James Forsyth

Theresa May has had by far her most successful EU Council this week. The terms of the transition deal were signed off and, in a genuine diplomatic achievement, she got the EU to collectively recognise that no one other than Russia could have been responsible for the Salisbury attack. But as I say in The Sun today, that doesn’t mean the government should ease off on ‘no deal’ planning. There is a sense in Whitehall that with the negotiations progressing well, there’s not much point in rocking the boat by preparing for a no deal scenario or spending money on things that might not ultimately be needed. One of those intimately involved in no deal planning complains that ‘there is an institutional reluctance to continue working on contingency in Whitehall’.

Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But, as I write in the magazine this week, when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing violent crime on Tuesday, Boris Johnson took issue with what the Prime Minister regards as one of her key legacies: the dramatic reduction in stop and search. He argued that more stop and search was needed to deal with a spike in crime. What went unsaid — but what everyone around the cabinet table was acutely aware of — was that this was the opposite of May’s approach as Home Secretary. As Home Secretary, May toughened up the rules around the police’s use of stop and search. In 2014, she said that the system was ‘unfair - especially for young black men’.

The political weather has changed at Westminster. Tory MPs now have a spring in their step in a way that they haven’t had since the snap election went so wrong. By contrast, the Labour benches look glummer than they have in a while. Tory MPs might be exaggerating how much things have really changed; several of them are currently demonstrating that the Conservative party really does only have two modes, panic or complacency. But a couple of things have shifted in the last few weeks. Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal has reminded Labour moderates of why they were so opposed to Corbyn in the first place. Whether this sense leads to them actually taking any concrete steps remains to be seen.

The single most important domestic policy decision that the Conservatives must take is what to do about public spending. After the snap election went so wrong last year, many Tories rushed to blame ‘austerity’. Gavin Barwell, now Theresa May’s chief of staff, said this was one of the principal reasons he had lost his Croydon Central seat. Even the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, admitted that the public was weary of the long slog to balance the books. This belief — that the public has had enough of austerity — explains why the Tories aren’t behaving as governments traditionally do.

Theresa May has just told the House of Commons that there is ‘no alternative conclusion’ other than that Russia was responsible for the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal. She said that Moscow’s response to the UK’s request for an explanation of what had happened in Salisbury had demonstrated ‘complete disdain’. In response to the incident, the government will expel 23 Russian diplomats who it believes to be spies. The UK will also break off all high-level contact with Russia – so there’ll be no British dignitaries at the World Cup this summer – and pass its own Magnitsky act. This UK response is not small. But it is clearly designed so that the government can respond to whatever Russia does next.

Theresa May has given Russia until Wednesday to explain why a nerve agent that it has developed was used in the Salisbury attack. She told the House of Commons that it was ‘highly likely’ that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter. She said that Boris Johnson had summoned the Russian Ambassador and put it to him that were only two explanations for what had happened, one that the Russian government itself was responsible or that Moscow has lost control of its stock of deadly nerve agents. I think it is safe to assume that no explanation, at least not one that would satisfy a reasonable observer, will be provided before Wednesday.

‘Evolve’ is the new word of the Brexit negotiations. The draft Council negotiating guidelines presented by Donald Tusk yesterday, stressed that the EU's offer would change if the UK’s position evolved. Meeting Tusk today, the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has made exactly the same point. The negotiating strategy is clear: keep telling the British that if they are prepared to change their position, then the EU will come back with a far more wide-ranging deal. As I say in my column in this week's magazine, the EU will continue to offer Theresa May a choice between—basically—Canada or Norway. They hope that if they can keep this up, the UK will eventually take the Norway option and agree to become a regulatory rule-taker across the economy as a whole.

I am told that Boris Johnson harrumphed his way through the Cabinet’s reading of Theresa May’s Brexit speech on Thursday. As I write in The Sun this morning, one minister complained to me ‘it is very hard to concentrate with him making all that noise’. Listening to Mrs May yesterday, you could see why Boris Johnson was harrumphing. There were things in it that are hard to swallow for those who want to ‘take back control’. The decision to try and stay in the European Medical, Chemical and Aviation Safety agencies essentially makes the UK a rule taker in all those sectors of the economy. But May was clear that the UK was not going to stay in any kind of customs union with the EU.

The Cabinet met earlier today to discuss Theresa May’s big speech on Brexit tomorrow. I understand that in a lengthy meeting most ministers applauded the speech. But there is one particular area of controversy, I hear. Both David Davis and Boris Johnson pushed back against the idea that the UK should make a ‘binding commitment’ to align with EU rules and regulations in certain sectors. The Brexit Secretary, I am informed, led the charge against this idea which the Brexiteers feels go further than what was agreed at the Chequers meeting of the Brexit inner Cabinet.

Theresa May’s response to today’s Brexit developments has been revealing. At PMQs, she called staying in a customs union with the EU a ‘betrayal’ of the referendum result, a definite ramping up of her rhetoric, and said that ‘no UK prime minister could ever agree to what the EU’s draft legal text proposes on Northern Ireland.' What makes May’s comments so interesting is that many believe, including the Foreign Secretary, that the EU is raising the stakes on the Irish border to try and get the UK, as a whole, to commit to staying in a customs union with the EU. May seems to want to make clear to other EU governments that this is a non-starter for her.

The question of the Irish border has almost collapsed the Brexit talks once, remember Mrs May’s first abortive December trip to Brussels, and it is threatening to do so again. A leaked copy of the EU’s proposed legal text of the phase one agreement that was finally reached in December says that if other options cannot be made to work Northern Ireland would be considered part of the customs territory of the EU. Given the UK’s plan is to leave the customs union, this would—in effect—create an internal economic border within the UK. It is doubtful whether this would be acceptable to any UK government, but it is particularly unacceptable to a British Prime Minister who relies on the support of the Democratic Unionist Party. So, what happens now?