Eu

The last PMQs before Christmas will not live long in the memory. After last week’s rather entertaining Eagle Osborne clash, it was back to the Cameron and Corbyn show. The Labour leader has now abandoned his ‘new politics’ style and today asked all of his questions on the NHS. The exchanges weren’t particularly enlightening as Cameron parried the Labour leader with relative ease. Cameron was clearly keen to whip up the Tory benches and send them off for the holidays in good cheer. But the atmosphere in the Chamber remained relatively muted. . Angus Robertson went on the EU renegotiation, the subject which Corbyn should have led on as six questions

The House of Lords has tonight rejected a Labour amendment that would have given 16 and 17 year olds the vote in the EU referendum. This removes the largest potential obstacle to getting the EU referendum legislation into law quickly. This means that, if the government can get a deal at the EU summit in February, a June referendum is still possible. The government’s victory in the Lords tonight was not expected. Most observers, including myself, thought that the opposition’s in-built majority would be enough to get the Labour amendment passed, and so start ping pong between the two Houses. But the Lords has backed down from a confrontation with

Reading the Sunday newspapers, you could be forgiven for thinking an earth-shattering agreement was reached in Paris – one which outdid even the Kyoto Protocol in the way of binding agreement across the world on climate action. The deal was heavy on political will and ambition (or at least expressions thereof) but as many experts are now queuing up to say, offered little in the form of hard targets and binding commitments around reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is of course a pragmatic approach to doing policy at the global level, particularly given the extreme variation in capacity and priorities between countries operating at vastly different levels of development. If the

When an EU country elects a government with nationalist or Eurosceptic policies, the European Parliament calls an urgent investigation into ‘the situation’ in that country. When Victor Orban became Prime Minister of Hungary in 2010 for example, the European Parliament called a debate entitled ‘the situation in Hungary’. Orban’s Fidesz party is known for its conservatism and its regard for national sovereignty. When Orban was democratically elected with a two thirds majority in the Hungarian Parliament, he was elected with a mandate to reform the state institutions, which had become corrupt under communist rule and had been stagnating ever since. When he set about enacting the above, the European Parliament

When the EU is in crisis, the Commission’s answer is, inevitably, more Europe. So, its response to the migrant crisis is to propose an EU border force that could, in extremis, take over the management of Schengen countries’ borders without permission. Now, Britain is not in Schengen so this proposal would not apply here. But it is worth considering just how federalising it is. Under this proposal, the Italians, say, could suddenly find the EU manning its borders. It would be a major erosion of national sovereignty. The Guardian’s Ian Traynor reports that the French and the Germans are backing this idea, which gives it a reasonable chance of success.

What if David Cameron does win his fight – staged or otherwise – with European leaders to block benefits for EU migrants for four years? In terms of his pitch to the British public that voting to stay in the bloc is a good idea, this win would be very handy indeed. But would it actually materially change anything? Today, in an evidence session to the Treasury Select Committee, Office for Budget Responsibility Stephen Nickell rather undermined the importance of this row between leaders when he ended up telling MPs that it wouldn’t make much of a difference to immigration from other EU countries to Britain anyway. He said: ‘I

At the start of this week, everyone was wondering how George Osborne was going to get out of trouble on tax credits, avoid a deeply damaging row over police cuts, all while still keeping to his surplus target. But thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility upgrading its forecasts, Osborne was able to scrap the tax credit changes, protect the police budget and maintain his plan for a £10 billion surplus by the end of the parliament. But now, an even bigger challenge awaits Osborne: the EU renegotiation. I argue in my Sun column today that it is now the biggest threat to his chances of becoming Prime Minister. Boris

The House of Lords has tonight voted to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote in the EU referendum. This question will now go to the Commons, which can try and overturn it and send the bill back to the Lords—so-called ‘ping pong’. The government has already made clear tonight that it will try and overturn this amendment. But, intriguingly, some Tory MPs have told me that they think the Commons will actually back votes at 16 for the referendum when this comes back down to the Commons. If this does happen, this could delay the referendum as the Electoral Commission argue that extra time will be needed to

Oh dear. David Cameron’s speech to the Confederation of British Industry got off to a shaky start today after he was heckled by Brexit protesters. While the CBI had opted to leave members of the Vote Leave campaign off of the invite list, two protesters managed to sneak in and get their own anti-EU message across. As the Prime Minister gave a speech in which he said that he could work with business leaders to keep ‘Britain in a reformed Europe’ after a successful renegotiation, protesters held up a banner and shouted that the CBI is the ‘voice of Brussels’: Exclusive: watch anti-CBI hecklers interrupt PM speech (& forgive my