Eu referendum

Friday

Isabel Hardman

IDS’ furious attack on the ‘In’ campaign threatens Tory unity post-referendum

Iain Duncan Smith’s attack on the ‘In’ campaign today doesn’t just show us how febrile the referendum campaign is going to be for the next few months. It also shows us that ministers like the Work and Pensions Secretary are so peeved with the way the Prime Minister and others are conducting the campaign that they want to threaten Tory party unity after the referendum, whatever the result. IDS writes in the Mail today: ‘The acrimonious manner in which all this has been conducted is troubling, and will I fear have consequences long beyond June 23. After all, such desperate and unsubstantiated claims are now being made that they begin

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 3 March 2016

What might have been Sir: Harry Mount points out that Boris Johnson is two years older than David Cameron (Diary, 27 February). Both, however, began their careers in the same year. On 15 June 1988 I interviewed David Cameron for a post in the Conservative Research Department; on 26 July it was Boris’s turn (‘Johnston’ in my diary). The former was signed up to cover trade and industry issues (memorably forgetting the trade figures when Mrs Thatcher asked him for them). Boris was invited to follow in the footsteps of father Stanley, who had been the department’s first environment expert in the Heath era. But journalism lured him away. Would

Peter Jones

People power then and now

It does seem extraordinary that the increasingly puce-faced Mr Cameron offered us an ‘in-out’ referendum and is now telling us that ‘out’ would mean the end of the world as we know it. What on earth did he think he was doing? His reaction is to eviscerate MPs who support ‘out’, and intentionally deprive us who will actually make the decision of information enabling us to do so. People power is clearly not for him. One of the great virtues of 5th-century bc Athenian direct democracy was that those who made the policy decisions were citizens meeting weekly in Assembly. Parties did not exist. So there were no such things as

Dot Wordsworth

Leap in the dark

‘They all laughed at Christopher Columbus,’ sang my husband flatly, ‘when he said the world was round.’ I wasn’t going to tell him yet again that George and Ira Gershwin were wrong and everyone knew the world was round when Columbus set off. But there is a connection between Columbus’s name and the leap in the dark that he took in his voyage — and which David Cameron says ‘outers’ want to take today. I’ll stick to language, since this is not a political column. That very English word leap has no affinities in languages outside the Germanic family, unless, some scholars say, it is related in origin to the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron plays the Jungle drums again

This is from tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political events. Subscribe here. Today in brief François Hollande warned that there would be ‘consequences’ for the British-French border deal that keeps migrants at Calais. Boris Johnson responded to the warnings that Brexit could lead to a ‘Jungle’ on UK soil with ‘Donnez-moi un break’. Jeremy Corbyn rejected the ‘failed economic orthodoxy’ espoused by the previous Labour government and called for a ‘new settlement with the corporate sector’. Caroline Lucas attacked Labour for its ‘silence’ in the EU referendum. Sajid Javid said he was still a ‘Brussels basher’ despite backing the campaign to stay in.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour shadow ministers told to emulate Will Smith in EU campaign

Even if Jeremy Corbyn isn’t making waves in Labour’s EU campaign, the rest of the party is trying to knuckle down and get on with what is essentially an enthusiastic get out the vote operation. The party knows that the bulk of its voters are in favour of Britain staying in the European Union, and that it just needs to enthuse them enough to bother to vote – which is the problem I set out in this earlier post. If Corbyn can’t do the enthusing, then other frontbenchers need to do it in his stead. Those involved in the Labour for In campaign are trying to ensure that the party

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs unnerved by party’s low-key referendum campaign

Caroline Lucas is speaking for a number of Labour MPs with her warning about the weakness of the Labour party in the EU referendum debate. They are worried that their party is not going to be able to deliver the voters needed to keep Britain in the European Union. ‘Labour voters will not be turned out by a load of Tories,’ says one MP, though when Labourites start moaning about a lack of leadership from Jeremy Corbyn on the Labour for In side of things, they then end up accepting that actually a very involved Labour leader might not be a good thing, either, given his lack of appeal to

