This morning, a fishing boat called Holladays sailed down the Thames loaded with right-wing MPs, Nigel Farage, and a bunch of journos. It was a protest at the fact that the transition deal May has negotiated will keep Britain in the Common Fishing Policy throughout, i.e. until December 2020. Farage as mentioned, was on the […]
Transitional period agreed between the EU and the UK – here’s what that really means
Today, Barnier and Davis held a joint press conference announcing that a transitional period, to last from the end of March 2019 until December 31, 2020, had been agreed by the two parties. However, as ever with these negotiations, it’s worth looking into the detail. There are days when that whole “Theresa May is a […]
Was the upbeat tone of the spring statement ill-advised? A closer look
Okay, I understand why, for many reasons, Phil Hammond didn’t want to give another doom and gloom statement from the Treasury about the economic conditions of today’s Great Britain. One, he’s starting to get typecast; two, he wants to seem medium-Brexity for the short term at least, so he had to inject some oomph into […]
Yesterday’s session in the House shows why I’d still rather have Theresa May as prime minister over Jeremy Corbyn
I think it’s fair to say I’ve never been the greatest fan of Theresa May as PM. I have often ranted here about her failings as leader of the Conservative Party and of the country. I even dismissed her in the opening page of my last book as “crap”. However, if it came down to […]
How we could be headed for a serious Brexit related constitutional crisis – but not the one you’ve heard about
I’m going to try and keep this as straightforward as I can – but a warning that this gets into heavy constitutional technicalities as a matter of course. That’s where we’ve got to now. Best for Britain, the Remainer campaign group, is launching a legal challenge against the government with the aim of getting a […]
People will build up the local election results in May. Here’s why they don’t matter much to the national picture
In May of last year, we had a set of local elections, as indeed we do every May. People don’t talk about the results of them much anymore for several reasons. One, once they come and go, people tend to forget all about the national results of local elections – even though, immediately afterwards, they […]
We’ve gone from “we’re all liberals” to the exact opposite in the last couple of years. What happened?
A few years back, Maurice Glasman, the academic and Labour peer, and Philip Blond, once described as “Cameron’s philosopher king” and founder and director of the think tank Respublica, would run sessions on “Red Toryism v Blue Labour” and how that were not all that far apart. The basic pitch was two pronged: one, social […]
Why May’s mention of the US-Canada border in relation to Ireland has me worried – about the state of the Left
Theresa May spoke in the House yesterday to update the Commons on what the Mansion House speech might mean in practice. In answer to an inevitable question regarding the Irish border, the Prime Minister said: “There are many examples of different arrangements for customs around the rest of the world. Indeed we are looking at […]
Remainers are beginning to lull themselves into a false sense of security that Brexit won’t happen. They’re misguided
Tony Blair has said very recently that he now thinks there is a 50% chance Brexit won’t happen. If you go on Twitter and search through the #FBPE pro-European hashtag, you will find a lot of people who have almost convinced themselves that not only will Brexit not happen, it can’t happen. Remainers are starting […]
First thoughts on Theresa May’s latest Brexit speech – why this should have been the spiel at Lancaster House over a year ago
Reports leading up to today’s speech were mixed. On one hand, Chris Grayling said that “the prime minister will recognise in the speech today that it is not about cherry picking, that we can’t have everything that we might like to have because we are leaving.” This seemed to suggest more realism, which was to […]