Brexit

Call me old fashioned, but I find it impossible to see how any Tory leader could survive crashing to fifth place in a national election and picking up just 7 per cent of the vote – which is what YouGov predicts in the Times. Of course it’s only one survey. The real vote tomorrow may yield a better outcome. And Labour is also set for a humiliating night, with just 13 per cent of votes cast, say the pollsters. But 7 per cent for the supposed natural party of government, for just the past couple of centuries, is the kind of humiliation that few institutions would shrug off. May should

Theresa May has made her latest Brexit deal pitch – and it isn’t going down well with Tory MPs. The Prime Minister used a speech this afternoon to say Parliament will get a vote on whether to hold a second referendum if it backs the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill. But Simon Clarke – a Tory MP who supported the PM’s deal the last time around – has changed his mind and vowed to vote the deal down. Here is what he said: And Simon Clarke wasn’t the only Tory MP to vent his fury at the PM in the aftermath of her speech. Owen Paterson said the offer is a

I have a question. How come when someone like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez funds themselves through small donations it’s a sign of how engaged and democratic they are, but when the Brexit Party does the same thing it’s proof of how sinister and shady that party is? I think we all know the answer to this question. It’s because the liberal elite is staggeringly hypocritical and now applies a double standard to everyone in politics. If you’re on their side, you’re pure and clean; if you’re on the opposite side, you’re dirty and ‘dark’.  This is the news that the Brexitphobic sections of the political and chattering classes have

Jeremy Corbyn – Labour supporters voted ‘both Leave and Remain’ With the European elections taking place next Thursday, several senior political figures took to the TV studios to reiterate their case, including a handful of party leaders. One of these was Jeremy Corbyn, whose Brexit position has been criticised for its lack of clarity. Speaking to Andrew Marr, Corbyn defended his strategy of not picking a side: JC: Labour supporters voted both Leave and Remain, and every other party in this European election is appealing to either one side or the other, defining everybody on 2016. We’re not. We’re defining people as hopefully supporters of us – but also, people who

Much has been made of the Brexit Party’s insurgency amongst people in Leave-voting communities, who have been subject to disparaging and patronising establishment contempt ever since they dared to vote the ‘wrong’ way in the EU referendum. But far less attention is given to the minority of Leave voters who work and live in the professions and other areas where support for Remain is the default position. One woman who approached the Brexit Party stall in Chester last week told me his: “I am a solicitor; my friend here is a physiotherapist and we are both fed up of being shunned by colleagues because we voted Leave. I just don’t

In a small town in the Black Country last night, a political rally took place which should have the two main parties feeling extremely nervous. Willenhall, on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, doesn’t even have a train station. Yet well over a thousand supporters packed out a wedding venue to see the Brexit Party’s latest rally, filling every seat, standing in the aisles and exhibiting a greater enthusiasm than has been seen in British politics since the rise of Jeremy Corbyn. The Brexit Party launched only a few weeks ago but already this is looking like a movement which could have a profound effect on Britain’s politics. “I’ve never seen anything like this,”

Labour’s fence-sitting Sir: James Forsyth writes that Mrs May and Mr Corbyn are ‘not, in fact, that far apart’ (‘May’s compromising position’, 11 May). To many, the Labour left is simply playing its very old game of sitting on the fence over the EU. The electorate have spotted it, and Labour paid for it in the local elections. Some of us are old enough to remember Harold Macmillan’s withering mockery of the Labour attitude to the then Common Market in the early 1960s. It recalls the words of the old song: ‘She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no; she didn’t say stay and she didn’t say go!’ The