Is the fat lady really singing for Dominic Cummings? Twitter is sceptical. First there was euphoria. Then a 90’s movie reference to Gwyneth Paltrow’s head being in the cardboard box Cummings carried out of No.10 Downing Street, in what looked like a very stage-managed way. (The movie was David Fincher’s neo-noir, Se7en, by the way. […]
If the close-run election in America should teach us anything at all, it is that we have a much better chance of unseating this crooked government if we stand together. Whether you voted remain, like me, or leave, we have all become victims of what I can only describe as a coup. I like my […]
After writing to my local MP, James Heappey, about the threat to food and farming posed by US agricultural interests, I received his standard acknowledgement and holding reply. It contained, as usual, the lines “I receive a large number of emails each day and whilst we do aim to respond in the order that we receive […]
A hard-hitting thread was posted on Twitter yesterday by composer and broadcaster, Howard Goodall. He called it the “Bad News Advent calendar.” Brexit is going to make life doubly difficult for the thousands of people working in the performing arts, just when they are already seeing their livelihoods wrecked by Covid-19. This is not just […]
For those of you not on Twitter we are pleased to reproduce Repubblica journalist Antonello Guerrera’s helpful compliation of highlights from Sir John Major’s barnstorming speech, 9 November, Middle Temple. Thank you, Antonello. BREAKING. Sir John Major: “Complacency and nostalgia are the route to national decline” “We are no longer a great power. We will […]
This article is reproduced by kind permission of The Federal Trust 70 years ago, on 4 November 1950, the European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome. The ECHR was a remarkable achievement. Like its better known cousin, the EU, it has become a foundation stone of post-war peace and stability in Europe. We […]
Nigel Farage’s ‘new’ Reform Party is doing exactly what the far-right has always done: exploiting misery, chaos and toxic conspiracy theories. In 1919, with the world reeling from the impacts of the recently ended Great War and a devastating flu pandemic, Benito Mussolini was contemplating his future. As Denis Mack Smith writes in his History […]
I’ve been reading quite a bit by Fintan O’Toole, lately… talks on YouTube and most recently his book Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. For me, he really helps my understanding of all things Brexit, the history of Ireland/Northern Ireland, and much more. I find he makes the ‘warp and weft’ of it […]
Historically, the City has leaned heavily to the Tories. In part, this was ideological with practitioners mostly believing in free enterprise capitalism, the small state and low taxes. In part, too, it historically reflected the background of most of its leading figures: male, privately educated and upper middle class. The frontier between finance and the […]
Editor: When Priti Patel smirks her delight at the ending of free movement, she neglects to remind UK citizens that, whilst our European friends and neighbours have been denied the unfettered freedom to move to the UK, we have lost our rights to live, love, work and retire freely in the EU member states. 27 […]
The Agriculture Bill comes back to the House of Commons on 4 November amidst growing concern from rural communities up and down the UK over the government and Conservative MPs’ stubborn refusal to enshrine food and animal welfare standards in law. Peers have voted again to beef up protection for farmers and consumers. Farmers are […]
Anthony Mangnall M.P. House of Commons London SW1A 0AA 26 October 2020 Dear Mr Mangnall I’m writing this open letter to you in reply to yours of 27 July 2020, which reprimands me for calling Brexit out as a “resurgence of the disease of fascism”. Be in no doubt: that’s exactly what Brexit is. […]
Farmers will be better off if we vote to leave the EU, they said. We’d decide our own rural strategy, abolish the hated basic payment system, pay farmers more, keep and maybe even enhance farmers’ subsidies just as Switzerland, Norway and Iceland do. And we’d get rid of those pesky regulations — all while improving […]
Amazingly, this is my third #TheWeekInTory in 7 days, and if anybody wants to pay for me to go somewhere comparatively sane and relaxing for a week, I’m up for it. I hear Mogadishu is nice. Anyway, buckle up, here we go… 1. Previously on The Week In Tory: the government campaigned for Brexit so […]
#TheWeekInTory returns, and I’m very sorry, but it’s a monster. The little scamps have achieved quite a lot in the – yep – FIVE DAYS – since the last one. Let’s dive straight in with probably the most gobsmacking sentence you’ll read all year… 1. NHS staff were polled on whether, in recognition of their […]
