Eu

Wednesday

Ed West

Why we need a second referendum – on the EEA

Roger Scruton once observed, in his astute way, how important national feeling was to democracy: ‘Democracy is a form of government that depends upon a national, rather than a credal or tribal idea of loyalty. In a nation state the things that divide neighbours from each other – family, tribe and religion – are deliberately privatised, made inessential to the shared identity, and placed well below the country and its well-being on the list of public duties. It is this, rather than any Enlightenment idea of citizenship, that enabled nation states so easily to adopt democracy. In a place where tribal or religious loyalties take precedence, democratic elections, if they

Steerpike Steerpike

Sarah Vine reveals the Gove household reaction to Brexit: ‘you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off’

Since Leave triumphed in the EU referendum, there have been growing concerns that the Brexiteers were not suitably prepared for success at the polls. As well as no clear plan of action, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have been uncharacteristically quiet since the result came in. Happily Gove’s wife Sarah Vine has now filled us in on what the Justice Secretary has been up to over the past few days. In her Daily Mail column, Vine reveals that the first she heard of the result was near 5am on Friday when Gove was woken up from his slumbers by a phone call: ‘I was just drifting back to sleep when my husband’s

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Nigel Farage does his best to alienate the rest of Europe

Thankfully, many in Europe – not least the European Parliament – will have stopped listening to Nigel Farage a long time ago. The Ukip leader, no stranger to attempting to infuriate his MEP colleagues, has been winding them up again. In this morning’s session, he gloated: ‘You all laughed at me. Well, I have to say, you’re not laughing now, are you?’ But Farage didn’t stop there, telling those around him: ‘I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade, or ever created a job, but listen’ It was clear from the huge smile across Farage’s face during

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Keep an eye on BBC journos injecting their political agendas into the Brexit debate

A quick update on the BBC TV News. At ten o clock last night the programme ran a report from its idiotic northern correspondent, Ed Thomas, which attempted to suggest that the Leave campaign was responsible for nasty things being said to immigrants. Thomas is an appallingly partisan correspondent and presumably has his job because he is only person within the BBC with a vaguely northern accent. He chose to interview two neanderthals. Then over to the inestimable Laura Kuenssssberg, who referred to the UK’s ‘likely’ exit from the EU. No, Laura: exit. We have to keep watching these patently parti-pris buggers. The subtle and not so subtle way they

Mark Nayler

Will Spain’s election finally end the country’s power vacuum?

The only surprise result in Spain’s repeat general election on Sunday – rendered necessary by the impasse produced by December’s – was the failure of the new Spanish left to nudge the Socialists out of second place. The radical-left coalition Unidos Podemos (‘United We can’), a combination of Podemos (We Can) and Izquierda Unida (United Left), was expected to increase its joint share of the votes and take second-place behind the Conservative Popular Party (PP), replacing Pedro Sanchez’s PSOE as the dominant force of the Spanish left. Instead it came in third place, taking 21.11 per cent of the vote and 71 seats. Everything else was almost an exact re-run of December’s inconclusive vote, prompting

Monday

James Forsyth

Jo Johnson backs Boris

Jo Johnson has declared his support for his brother’s leadership bid. In a statement to The Spectator, the minister for universities and science says: ‘Boris and I were on different side of a hard fought referendum campaign. But it is time to move on, time to unite and time to deliver. I have known my brother for longer than anyone in parliament. He is the great communicator—and I have no doubt at all that he is the person best placed not just to secure a new settlement for Britain in Europe but also to provide the optimistic, confident and outward-looking leadership we will need in months and years to come.’

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron indicates that he wants the UK to stay in the single market

David Cameron came to the House of Commons this afternoon to update the House on Brexit. Cameron was greeted by the loudest Tory cheer that I’ve heard of seven years of sitting in the press gallery. He was in remarkably good spirits, considering what has just happened. Jeremy Corbyn’s predicament appear to have cheered Cameron up. He joked that the new Labour MP for Tooting should keep her phone on as she might be offered a job at any moment. He also joked at Corbyn’s expense that he thought he was having a bad day until he saw what was happening to Corbyn. When it came to the process of

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn heckled by his own MPs – ‘resign!’

