Brexit

Olly Robbins will be trying to avoid the Prime Minister today after his hurricane strength gaffe was splashed all over the newspaper front pages. He deserves a fair share of the criticism that has come his way, but I’m sure most of us have mouthed off a little too loudly in the pub after a stressful day in the office. The PM will be especially frustrated because he has undermined one of Theresa May’s central claims – that the choice facing Parliament is a binary one between her deal and no deal. But she can’t blame Robbins for the fragility of her position. In fact this is just a specific

Earlier this morning, I pitched up at Good Morning Britain’s studios for what was billed as a Brexit debate with Dr Victoria Bateman A.K.A. the naked academic. I’d been warned in advance that she would be naked. And when I was shown into the studio, she was – totally. We hadn’t met backstage in the green room, as Dr Bateman was in her own dressing room. Presumably she was busy writing her slogan across her torso (she kindly offered later to allow ITV to film this process). So, we were only introduced under the studio lights. We had a brief chat during the commercial break, as Dr Bateman handed her

Oh dear. Jeremy Corbyn was caught out last week after a video emerged of him claiming that the European Union was creating a ‘military Frankenstein’. It now seems as if that criticism of EU wasn’t a one off. Here is Corbyn making a speech at a rally in 2010 in which he says the EU must be ‘defeated’: He told the crowd: ‘They – the worlds bankers – the international Monetary Fund, the European Union, are utterly united in what they want. Utterly united in deflation, suppressing the economy and creating unemployment. We need to be equally united…to show that the voice of those campaigning for peace, justice, socialism, will

I have this mental image of Brexit Britain on a hospital ward waiting for treatment that never comes. We are hanging on for an operation that is supposed to make us stronger and happier, but we still don’t know what kind of procedure it will be – or even when or whether it will definitely happen. This coming Thursday was supposed to be a big day. It was billed as when MPs would vote on whether Brexit should be postponed, and what kind of Brexit they might eventually support. But it now looks as though the consultant in charge of our treatment, the prime minister, will announce on Tuesday or Wednesday

Number 10 had hoped that if it could hold off the Cooper amendment again next week, then it could eke out a concession from the EU on the backstop. But as I say in The Sun this weekend, this approach has been complicated by Jeremy Corbyn’s soft Brexit plan. This scheme, obviously, appeals to the EU: it would keep Britain in the customs union and following many of the rules of the single market. ‘The Labour party and the EU are operating in tandem to some extent, which is worrying for us’ frets one Cabinet Minister. So, May needs to persuade Brussels that such a deal couldn’t get through because

Like many people growing up in Northern Ireland, I closed my eyes to the dirty, nasty low-grade civil war that we called ‘The Troubles’. But when John Major’s government averred itself in the 1993 Downing Street Declaration to have “no selfish strategic or economic interest” in Northern Ireland, I pricked up my ears. Events moved quickly from this point. A few years on, in 1998, Tony Blair gave unction to the historic Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Ireland amended its constitution abandoning its claim to sovereignty over the entire island; the United Kingdom recognised the right of a majority of people in Northern Ireland to determine whether it remains part of the

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, went off to Brussels again to talk about ‘alternative arrangements’, for which parliament had voted, to the Irish backstop in her EU withdrawal agreement, which parliament had rejected. First she gave a speech in Northern Ireland, saying: ‘There is no suggestion that we are not going to ensure in the future there is provision for this insurance policy… the backstop.’ Lord Trimble (once an Ulster Unionist, now Conservative), the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, said he was ‘exploring’ the possibility of a legal challenge to May’s deal on the grounds that it undermines the Belfast Agreement of 1998. The coroner for Northern Ireland