Caroline Lucas

If the left doesn’t wake up soon, it could be responsible for Brexit

It’s only been a week and a half since the starting gun was fired, yet for people outside of the Westminster bubble, the debate over the EU referendum is no doubt already beginning to tire. On the one hand we have the ‘outers’ banging on almost exclusively about sovereignty and immigration. And on the other side we hear the same economic mantra repeated over and over again. I’m a convinced ‘remainer’ and of course I know that these arguments matter enormously – but I fear that this debate over the future direction of our country could be lost to the ‘outers’ unless my side make a more visceral argument for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Cameron pull his punches to help the Tories reunite?

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsangryamerica/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson & Isabel Hardman discuss the opening skirmishes of the EU referendum campaign” startat=540] Listen [/audioplayer] If Downing Street’s calculations are correct, next week will see politics begin to return to normal. We’ll all move on from talking about Boris Johnson and Brexit and instead start fretting about the budget and pensions: the first phase of this four-month referendum campaign will be over. The two sides will regroup and try to work out what they can take from these initial skirmishes. One lesson from the first weeks of the campaign is that the ‘in’ side have the advantage when the debate is on the economy.

Timothy Garton Ash

A conservative case for staying in

I open a dusty binder and look at my yellowing Spectator articles from Poland, Germany and Russia in the dramatic 1980s. And here’s one from Brussels in 1986, suggesting that Britain was edging towards finding its role in the European Community. Ho ho. Back then, Charles Moore was the editor and I was the foreign editor of this magazine. He shared my passion for the liberation of eastern Europe, while becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the western European Community, but he let me make the case for it. Now, 30 years on, Charles and I stand on different sides of a historic national argument. This makes for a curious role reversal.

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Of course the old Tory hatreds are back. That’s referendums for you

Of course it’s vicious. It was always going to be. Sure, they’ve spent decades living peacefully side by side, but so did the Hutu and Tutsi. So did the Alawites and Sunnis, and so did every manner of former Yugoslavian. In politics, old hatreds do not die. They merely keep mum, so as to get selected and maybe become a junior minister. You will not find me dwelling upon the row in cabinet, this week, about whether pro-Brexit ministers are allowed to see government papers related to the EU referendum. Personally, I’d pay good money not to see government papers related to the EU referendum. I consider it a very

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Head of the IN campaign says wages will go up if we leave the EU

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsangryamerica/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson & Isabel Hardman discuss the opening skirmishes of the EU referendum campaign” startat=540] Listen [/audioplayer] Stuart Rose will have to be added to the long list of British businessmen who have struggled to make the transition to politics. Rose, the Chairman of Britain in Europe, didn’t get off to the best of starts in this campaign when he told The Times that ‘“Nothing is going to happen if we come out of Europe in the first five years, probably. There will be absolutely no change’ a quote that was seized upon by the Out campaign who said it disproved all the dire warnings about

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs Sketch: Corbyn’s sitting back and waiting for the Tory funerals

Jezza is one of the oldest Out campaigners in the Commons. He’s not quite the ‘Father of the Outs’ – Bill Cash claims that honour – but the Labour leader is next in line. Yet the referendum has led him to a shrewd, albeit unprincipled, decision. If your enemies are tearing each other apart, pull up a chair and enjoy the show. Hence his silence on Europe. A slow but strengthening civil war has begun within the Tory party and the vote itself will sound the death-knell for many a high-profile Conservative. So Corbo’s pleasant task is to sit back and wait for the funerals. Meanwhile he’s obliged to pick

Jonathan Davis

The ‘in’ and ‘out’ campaigns? Claptrap on both sides!