It’s not proving to be a great day for Jeremy Corbyn. After over half of his Shadow Cabinet resigned, the Labour leader has now faced a revolt in the Chamber. While giving a statement on the European referendum, Corbyn called for MPs to refrain from in-fighting: ‘The country will thank neither the benches in front of me or the benches behind for indulging in internal factoring maneuvering at this time.’ Alas his words on party unity hit a bum note with those on the Labour benches. MPs looked incredulous as Corbyn spoke, and shortly began a chorus of heckles urging him to resign — with Toby Perkins and Chris Evans leading

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour makes a mess of holding the Government to account as Parliament returns

Even when Britain has just voted to leave the European Union, Commons business must go on. And so this afternoon the first item on the agenda in the Chamber was not the statement from the Prime Minister on Brexit and his own resignation, but Defence questions.   This should have been awkward for the Government, which is in chaos at the moment. But instead it was awkward for Labour, whose newly-appointed Shadow Defence Secretary Clive Lewis was unable to get back to Westminster from the Glastonbury Festival in time. Despite kind offers to help from supportive friends of Jeremy Corbyn, Emily Thornberry stepped into the breach instead, telling the Chamber that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn is going to fight to the bitter end

Despite the rolling programme of frontbench resignations in the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn is clearly planning to fight to the bitter end. Labour sources are repeatedly insisting that he will definitely be on the ballot paper in a new contest, and referring to the mandate he has already been handed by members. A Corbynite source said: ‘We are not going to betray that trust by dumping the democracy of the Labour party if there is a leadership challenge. ‘The only way that the leadership of the party will change will be if the members decide that.’ The reason Corbyn is staying put is because he still believes that the membership

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

How can we reassure other countries that Brexit isn’t a victory for ‘Little Britain’? Howard Drake has the answer

Reassuring other countries that Brexit doesn’t mean Britain is hauling up the drawbridge is vital for ensuring the UK continues to succeed. So far, much of the foreign coverage of the outcome in the EU referendum has certainly painted the decision as an isolationist move. The German newspaper Taz.am wochenen summed up that sentiment with its front page at the weekend, which said simply: ‘Well done, little Britain’. So what is being done to offer assurances to other countries that Britain is, in the words of George Osborne this morning, still ‘open for business’? Not a lot if the Foreign Secretary’s appearance on TV at the weekend was anything to

Ed West Ed West

Brexiteers need to act now, or become the most hated people in history

The British constitution is built on compromise and moderation; it’s one of the main reasons why this country enjoyed a period of relative domination in the 19th century while our neighbours tore themselves apart. Referendums do not encourage compromise, which makes them such bitter devices, and why the last few weeks have been so painful. But now that the British people have made their choice – and I have no idea if it was the right one – we have the opportunity to make a compromise that will cause the least amount of pain. I’m talking about the Norway option, which an increasing number of Conservative MPs are coming around to. This

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Brexit lies are opening up a terrifying new opportunity for the far-right in Britain

The Tory leaders of Vote Leave, those supposedly civilised and intelligent men, are creating the conditions for a mass far-right movement in England. They have lined up the ingredients like a poisoner mixing a potion, and I can almost feel the convulsion that will follow. They have treated the electorate like children. They pretended that they could cut or even stop immigration from the EU and have a growing economy too. No hard choices, they said. No costs or trade-offs. Now the Tory wing of the Brexit campaign, the friends of the City and big business, insists that we should remain part of the single market. So should you, if

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Coffee House shots: Tory turmoil, Jexit and Boris’ bid for No.10

As the spate of resignations from the Labour shadow cabinet continues this morning and the rival candidates in the race to replace David Cameron as Prime Minister step up their campaigns, politics shows no signs of slowing down today. Boris Johnson and Theresa May are the front runners in the upcoming Conservative leadership contest – but who will emerge on top? And amidst Tory turmoil, the crisis at the top of the Labour party continues this morning. On today’s edition of our Coffee House shots podcast, James Forsyth tells Isabel Hardman that: ‘One of the rules for politics at the moment is that however bad things are for the Conservatives

