans of the Special Air Service for my book about the history of the regiment’s early years. This adventure coincided with Britain’s march to war against Iraq and, more often than not during my discussions with these old warriors, the question of the conflict arose. Only one veteran among the scores I spoke to was in favour of Britain’s participation. The rest gave their wholehearted support to the soldiers sent to fight Saddam Hussein’s forces, but distrusted the political reasons for their deployment. Of these men only a handful remain. I had lunch with one at the

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 30 May 2019

Leavers only, please Sir: Your leading article (‘The end of May’, 25 May) correctly calls for the Conservative party to establish itself as ‘unequivocally the party of Brexit’. The meltdown at the EU elections confirmed this is now the only course of action open to it, if it wishes to survive. Conservative MPs should show they have finally woken up to reality. They need to send the membership two candidates with impeccable Leave credentials, and who are not in the current cabinet. Placing any Remain-tainted candidates on the shortlist would display MPs’ continuing contempt for the party’s activists, supporters and donors. It would also show a curious lack of interest

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 30 May 2019

Considerate to the last, she had her order of service arranged in her mind. I sat close with my notebook. She didn’t want a eulogy, she said, but she is definite about the hymns and readings. To kick off, she would like that old Russian roof-raiser ‘How Great Thou Art’. Then, ‘Lord, For the Years Your Love Has  Kept and Guided’. And for the big finish: ‘In Christ Alone (My Hope Is Found)’. If there is to be a psalm, she would like number 121: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.’ Lately there’s been a funeral a week in the village church.

The Spectator

The Trump card

The day after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Donald Trump arrived by helicopter at Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland. The financial markets were in crisis and David Cameron had resigned in a panic. The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, said that Britain had ‘collapsed: politically, monetarily, constitutionally and economically’. The then candidate (still not even party nominee) Trump put it differently. ‘You just have to embrace it,’ he said. ‘It’s the will of the people. I love to see people take their countries back.’ Perhaps his advice should have been taken more seriously. Huge numbers of people, including many Americans, think that Trump is unfit for the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 30 May 2019

Home The Brexit party, led by Nigel Farage, received 5,248,533 votes (out of 17,199,701 cast) in the European parliament elections, securing 29 seats — more than twice the seats won by the Conservatives (in fifth place, down from 19 seats in 2014 to four now) and Labour (down from 20 seats to ten) put together. The Liberal Democrats, with 3,367,284 votes, pushed Labour into third place by winning 16 seats (up from one). The Greens won seven seats (up from three). The Yorkshire party secured more votes than the right-wing English Democrats did in the whole country. The Animal Welfare party received more votes than the Women’s Equality party. Ukip

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Why I’m pleased that Dominic Raab isn’t a feminist

Dominic Raab is not a feminist. That is the confession the Tory leadership hopeful makes in an interview in this week’s Spectator. Screams, gasps and 240 character rants have swept the internet since. Who in their right mind would reject the notion of treating men and women equally? Of course, Raab didn’t do that. He describes himself as “someone who is passionate about equality and wants a fairer society.” What Raab rejects is the term itself: feminism. And Raab is not alone. In fact, his position represents the vast majority of women in the UK. Most women don’t identify as feminists. Young women, older women, and especially women in lower income brackets actively

Eamonn Butler

The message Tory leadership candidates need to hear

I’ve been the victim of a robbery. In broad daylight. As an average Brit, more than 40 per cent of everything I produce is taken by the government for whatever they want to spend it on. In theory they ask my opinion on what that should be. But they ask me only every five years, and even then, the chance of my vote making a difference is literally millions to one. That’s why many – or most of us – don’t bother to vote at all and most of the rest simply give the major parties a big two fingers. Even mediaeval serfs only had to work a third of their time for their

Hermione Eyre

Serial genius

‘It’s no use at all,’ says Posy Simmonds in mock despair, holding up her hands. ‘I can’t tell my left from my right.’ She is ambidextrous. ‘This hand [her right] writes and draws; and this hand [her left] cuts out, sharpens pencils, throws balls, plays tennis… I can’t drive. I’ve never taken a test. I’m always on the wrong side of the road.’ Looking at these wonderful hands, elegant and almost limp, one would never suppose they had created, over the past 50 years, such a large volume of intensely enjoyable and astute drawings. Reliably funny and wise, her work ranges from Fred (1988), about the secret rock-star life of

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The Boris Brexit court case isn’t as bad for his leadership bid as some hope

Will Boris Johnson being told to answer to allegations of misconduct in a public office derail his leadership campaign? The former foreign secretary has been told he must appear in court to answer the claims, brought in a private prosecution by campaigner Marcus Ball, who objects to his claim during the referendum that the UK sends £350 million a week to the EU. Today a district judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a trial. This prosecution will naturally be seen by someone of Johnson’s enemies as a chance to undermine him while he’s the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership contest. But this isn’t likely to have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Talking about Brexit won’t be enough for the next Tory leader

The Tory leadership contest has been dominated by Brexit so far. To a large extent, this is inevitable: Brexit is the biggest issue facing the country and the Tory party. But dealing with Brexit is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a Tory recovery. If the Tories are to win a fourth term in office, they are going to have a compelling domestic agenda as well. So far, the ideas put forward in this contest haven’t been particularly imaginative—doubling defence spending and a penny off the basic rate are standard Tory fare. The biggest question, to my mind, for the Tories is how to revive the ownership society. The

Matthew Lynn

Matt Hancock has missed the point about Boris’s business jibe

If it was in a playground in one of the rougher parts of town, which increasingly it resembles, this could easily escalate. One candidate remarks that he thinks the party should ‘f**k business’ so another one wades in to argue ‘f**k ‘f**k business’’. And perhaps by lunchtime some other candidate you have never really heard off will be tweeting that instead the party should ‘f**k, ‘f**k, f**k business’’. Before long, the Tory party leadership contest will start to look like the bits that were edited out of a Malcolm Tucker rant in The Thick of It for being too sweary. And yet the row spectacularly misses the point. Of course

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Boris Johnson’s court appearance is nothing to celebrate

I have often wondered what would happen if politicians were bound by the same rules as advertisers, or if manifestos were brought within the scope of the trading standards laws. What if we could take legal action against a government for failing to provide the extra NHS beds or school places they had promised? Given the propensity for governments to excuse themselves from their own legislation when it suits them – Blair’s government simply passed a clause excluding political parties when Labour’s women-only shortlists fell foul of sex discrimination legislation – it is hard to imagine such a law being passed by Parliament. But on 14th May, Westminster Magistrates heard

Tuesday

Daniel Rey

What I’ve learned from talking to Americans about Brexit

I’m an Oxbridge graduate in my twenties and a native speaker of a Romance language. I’m a citizen of nowhere rather than somewhere, and two years ago I moved to the United States. I could be the illustrated dictionary’s definition of a Remoaner. And I am. So why is it that, whenever I have a proper conversation with a liberal, knowledgeable American who criticises the idiocy of leaving the EU, I find myself leaping to the defence of Camp Brexit? For a few minutes, mid-conversation, I’m manning the barricades of Thanet with Nigel Farage, throwing real ale at the Provençal set. Except that, being British, I don’t dare voice my