Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Speaker’s ruling was a good one on the government’s Withdrawal Agreement. It has twice been decisively rejected. On the second occasion the government tabled additional documents and argued it was a amended proposal,  but  many in Parliament thought the changes did not amount to much. As I wrote at the time, ask the same […]

The Withdrawal Agreement is a deliberate expensive delay. It means we do not take back control of our laws, or our money or our borders for at least 21 months, and probably for 45 months under the extension built into it. That would take us well beyond the next General election, and would mean no […]

The Prime Minister gave her word many times that we would leave the EU on 29 March. The Conservative Manifesto said we would either leave with a good deal or with no deal. The government has had 2 years eight months to negotiate a deal, and to put in place everything needed to leave with […]

Remain loses the EU referendum so demands a second one. Remain loses the vote in  the Commons to hold a second referendum, so proposes to demand another vote in the Commons on it sometime and carry on campaigning for it. Remain lose various votes in the Commons to keep us in the single market and […]

On Thursday evening we at last got a vote in Parliament on the People’s Vote proposal, recently adopted as Labour policy.  It was massively defeated by 334 votes to 85. Labour officially abstained, lacking confidence in their new policy.  The majority against was  249 votes. The Peoples Vote campaign now say this was not the […]

I will produce considered pieces on these two topics over the weekend. The immediate headlines are A big majority of Conservative MP (188) and a bigger majority of Conservative members oppose delay. If the EU agreed a delay it could only go through with Mrs May and her minority of Conservatives  in alliance with Mr Corbyn […]

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Some 17.4 million people voted to leave. They were told by both the Government and the remain campaign that that meant leaving the customs union and the single market. They were told that many things would be damaging or wrong if we left. There was a series of very bad short-term […]

The Commons motion last night to reject a so called no deal or WTO exit does not change the law. That says we leave on 29 March. Those who wish to delay Brexit need to persuade the government to go to the EU to negotiate a delay, and then to legislate for a delay. The […]

Today the Chancellor should confirm what the published figures have been telling us for some time. The deficit is lower than planned as his fiscal squeeze has been tougher . The government has collected more tax than planned, despite shortfalls on Stamp Duty and VED where they put rates up too much. Lower corporation tax […]

The crushing defeat for the Withdrawal Agreement again should come as no surprise. It united Remain and Leave voting MPs, as it is such a bad proposition for the UK. We now know the government is not going to whip the Conservative party after all for the votes to come on Wednesday and Thursday. It […]