James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Britain’s three main political parties are in crisis. That isn’t meant to happen. If only by a process of elimination, one of the three UK-wide political parties should be doing well at any given moment. These simultaneous crises are one of the things that is making politics so volatile. Let’s start with the Liberal Democrats.
John McDonnell’s response to the latest episode in Labour’s anti-Semitism scandal is another reminder of how he grasps the political danger of this to the Corbyn project so much better than Corbyn himself does. The shadow Chancellor appears to get, in a way that Corbyn doesn’t, just how much this issue could damage Labour. One
So what happens now Michel Barnier has laid into Theresa May’s customs plan? That’s the question I try and answer in my Sun column this morning. Those close to May are trying to downplay Barnier’s criticisms. One Cabinet Minister remarks, ‘It is not a great surprise. He’s been saying no all along’. This Minister’s view
David Davis could be forgiven a wry chuckle today. For what he warned Theresa May about has come to pass: Michel Barnier has made clear that the EU Commission can’t accept Theresa May’s proposed facilitated customs arrangement as it won’t have a third country (ie, the UK) collecting tariffs on its behalf: ‘The EU cannot
The last day of the parliamentary term is usually an occasion for the government to get a whole bunch of bad news out of the way all at once. But this summer’s end-of-term announcements were used as a chance to put out some seemingly good news. Teachers, prison officers and members of the military will
Regional Cabinets are always a bit gimmicky. The idea that putting ministers on a train to somewhere outside of London would make them take different decisions has always struck me as somewhat absurd. But today’s, as Katy said earlier, has taken on a particular significance because it marked the beginning of Theresa May’s attempt to
‘She’s safe until September’. That’s the verdict on Theresa May of one of those who knows the Tory parliamentary party best, I write in The Sun this morning. Number 10 want to use the summer to try and turn opinion around on Mrs May’s Chequers plan. Under consideration, is a plan for her to do
The summer holidays couldn’t come soon enough for Theresa May. So desperate was she to get MPs away from Westminster that she wanted to send them home early. Normally, prime ministers would do almost anything to avoid headlines such as ‘MPs vote to go to the beach’. But in these circumstances, Downing Street decided that
Boris Johnson did not launch a full-on attack on Theresa May in his resignation speech. But he was brutally critical of the Chequers plan, saying that in crucial respects it was ‘Brexit in name only’. He complained that since the Lancaster House speech ‘a fog of self-doubt has descended’ and that the UK never even
If Theresa May gets a Brexit deal and it can’t get through parliament, then we are heading towards the most dangerous political crisis in living memory, I say in The Sun this morning. For I very much doubt that the 80 percent of MPs who are opposed to no deal, would let Britain leave without
The single most important fact in British politics, I say in the magazine this week, is that Theresa May does not currently have the votes to pass her Brexit plan even if she could get the European Union to accept it. ‘The numbers just don’t stack up’, one Cabinet Minister laments to me. May’s problem
‘The numbers just don’t stack up,’ one cabinet minister wearily declared to me on Monday night. This is, perhaps, the single most important fact in British politics today: Theresa May does not currently have the votes to pass her Brexit plan even if she could get the European Union to accept it. Boris Johnson and
Donald Trump has demanded that Nato members spend four percent of their GDP on defence. He is proposing a doubling of the current Nato target of two percent. This is, obviously, a negotiating tactic: even the US doesn’t, currently, hit this 4 percent mark. I suspect that Trump’s real aim is to highlight how few
Jeremy Hunt is the new Foreign Secretary, replacing Boris Johnson. Having secured a new funding settlement for the NHS, Hunt has—finally—agreed to move jobs. I suspect it will be quite some time before anyone beats his record as the longest serving Health Secretary ever. Hunt was a Remainer during the referendum campaign. But since he
Having lost two of her most senior Cabinet Ministers, Theresa May went to address her MPs in a stuffy, hot room. But the occasion went off fairly-well for her. The vast majority of the questions were supportive and even the veteran Eurosceptic Edward Leigh made clear that the 1990s showed that a leadership contest wouldn’t
Boris Johnson has resigned. The Foreign Secretary becomes the second senior Cabinet Minister to quit over the deal agreed at Chequers, which he reportedly called a ‘turd’. At the weekend, those close to Boris were clear that he wouldn’t resign. They said that the only people who would benefit from his resignation would be Michel
The Brexit Secretary David Davis has quit. Davis’s resignation is the biggest political crisis that Theresa May has faced since the loss of her majority in the general election and leaves her facing a battle to save her premiership. Davis has gone because he could not stomach the opening UK negotiating position agreed at Chequers.
From the flurry of joint op-eds from Cabinet Ministers today, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Chequers deal is the deal. But, of course, it is not. Rather, it is the UK’s government opening position in the negotiation on the future relationship. So, logically, you would expect the government to have to make
Theresa May is through Chequers with a plan that proposes having the UK follow EU rules on goods and agri-foods. This isn’t what the Cabinet’s Brexiteers would have expected two years ago, or even nine months ago. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the biggest single reason they are putting up with
Earlier I wrote about how a paper circulated to ministers before Chequers makes clear that the UK’s plan to follow a ‘common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’ with the EU ‘would not allow the UK to accommodate a likely ask from the US in a future trade deal’ as the UK would be unable to
