Brexit

MICHAEL WHITE on Tory treachery, Lib Dem ambition and a week of serpentine manoeuvring in Westminster Another momentous week, another object lesson in how events, chance and human agency collide in unpredictable ways to produce profound consequences. Who could have predicted that cautious Angela Merkel’s decent instincts towards refugees – every German family knows first-hand […]

Labour MPs HEIDI ALEXANDER and ALISON McGOVERN on why their party cannot continue to brush Brexit under the carpet Like the German word schadenfreude there is doubtless a compound noun somewhere that perfectly encapsulates a dilemma you pretend to grapple with whilst never really dealing with it in any serious or honest way. If it […]

If you’re heading to the Stop Brexit march in Manchester on Sunday you’ll want to take these posters Heading to the Stop Brexit march in Manchester in Sunday? Then as a New European reader you won’t want to be without one of our brilliant and suitably Mancunian placards we’ve created especially for the occasion. Download […]

STEVE ANGLESEY rounds up the losers and losers (because there are no winners) of another crazy seven days on Planet Brexit 10 Russell Brand Asked on Newsnight if he supports Brexit, the increasingly precious former comedian replied: ‘To be honest, I source my emotional connection to politics beyond those kind of parameters.’ Sadly, Rusty later […]

Jeremy Corbyn and his Momentum supporters have a stranglehold on the Labour Party. RICHARD PORRITT reports from Labour conference on the impact that is having on the party’s Brexit stance A few hundred yards from the armed police that patrol the entrance to the Brighton Conference Centre a queue snakes around the block. Young and […]

Brexit was bad enough, now John McDonnell has given businesses even more to think about. ANGELA JAMESON reports Which is the bigger economic crisis facing the UK – the prospect of leaving the EU without any trade deal or a Labour government with Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister and war-gaming John McDonnell as his renationalising […]

The grassroots movement to stop Brexit returns to the streets this weekend with a mass march in Manchester. Organiser PETER FRENCH issues a rallying cry A friend of mine who will be taking part in Sunday’s Stop Brexit march has only recently become an active participant in our fight. He told me he had decided […]

Former Labour minister DENIS MACSHANE gives his snap verdict on the speech Jeremy Corbyn gave today Jeremy Corbyn’s keynote conference speech was carefully calibrated to stay on not-quite diverging tramlines with Theresa May but he at least dropped Labour language that the EU was responsible for driving down wages in Britain because of freedom of […]

If you thought you couldn’t see anything more embarrassing from the Brexit fall-out than the March For Leadsom on Parliament, think again. An enterprising elderly warbler has taken to YouTube to voice his support for exiting the EU via the means of a mind-numbingly awful music video. The Brexit Song (We’ll Be Strong) by Peter […]

Boris Johnson’s Brexit intervention has put the focus back on statistics, says ANGELA JAMESON. And the actual numbers do not look good Boris Johnson has done more to stimulate interest in how statistics are used and abused in the last few days than the UK Statistics Authority has managed in its 10 year lifetime. BoJo’s […]

Sir Keir Starmer has said Labour could negotiate “a new single market relationship” with the EU after Brexit. The Shadow Brexit Secretary said options for retaining the benefits of the single market and customs union “should not be swept off the table”, as he also mentioned a new bespoke trade deal. Sir Keir told the […]

Jeremy Corbyn appeared to pour cold water on demand from Labour members to back membership of the single market, suggesting it could hinder his plans to nationalise the railways. More than 40 senior Labour figures, including 30 MPs, have signed an open letter in the Observer today urging the leadership to commit to remaining in […]

Britain’s entry into Europe was a long, painful process – with clear lessons for our even more painful departure, says EDWARD BICKHAM, curator of a new exhibition on this pivotal period in British history During the late 1940s, Winston Churchill had been the darling of many European political salons as a result of making trenchant […]

MITCH BENN lays out how to understand the Brexiteering foreign secretary First rule of Boris Johnson; it’s all about Boris Johnson. Second rule of Boris Johnson; it’s ALL about Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson may, on occasion, have taken actions which benefitted people besides himself (I’ll put my hand up right now and acknowledge that his […]

Labour’s position on Brexit is softening, says NATHANIEL TAPLEY, and the 48% should get off Jeremy Corbyn’s back The greatest threat to the cause of Remaining are large swathes of the country who are in the grip of Corbyn-fever. There are activists and commentators whose every article, every statement, every position is all about the […]

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 […]