Brexit

MICHAEL WHITE on the painfully slow realisation dawning on the Tories that Brexit is complicated and requires compromise How deeply irritating it must have been for travelling Theresa May constantly to be distracted all week from the draft of Friday’s ‘vision thing’ speech in Florence by the sight of her priapic Foreign Secretary wildly waving […]

RICHARD PORRITT with this week’s big stories The comrades are massing on the south coast for the Labour Party conference – but hidden by the raucous renditions of The Red Flag the whispers of division continue. With the McDonnell rule – meaning leadership contenders only need the support of 10% of their peers, not 15% […]

The venerable Dr Johnson described patriotism as ‘the last refuge of the scoundrel’. In our times, political scoundrels use nationalism as their last refuge, spiked with bitter xenophobia, and throw in some handy cynicism. They impugn migrants, refugees, immigrants, and people of colour. They upbraid powerless outsiders for the ills of this splintered, ungovernable nation. […]

Home Secretary Amber Rudd today accused her Cabinet colleague Boris Johnson of “back-seat driving” as the row over his Brexit intervention deepened. She publicly slapped down the Foreign Secretary after he used a 4,000-word essay in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph to set out his personal vision for post-Brexit Britain just days before the Prime Minister delivers […]

BONNIE GREER on the conviction that you can have your cake and eat it Like all questions that history deems to have ultimately been about a nation’s identity, its very soul, Brexit has quickly become a measure of more than itself. The pro-EU march on Westminster last weekend turned out Middle England, that bellwether of […]

MICHAEL WHITE on the coming post-EU withdrawal bill vote storm and what happens now we get into the detail Never boring, is it? Monday night’s second reading vote on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill may only have been classified as a Category 2 storm which passed through the House of Commons with limited damage to […]

RICHARD PORRITT with the week’s big stories So to Bournemouth and Sir Vince Cable’s debut at Liberal Democrat conference as leader. ‘We need to give people power over the decisions which affect their lives,’ he says in the foreword to the conference programme. Some might say giving the public a say got us into this […]

STEVE ANGLESEY rounds up the losers and losers (because there are no winners) of another crazy seven days on Planet Brexit 10 Michael Caine The 84-year-old actor told an audience at the Venice Film Festival that he supported Brexit because ‘I’d rather be a poor master of my own fate than a rich servant of […]

Britain will “soon regret” leaving the EU, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has warned in his annual state of the union speech. He told the European Parliament that although Brexit would be a “sad, tragic” moment the remainder of the union would “move on”, setting out moves for closer economic and defence co-operation. The “wind […]

Theresa May’s insistence that she is sticking around as PM may have been met with scepticism and incredulity, but PR agent MARK BORKOWSKI argues her reboot may yet work Theresa May stunned many in Westminster when she expressed her desire to lead her party into the next general election. After the almighty stumble of June’s […]

An estimated 50,000 passionate Remainers marched on Parliament yesterday demanding the Government reverse its Brexit strategy. The People’s March For Europe began at Hyde Park, moving noisily through central London before attending a rally in Parliament Square with speeches including former cabinet minister Sir Ed Davey and Conservative peer Baroness Wheatcroft. Many clad in the […]

Tony Blair today made an explosive intervention in the Brexit debate, calling for tough new immigration rules which would allow Britain to stay in the EU. In a policy paper for The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the former Prime Minister has called on the Government to make EU citizens coming to Britain register […]

RICHARD PORRITT on the week’s big stories ‘Shut up and do as you are told or the Commie bastard on the opposition benches will send us all back to the 1970s’ appears to be the Whips’ latest line of attack on Tory Remainers. But why the paranoia? Even rogue Remain Tory Anna Soubry admitted that […]

Britain’s chances of being ready to begin EU trade negotiations by the next round of trade talks in October are “in the neighbourhood of zero”, former European Council president Herman van Rompuy warned today. The stark warning comes days after David Davies admitted Brexit negotiations were proving “tough and at times confrontational” as he told […]

With a protest in Manchester next month and another in London this weekend, the grassroots fight against Brexit is taking to the streets again. Organisers of Saturday’s event KAZ LLEWELLYN and JEREMY DAVIES issue a call to arms We must protest and we must march if we are to reclaim our future. We are not […]

Attempts to look on the bright side, economically, are – as ever – undermined by the same doubts and uncertainty surrounding Brexit, says Angela Jameson. A press release lands from a private equity company that wants to talk up the economy. ECI Partners, which invests in small-to-medium-sized growing firms, says that the 350 businesses it […]

