By BAGEHOTAFTER TWO days of voting Tory MPs have chosen two of their colleagues to go through to the next stage of the leadership election: a run-off when the party’s 160,000 members will choose the winner. They are Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary. Mr Johnson got more than half the votes with
By BAGEHOTIN MY column this week I profile Dominic Cummings, a former government adviser who is now campaign director for Vote Leave, the largest of the groups vying to lead the Out campaign in Britian’s upcoming referendum on the European Union (EU). Mr Cummings is blunt, energetic and clever; he infuriates some but inspires intense
“BREXIT-plus-plus-plus” was how Donald Trump—who also called himself “Mr Brexit”—termed his pitch to voters during his successful presidential campaign. Sure enough, many Americans will soon be waking up soon to a feeling similar to the one Remainers in Britain experienced on the morning of June 24th: bafflement at the failure of so many polls to
DELEGATES and journalists arriving in Glasgow today for the Scottish National Party (SNP) conference had one big subject on their minds: the political puzzle that has been hanging over Nicola Sturgeon since June 23rd. In Britain’s referendum on leaving the EU, every single area of Scotland voted to remain in the union. The country is
By BAGEHOTTODAY is Brexit day at the Conservative Party conference and Theresa May has opened proceedings with two chunky announcements about Britain’s next steps towards the exit door. First, she intends to include a Great Repeal Act in next year’s Queen’s Speech. This will revoke the 1972 European Communities Act (ECA), the legislation that took
By BAGEHOTOWEN SMITH was never the front-runner in Labour’s leadership contest. But moderates in the party hoped that he would at least begin the process of clipping away at the mighty mandate, 59% of vote, that accrued to Jeremy Corbyn last year. Perhaps this could be shaved to nearer 50%. And perhaps, in one of
By BAGEHOTTHE urgency with which Britain’s Brexiteer elite has scrambled to cosy up to Donald Trump in the weeks building up to today’s inauguration has been something to behold. Leading the way was Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, flashing a mile-wide grin as he posed for souvenir snaps with the president-elect. Last week Michael
By BAGEHOTFOR the past few months Theresa May and her ministers have allowed some ambiguities to swirl around Britain’s future relationship with the European Union. Yes, she confirmed in her conference speech in October, Brexit would take it beyond the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the EU’s free movement regime. Some found
By BAGEHOTA PATTERN is emerging in political journalism. Whenever something can be construed as a rejection of the establishment, or a win for authoritarianism, or a triumph for swaggering, braces-twanging bombast—or some other shift the writer does not like—the subject is ascribed to a global Trump-ite revolution. Often this comes without nuance.Take this week. On
By BagehotIN A year of grim defeats for internationalists in Britain and abroad, a morsel of relief. The Liberal Democrats pitched yesterday’s by-election in Richmond Park as a chance for voters to voice scepticism about Brexit. The gambit worked: Sarah Olney took the south-west London seat with an increased vote-share of 30.4 points. Zac Goldsmith
