Tom Goodenough is online editor of The Spectator.
Theresa May’s reshuffle has been somewhat underwhelming so far, but with a raft of junior ministerial appointments set to be announced today the Prime Minister still has an opportunity to shake things up. Here are all the movers – and non-movers – announced so far. We’ll keep this updated throughout the day as more appointments
Time is running out to halt Brexit. That was Tony Blair’s dire warning on the airwaves yesterday, as the former prime minister once again waded into the referendum debate to say that: ‘2018 will be the year when the fate of Brexit and thus of Britain will be decided’. Unsurprisingly, his warnings have not gone
Tony Blair’s message for voters on Brexit is becoming more and more shrill. His latest stark warning is that: ‘2018 will be the year when the fate of Brexit and thus of Britain will be decided. 2017 was too early in the negotiation. By 2019, it will be too late.’ The point Blair misses is
The anger that greeted the hike in rail fares yesterday once again caught the Tories on the back foot. Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, eventually popped up from Qatar to say that he too was annoyed at the rise in ticket prices. But it was too late: Labour had spent much of the day making
Rail fares are up again, with the latest rise – of an average of 3.4 per cent – the biggest in five years. Labour are clear about who is to blame: it’s the government’s fault, according to the shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald. But whether that’s right or not, it’s inevitable that anger at this
Damian Green was Theresa May’s closest ally in government and his departure makes life even trickier for the embattled Prime Minister. Yet while Green’s sacking caps off a dreadful 2017 for the PM, still May survives. ‘In an otherwise traumatic year’, says the Guardian, ‘that probably counts as a success.’ So how has May managed
Ever since the referendum, the reality has hit home for the British government as to ‘the weakness of (its) bargaining position’, says the Financial Times. This ‘dawning’ of reality has led ministers to realise that ‘they are accepting Brussels’ demands rather than genuinely negotiating’ during discussions with the EU. When talk turns to trade in
Theresa May’s Brexit statement in the Commons yesterday ‘told us a great deal about what has happened already,’ says the Daily Telegraph. But the detail on ‘what happens next’ was thin on the ground. Once again, the PM ‘reaffirmed that the UK is leaving the EU on March 29, 2019’. Yet this told us little
‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ is no longer the basis of the divide over Brexit, says the Daily Telegraph. Instead, the new split is over to what extent post-Brexit Britain should ‘mirror what the EU does on trade and services’ or whether the UK should ‘plough its own furrow in the world’. 18 months on from the
EU leaders look set to formally approve a move on to the next stage in Brexit talks today in Brussels. Yet back home, this week saw the government suffer its first defeat on Brexit legislation in Parliament. So will the actions of the Tory rebels leave the government hamstrung? The Tory rebellion may prove to
The government’s defeat in the House of Commons last night amounts to a ‘bitter humiliation’ for ministers, says the Sun. It is also ‘a moment of shame for the Tory “rebels”’. In defeating the government, the Tory MPs who sided with the opposition ‘utterly compromised’ Theresa May as she heads to Brussels today. As well
Corbynistas are curiously quiet this morning about the latest YouGov poll, which puts Theresa May narrowly ahead of the Labour leader for the first time since June. 42 per cent of voters back the Tories, with 41 per cent saying they would vote for Labour. May’s success in securing a deal with the EU in
Britain and the European Union will progress to the next stage of Brexit talks following a breakthrough in negotiations overnight. The European Commission said that sufficient progress had been made in discussions on the Brexit divorce bill, the Irish border and citizens’ rights to allow trade talks to get underway. There is no doubt that
Another day, another Brexit warning: this time it comes from the head of Standard Chartered, who says that Britain’s imminent departure from the EU is already having a negative impact. Bill Winters said that his bank is already ‘preparing for the worst’. The Sun says that the ‘same old commentators’ are repeating themselves constantly with their
Not for the first time, David Davis’s words came back to haunt him as he was quizzed on Brexit today. The Brexit secretary, who is having something of a tough week in a year of tough weeks, told MPs that no detailed sector-by-sector analysis of what the impact of leaving the European Union would be
17.4million people backed Brexit, but only two – at least one of whom campaigned for ‘Remain’ – decided that leaving the EU should also mean a departure from the single market, the customs union and the European court of justice, says the Guardian. The pair were, of course, Theresa May and her former aide Nick Timothy,
Today’s report into the Manchester and London terror attacks makes for devastating reading, spelling out as it does the horrors of the murderous events in which 51 people lost their lives. The details are further daunting for making it clear just how great the threat facing Britain from Islamist terror continues to be. Much of
Theresa May’s plan to wrap up an agreement on the first stage of Brexit talks was scuppered at the last minute yesterday. Good, says the Sun. The paper argues that yesterday’s deadline was ‘always going to be a moveable feast’, and that ‘the Prime Minister is right not to agree a deal to meet a made-up
Donald Trump’s January visit to Britain now looks to be in doubt following the furore over his tweets. Diplomats in the United States are said to have put the plans on ice, according to the Daily Telegraph. Good, says the Guardian in its editorial this morning: it’s time to ditch the state visit. Tump’s decision
‘At last’, says the FT, Britain has ‘accepted it must pay its dues to Europe’. ‘It has been a tortuous journey’ to get to this stage and ‘months have been wasted’ along the way. Yet while progress has been made at last, the government has still failed ‘to explain to the public the…cost of leaving’.