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The Brexit divide wasn’t between young and old, but Ponces and Non-Ponces

Ever since Friday’s Glorious Victory, one of the chief recreation activities of we Brexiters of a childish bent has been the Taunting Of The Remnants, mostly online. ‘How are you comforting yourself?’ one Facebook post asked. ‘In the usual way – with the tears of the vanquished,’ I replied. ONLY ONE LIKE! For self-proclaimed ‘progressives’, what a bunch of doom-mongering, curtain-twitching, tut-tutting stick-in-the-muds they’ve proved to be! For this Remnant Zombie Army, out to do in our brains with their bed-wetting ways and bleats for more referenda until they get the result they want, everything that goes wrong over the next few months – the weather, the football – will

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

No, Brexit wasn’t a defeat for humanist values – or for love

Perhaps the most important pundit to have emerged from the earthquake is Giles Fraser. As a left-wing vicar and longstanding anti-racism campaigner, he makes it harder for people to depict the Brexiters as closet racists. He disrupts the defeated Remainers’ assumption that they represent progressive values, humanism. The same applies to the handful of pro-Brexit Labour MPs, but MPs can be assumed to have murky motivations. On last night’s Question Time, Fraser quoted Galatians (one of the readings in churches yesterday): Love your neighbour as yourself. We need to get beyond our current divisions, and trust in this supra-political principle, he said. Contrast this with today’s offering from Zoe Willams,

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

George Osborne ditches ‘Project Fear’ as he breaks his Brexit silence

George Osborne has turned his back on ‘Project Fear’ after finally breaking his Brexit silence. The aim of his speech this morning was all about reassuring the financial markets before they opened. To help him do that he reeled off a couple of sound bites about how Britain was open for business, how it ‘will not be plain sailing’ but that it was a good job we’d ‘fixed the roof’. The Chancellor also said that whilst this ‘is not the outcome I wanted or that I threw everything into campaigning for’, ‘the people have spoken’ and we must all accept that result. But what was more interesting was what wasn’t

Carola Binney Carola Binney

That Cameron is out while Juncker has stayed shows us just what’s wrong with the EU

According to Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, the Brexit vote was David Cameron’s fault: ‘If someone complains about Europe from Monday to Saturday then nobody is going to believe him on Sunday when he says he is a convinced European’, Juncker told the German newspaper Bild. Thursday’s vote brought with it the inevitable pressure on the leaders of the campaign for Britain to remain in the EU to resign: Cameron will be gone by October, as might Corbyn if the no confidence motion brought by two of his MPs succeeds. But there was also a sense of inevitability about three notable non-resignations: Juncker is remaining firmly in

Sunday

Steerpike

Sam Cam’s sister switches sides over Brexit – ‘how quickly can I join the Labour party?’

Ahead of the EU referendum, David Cameron’s sister-in-law declared that she would never vote Conservative again if Leave won. Now that Brexit is firmly on the agenda — and her brother-in-law set to stand down — Emily Sheffield is preparing to join the Labour party. Samantha Cameron’s sister has taken to Twitter to ask how quickly she can join, adding that she only ever voted Conservative for David: While this news doesn’t come as a huge surprise — given that she tweeted a Sadiq Khan campaign messages during the London mayoral election — it does beg the question of her sister’s voting preference. After all, back in 2010 Ed Vaizey claimed that Samantha ‘may have

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Reminder: the referendum was about leaving the EU, not blueprints for the future

It does seem to me that there’s been a misunderstanding about what, exactly, a referendum is about. It’s not a general election. It’s not about electing a party with a manifesto. It’s simply getting an answer to a specific question, in this case, whether to stay in or leave the EU. So when disgruntled Remainers complain that there is no blueprint for the future, no grand plan for the way ahead, no specifics about immigration reduction, no answers about getting access to the free trade area, all you can say is, that’s not what it was about, people. There was a coalition of disparate interests behind the Brexit side, from