Is there a genuinely independent go-to guide for anyone who cares about the future of the UK economy but isn’t sure how to cast their vote in the Brexit referendum? Two-thirds of voters are said by unreliable pollsters to have made up their minds already, which leaves at least a third undecided. As the strident rhetoric and tendentious factoids of the two campaigns intensify, the need for dispassionate analysis could not be greater. So it seems a good time to take counsel from one of the City’s wisest greybeards. Rodney Leach — Lord Leach of Fairford — did as much as anyone, as a leader of Business for Sterling, to

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What is the point of the government’s dodgy EU dossier?

Ministers are today publishing a document that is already being rubbished as a ‘dodgy dossier’ about the options for Brexit. The report, which comes out later, concludes, funnily enough, that all of the alternatives to EU membership would leave Britain ‘weaker, less safe and worse off’ and that ‘no alternative model guarantees that British businesses would have access to Europe’s free trade Single Market, that working people’s jobs would be safe and by how much prices would rise’. Iain Duncan Smith has been sent out to rubbish it, saying: ‘This dodgy dossier won’t fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

How Tory MPs could cause more trouble in EU document ban row

Sir Jeremy Heywood is currently insisting to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs select committee that there is absolutely nothing untoward about his guidance to civil servants about withholding documents that have a bearing on the EU referendum from ministers. ‘I’m really struggling to see what the problem is here,’ he has just argued to MPs. The row is occupying the energy of an awful lot of Tory MPs at the moment, and is unlikely to go away. One way that ministers could escalate the dispute is to work with backbenchers and use departmental questions in the Commons to make their point about the impact that this guidance has on

Theodore Dalrymple

British expats in the EU fear a stronger euro far more than they fear Brexit

Whenever I return to England from my home in France I am struck at once by the number of grossly fat people of beached-whale proportions, by the almost militant vulgarity of much of the population, and by the shabbiness of the infrastructure. This suggests to me that our deeper problems are unrelated to our membership of the EU, and that we have neither the will nor the ability to solve them. This is not to say, however, that our membership serves our national interest. Brexit is possible, though I confess that I’ll believe it when I see it, given the integrity of our political class. Would Brexit affect my position

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Brexit won’t mean more expensive flights for Brits. Here’s why.

We’ve been warned that Brexit could spell the end of cheap travel. But is it really true that Britain voting out of Europe would hit holidaymakers in the pocket? Easyjet’s boss Dame Carolyn McCall said before that Brexit ‘wouldn’t be good for Britain’. And in a company prospectus, the airline warned this year that if Britain votes out in the EU referendum in June, then it could have a ‘material adverse effect’ on the budget airline. But does this hold up to scrutiny? Easyjet says that: ‘The outcome of this decision (in the referendum) could have a material adverse effect on easyJet’s financial condition and results of operations.’ Obviously for

Monday

Isabel Hardman

MPs blast ‘sordid’ document ban for pro-Brexit ministers

Even if there has been no mistake at all in the guidance to civil servants about what documents they can share with pro-Brexit ministers during the referendum campaign, the government has clearly made a number of mistakes at least in the presentation of that guidance, as this afternoon’s urgent question in the Commons showed. The first mistake that ministers made was purely a process one: they failed to get any supportive MPs who are in favour of the guidance to attend the session, which meant that Matt Hancock spent the whole urgent question being beaten up by pro-Brexit MPs who are furious a minister will not be able to obtain

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith: Brexit would be a ‘stride into the light’

The papers report today that many Conservatives are furious with the way David Cameron is conducting the referendum campaign. MPs threaten that if the Prime Minister continues with the personal attacks that he launched at various opponents on the ‘Leave’ side this week, it will impossible for him to continue at leader after the referendum, whatever the result. Today Iain Duncan Smith exacted some revenge on the Prime Minister with his own attacks on the Remain side, offering the Marr Show a rather furious critique of the campaign’s tactics. Though he claimed he wasn’t being personal, he directly quoted warnings made by both David Cameron and George Osborne as he ridiculed