Update: Amendments defeated, but the Bill goes back to the Lords. There is still hope. Keep up the pressure. The Immigration Bill comes back to the House of Commons from the House of Lords this afternoon, Monday 19 October. The Lords’ amendments include an important safety measure for the three million-plus EU citizens living in […]
Last night, your government and mine voted against – yes, against – enshrining the UK’s food and farming standards in law. Instead, we are asked to trust in their manifesto promise to maintain said standards and not to compromise them in any trade deals they might finally (and without the say-so of parliament) strike with […]
I wander around in a daze wondering how it came about. I spend much of every day thinking about the beautiful relationship I had, but it was all taken away from me by lies and deceit, not on my part, but by others. I have known since the 23rd June 2016 that the divorce was […]
Thursday 8October saw ordinary people across the country taking part in the European Movement’s ‘No to no deal’ campaign. Established in the aftermath of World War Two by Winston Churchill, the European Movement is the UK’s longest standing pro-European organisation with a network of over 100 local groups. Their latest campaign is the most urgent […]
Several recent events have raised urgent questions about the threat to our democracy from unscrupulous digital operatives. Disturbingly, these questions remain largely unanswered by a report this week from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Last week, Channel Four reported on a data leak from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign that revealed how ‘Team Trump’ had worked […]
We like to bring you Twitter threads which you might miss because you aren’t on Twitter! Here’s one from a reader in the USA ahead of Monday’s Agri Bill vote, responding to a UK reader’s thread. We’ve added her thread, too. I’m an American, I lived in the US for 30 years and worked in […]
After a weekend call with Ursula Von der Leyen, Johnson capitulates on his own deadline and extends the Brexit trade talks by another month.
Anti-expert Michael Gove got October off to an interesting start, with a quite extraordinary answer to a question from Opposition MP Hilary Benn. Mr Benn, Chair of the Select Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union, had the previous day taken evidence from Neil Hollis, Regulatory Affairs Manager at the world’s largest chemicals […]
When asked whether he would be producing any new episodes of his famous satirical show, ‘The Thick Of It’, Armando Iannucci replied that British politics was now so silly, it was beyond parody. One artist who has, nonetheless, successfully satirised not just British politics, but populist politics around the world over the past four years […]
The attorney general lived up to her ‘Cruella-Suella’ nickname when she attacked Shadow Justice Minister Ellie Reeve on 24 September last. Ms Reeve had asked a perfectly reasonable question, in a polite and proper way: “…there is a universal view among those who look to the attorney general to defend the rule of law that […]
West Dorset constituent Joanna Simpson isn’t at all impressed by the government’s appetite for law-breaking. She wrote to her MP, Chris Loder, last week, to beg him not to vote for the Internal Market Bill. She received the standard cut and paste reply. We liked her response to that bit of inaccurate flummery and asked […]
As we approach a crunch point for farmers, growers and food producers with the return of the Agri Bill, we offer you our bumper crop of articles on the subject. Our communities and local economy depend to varying degrees on food and farming. If small farms go to the wall, the collateral damage will be […]
There’s money in misery. There’s cash to be made in a crisis. You can monetise just about anything these days, after all. The growth of the social media giants should have taught us that. This government is turning out to be world-beating at funnelling your tax and mine into the pockets of mates, donors and […]
Today Devon for Europe publishes Words on the Street, an e-book about its street stall campaign to stop Brexit. Here its authors, Simon Chater and Rosemary Schonfeld, write about the book’s genesis and contents. They hope to persuade you to download a copy and read it. Simon Chater writes: Though British by birth, I have […]
Editor: Once more we turn to @russincheshire for one of his twitter threads. This time, it’s a brilliant summary of the Brexit/trade/GFA situation. Please share it with those who’ve been subjected to government spin and gaslighting. If you are interested, you can read the Belfast Agreement/Good Friday Agreement yourself. Doing so will mean that you […]