Category Archives: Brexit

Corbyn’s team split over soft Brexit

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Shadow cabinet will clash this week over Norway-style deal or second referendum

Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet is set to clash again over Brexit this week, with supporters of a second referendum concerned that the Labour leadership will opt to facilitate a soft Brexit. With senior Labour figures openly calling for another public vote at the anti-Brexit march in London on Saturday, other influential MPs believe Corbyn’s inner circle is actually warming to a Norway-style Brexit that would see Britain leave the EU, but remain closely aligned to it.

Tensions between Labour and its pro-Remain activists are already high after the party released a tweet on Friday evening asking if supporters had any “big weekend plans” and called on them to go out leafleting for May’s local elections.

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People’s vote Brexit rally draws 1 million marchers – video report

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Official figures put the numbers at the people's vote Brexit march on Saturday at over 1 million. People from across the UK travelled to central London to demand a second vote on whether the UK should leave the EU

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One telling image: in a Brussels corridor, the EU takes back control of Brexit

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A photo of an ad hoc crisis meeting gives an insight into the efforts made to cope with a floundering British government

As pictures go, it spoke volumes. On Thursday evening in Brussels, Bulgaria’s permanent representative to the EU, Dimiter Tzantchev, tweeted a photograph he titled “In the corridors of the European Council art 50”.

In a play of light and shadow, as if in a Golden Age painting by a modern-day Rembrandt or Frans Hals, a tight cluster of perhaps two dozen figures, some standing, some crouched, pored over a screen: senior EU officials, member state diplomats, Europe advisers to heads of government.

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Macron accuses Brexiters of ‘lies’ over no-deal Brexit – video

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The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has accused Brexiters of telling 'lies' to British voters, and he claimed they would be hardest hit if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. 'They told the people, "It'll be easy, it'll be quick!,"' he said. 'It's awful, there were a lot of lies.'


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UK heading for no-deal Brexit if MPs reject agreement, says Macron – video

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The French president has said that if British MPs reject Theresa May's withdrawal deal next week, it will 'guide everybody to a no-deal [Brexit]'. Emmanuel Macron also said the EU and the UK could agree a technical extension if the House of Commons were to vote in favour

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‘Bad boys of Brexit’ were guests at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club

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Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore have drawn the scrutiny of investigators looking into possible Russian interference in the 2016 referendum vote

Two controversial backers of the Brexit movement were guests last year at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore, known as the “bad boys of Brexit”, visited the Palm Beach club in April, according to a review by the Palm Beach Post of Instagram posts tagged at the spot.

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Brexit: Theresa May says high time MPs vote for her deal – as it happened

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Rolling updates on the day’s political events, including PM’s statement at Downing Street and Labour leader leaving meeting

I am going to wrap this up now. Here a few of tonight’s highlights at a glance:

Theresa May tells the British People ‘I’m on your side” ...which side is that? Leave, Remain, or Resign?

The summary of Beth Rigby, deputy political editor of Sky News, is blistering:

May’s national address badly misjudged. She has further angered the very people she needs to win over, MPs. Never before has the power of persuasion and art of compromise been so sorely needed and so clearly missing

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Brexit delay decision unlikely this week, says Juncker

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Revolt by pro-Brexit cabinet ministers forces PM to request only three-month extension from EU

Theresa May will ask for only a short extension to article 50 delaying Brexit by less than three months, after a revolt among pro-leave cabinet ministers and MPs that threatened her premiership.

The prime minister had previously intended to agree a longer extension with the EU involving European parliamentary elections if her withdrawal agreement did not pass by Wednesday.

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May asks EU for Brexit delay with cabinet in deadlock over ‘crisis’

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PM forced to seek extension of article 50 as No 10 admits it is too late to leave with a deal

Theresa May will be forced to write to EU leaders on Wednesday and beg them to delay Brexit, with her cabinet deadlocked over the best way out of what Downing Street now concedes is a “crisis”.

The government had maintained until the last possible moment that Brexit could go ahead as planned on 29 March or after a brief “technical extension”.

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Donald Trump Jr and John Bolton berate UK leaders over Brexit

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President’s son and US national security adviser in apparent coordinated intervention

Donald Trump Jr and the US national security adviser, John Bolton, spoke out over Brexit on Tuesday in what appeared to be a coordinated intervention by the White House into British domestic politics.

Both the US president’s son and Bolton attacked British political leadership after Theresa May said she would ask the EU for a delay to the UK’s exit from the European Union; in line with parliament’s wish.

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Erasmus scheme in chaos as UK students left in limbo

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The 17,000 students about to do a year abroad face huge uncertainty over funding and accommodation

For Alice Watkins, a Manchester University student, a year in Paris, then Madrid, as part of her degree was a dream. Now, with the turmoil of Brexit, she is preparing to arrive in France this summer with nowhere to live and no idea whether the money will still be there to support her.

“It’s horrible not knowing,” Watkins says. “We’ve been told to take at least £1,200 of our own cash to cover us for the first six weeks, and that we can’t realistically sort any accommodation before we arrive. Turning up abroad with nowhere to live is a big stress.”