Boris Johnson has long been loathed by Remainers. Now, even the Tory grassroots are turning on him. Jane Merrick reports on the Foreign Secretary’s waning star. This summer, the United States wasn’t the only country to witness a total eclipse.. In the UK, another golden figure was blocked out – and this time it could […]

Steve Anglesey picks out the worst Brexiteers of the week. 10. PAUL NUTTALL The only man to win the Grand National as jockey, trainer AND horse opened an article for the Daily Telegraph with the words, ‘It has been just over two months since I stood down as leader of UKIP after the general election. […]

This week’s podcast looks at what Labour’s Leavers really think of the party’s policy shift, the songs which sum up Brexit and a scary look at Britain’s foodie future once we’ve left the EU. A review of the week’s Brexit news with host Steve Anglesey and broadcaster Neil Perry. Plus the podcast contains all the […]

Japanese businesses expect ‘clarity’ over Brexit, a top diplomat said as Theresa May jetted off to the Far East. Minister for public diplomacy at the Japanese embassy Shinichi Iida said his government would prefer Britain to stay in the European Union and will be ‘paying close attention’ to negotiations. He added that Japan has a […]

En même temps… I am guessing many of you know, without resorting to Google Translate, that it means ‘at the same time’. In France, however, it has taken on a political as well as a literal significance, because of Emmanual Macron’s heavy use of the phrase during his audacious bid for the Elysée Palace. It […]

Labour’s new Brexit policy is a step in the right direction – but doesn’t go far enough, say the party’s MPs Heidi Alexander and Alison McGovern. Have you ever had that excited but exasperated feeling when your team’s so close to scoring yet can’t quite manage to get the ball in the back of the […]

Clacton is where baby boomers go to retire. Anthony Clavane went to meet them on the seafront to ask them why, in Vince Cable’s words, ‘they shafted the young’ by voting for Brexit. It is midday and, taking refuge from yet another shower on the Essex sunshine coast, hundreds of holidaymakers have poured on to […]

Labour cannot halt Brexit, says Abi Wilkinson, instead it is down to a grassroots movement to swing opinion and then the politicians will follow. Here are several things I believe are true. First of all, that Brexit is going to be an unmitigated disaster with few – if any – silver linings. Secondly, that the […]

The European Union’s starry logo glistens in the sun on a plaque by a roundabout just outside Longford, a market town about 80 miles from Dublin in the Irish Midlands. Before the part-EU-funded bypass, Longford was choked in traffic. Now signs warn visitors to drive on the left in four languages – English, Gaelic, German […]

London’s economy is ‘wobbling’ due to the aftershock of the Britain’s decision to back Brexit, according to a new report. Research by think tank the Centre for London concludes that the looming EU exit could be a factor in reducing numbers of Europeans coming to the capital to work, a slowdown in job creation, declining […]

Things are now so grim in Brexit Britain – there is no hero riding to the rescue – but it’s not too late to rethink I expected, by now, to be coming round to the idea of Brexit. A lot of my friends were Outers – clever folk with whom I agree on much else. […]

Chancellor Philip Hammond has launched a ferocious counter-attack on cabinet rivals who have been briefing against him claiming Brexiteers are behind the plots. He accused them of trying to undermine his attempts to secure a Brexit deal which protected jobs and the economy. Hammond has been hit by a series of press reports claiming the […]

It’s becoming clear what the British people want from Brexit. But they are not being given the option, says former PM Tony Blair This was on any basis an extraordinary election, unique in recent British political experience and with major political consequence. The country is deeply divided: between young and old; metropolitan and outside the […]

A new Big Lie is currently entering the Big Lie lexicon. It is that 51.9% having voted Leave last June 23 – National Self-Harm Day – the number has now risen to over 80%. When the Brexit pathology is studied, hopefully by historians examining how the UK found its reverse gear and pulled back from […]

Cock ups, chaos and calamity – Brexit is a shitstorm like no other. We pick over the carcass of another rotting week of Brexit madness 10) Theresa May ‘Only the Conservatives can deliver a successful Brexit’ – remember that? It seems Theresa May is flip flopping on yet another election promise. She has now made […]

The Government’s actions based on the 2016 referendum’s outcome were politically illegitimate It is plain to every impartial observer that Brexit is a disaster, and promises yet worse. The harm to the UK, already happening and already mounting in ever larger quantities, is as clear as day. In any rational order a stop would have […]