Eu

Unlike the boss, I thought Liam Fox’s comments on fat and lazy British businesses that could be exporting more but aren’t because, well, an afternoon on the golf course is more comfortable than striving for Britain were deplorable. But they were also telling. Because they were a further confirmation that the United Kingdom now has a nationalist government. The liberal Toryism of the Cameron era is gone, sunk with a whimper in record time. In its place is a Conservative nationalism that envisages SS Britannia buccaneering its way across the world’s oceans. This, after all, was the animating spirit of what we might call the Brexit campaign’s more cheerful wing. Well, it’s a nice

I’m not a great optimist about the whole Brexit thing, although my colleagues would mostly disagree. It’s as if we were expecting a storm and we’re now cheering because it’s gone quiet. Strangely, eerily quiet. Anyway, like with climate change, I hope I’m wrong, and whenever I have my doubts about the whole thing, I think about the ‘Remain’ protests led by Eddie Izzard. Let’s hope these obviously counter-productive demonstrations continue for the next five years. However, one disaster that doesn’t seem to have materialised yet is the warning that Brexit would lead to a brain drain. One guy in the Guardian, called Mr Imhof, says he’s going, which is a shame, as

In the referendum run-up, we were inundated with warnings and messages of doom and gloom about the untold damage Brexit would unleash – and unleash immediately. It took a pub boss – Tim Martin, the founder of JD Wetherspoon’s – to add a bit of perspective. Why, he argued, would consumer sentiment plunge of a majority voted Brexit and got what they wanted? Why, if we wouldn’t actually leave the EU for two years, would the economy fall of a cliff? At the time, he was mocked for knowing nothing more than how to pull pints. But now, with the prophecies of economic woe having failed to materialise, it seems he was more

Theresa May received the traditional desk banging reception when she addressed the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. May pleased Tory MPs by emphasising that they  would have more opportunity to feed into policy making process now through George Freeman and the policy board and the green papers that will—once again—precede white papers. But what most excited Tory MPs was what May said about opportunity and grammar schools. May said that she would give a speech on a 21st century education system soon, explaining how selective schools–in other words, grammars–fit into the mix. Strikingly, she defended an ‘element of selection’ arguing that there is selection already in the system, and it

‘When the world ends, I’ll go to Mecklenburg,’ quipped Bismarck, ‘because there, everything happens a hundred years later.’ Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has always been seen as somewhere behind the times, but has this sleepy backwater now become a portent of momentous things to come? In last weekend’s regional elections, Germany’s fledgling anti-immigration party, Alternative für Deutschland, came second, pushing Angela Merkel’s CDU into third place – in her own constituency. So was AfD’s Leif-Erik Holm right to say that this could be the beginning of the end for Merkel? And does this shock result mark the end of the beginning for AfD? I have a soft spot for Mecklenburg (my father’s family used

David Davis has just finished his first statement to the Commons on the process for the UK exiting the European Union. Davis’s initial statement stuck closely to what the government has said already; the coordinated Labour backbench heckle of ‘waffle, waffle’ had some truth to it. But it was striking that Davis said he hoped the UK’s security relationship with the EU would be as close or closer post-Brexit; in Whitehall, Britain’s intelligence and military capabilities are regarded as one of our key assets in the negotiation. But in answer to the questions that followed, Davis–a naturally frank politician—gave a clearer sense of what he means by Brexit. In answer