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Constitutional chaos after third vote on Brexit deal blocked

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Prime minister likely to have to request long article 50 extension after Bercow intervenes

Theresa May’s government has been plunged into constitutional chaos after the Speaker blocked the prime minister from asking MPs to vote on her Brexit deal for a third time unless it had fundamentally changed.

With 11 days to go until Britain is due to leave the EU, May was forced to pull her plans for another meaningful vote because John Bercow said she could not ask MPs to pass the same deal, after they rejected it twice by huge margins. EU officials, meanwhile, were considering offering her a new date for a delayed Brexit to resolve the crisis.

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Global stock markets gain as investors predict cautious Federal Reserve – business live

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Central banks in spotlight amid Brexit uncertainty and growth concerns

The Bank’s reticence to raise rates has been hinted at by Gertjan Vlieghe and Silvana Tenreyro, two of the nine-member monetary policy committee.

Weaker growth prospects have come on top of concerns about Brexit, according to Martin Beck, lead UK economist at Oxford Economics, a consultancy. He expects a 9-0 vote to keep policy unchanged, saying:

The economy’s recent performance has been broadly in line with the MPC’s expectations. But public pronouncements by some committee members on downside risks have indicated a dovish shift around the pace of future rate hikes.

In light of the continued failure to get a Brexit deal through Parliament, Brexit uncertainty remains a key block on action by the MPC.

The Bank of England will also be in action later this week, with a monetary policy announcement on Thursday at midday.

Anything other than a unanimous vote to keep interest rates on hold would be a shock, for fairly obvious reasons.

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No 10 says it won’t call Brexit vote this week unless it has ‘prospect of success’ – Politics live

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

I’m just back from the Downing Street lobby briefing. And it was a good illustration of the old rule that the length a briefing is in inverse proportion to its usefulness. (That’s because, if the reporters get a story, they want to wrap up quickly so they can file. If the briefing drags on, that’s because people keep asking questions in the hope that they might eventually get a useable reply.)

Here is the main takeaway.

Arriving at the EU foreign affairs council in Brussels this morning, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, said that he hoped there would be a third vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal tomorrow. But, he added, “we need to be comfortable that we’ll have the numbers.”

He said there were “some cautious signs of encouragement” in that Tories who have opposed the deal up to now, like Norman Lamont and Esther McVey, now want to see it passed. “But there is a lot more work to do,” Hunt added.

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Brexit: Labour likely to back public vote on May’s deal, says Corbyn

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However, Labour leader also says he is determined to continue pressing for party’s softer-Brexit policy

Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour is likely to back an amendment aimed at securing a second Brexit referendum this week – but stressed his party still hopes to secure its own, softer deal.

The Kyle-Wilson amendment was drawn up by two Labour MPs, Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, who consulted with the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, over the precise wording.

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Cambridge Analytica a year on: ‘a lesson in institutional failure’

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One year after she broke the scandal, Carole Cadwalladr talks to whistleblower Christopher Wylie about the fallout for big tech, and the fight to hold the culprits to account

It’s a measure of how much has changed in a year that, last month the UK, parliament published an official report that called Facebook “digital gangsters” and said that Britain’s electoral laws no longer worked. It was a report that drew on hours of testimony from Cambridge Analytica directors, Facebook executives and dozens of expert witnesses: 73 in total, of whom MPs had asked 4,350 questions. And its conclusion? That Silicon Valley’s tech platforms were out of control, none more so than Facebook, which it said had treated parliament with “contempt”.

And it’s a measure of how much hasn’t changed that this was a news story for just two hours on a Monday morning before the next Westminster drama – the launch of the Independent Group – knocked it off the headline slots.

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Revealed: EU war-gaming for fall of May’s government

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Leak shows Brussels planning for PM’s defeat and making efforts to prevent her deal being unpicked

The EU is war-gaming for the fall of Theresa May amid a complete collapse in confidence in the prime minister after a week of chaos over Brexit, a leaked document seen by the Observer reveals.

In the run-up to a crucial summit of EU leaders where May will ask for a delay to Brexit, Brussels fears there is little hope that she will succeed in passing her deal this week and is preparing itself for a change of the guard in Downing Street.

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Conservatives tell MEPs to consider election bid if Brexit deal fails

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Party’s leader in European parliament says it must be prepared to field candidates

The Conservative party has contacted all its MEPs to ask them to consider running for election in May if the prime minister’s Brexit deal is defeated on Tuesday.

Ashley Fox, the party’s leader in the European parliament, contacted MEPs to ask them to think about their options in the event that Theresa May’s deal fails again.

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Ministers in talks with DUP in attempt to win backing for Brexit deal

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Discussions likely to cover role of Northern Ireland assembly if Irish backstop were used

The Democratic Unionist party is to continue intensive talks to try to reach an agreement to allow it to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal, with discussions focusing on domestic legal guarantees that Northern Ireland will have no regulatory divergence with the rest of the UK.

Downing Street is hopeful that the support of the DUP is key to unlocking the backing of many Conservative Brexiters when May brings her deal to the House of Commons for the third time.

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