Politics explained

Given that the Boris-Ursula dinner date didn’t go so well, and that neither side has (at least publicly) shifted their negotiating remit or “red lines”, it may be a mystery as to why the UK-EU talks are staggering on into the weekend – and possibly longer. Despite the fact that, in their separate statements, Boris Johnson and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen indicated a decision would be made soon (“the end of the weekend” for Johnson, “Sunday” for von der Leyen), the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab tellingly left the door open for them to continue even longer. Raab said the trade talks were “unlikely” to go beyond Sunday, but how many “unlikely” things have happened in the past year? After all it is only a year since the British election campaign when Johnson declared there was “zero chance” of a “no-deal Brexit”.One obvious reason for the continuing willingness to go over the same old arguments is that, as Johnson says “hope springs eternal”, and there is much at stake. Another is that both sides are terrified of getting the blame for ultimate failure, and both are going out of their way to sound reasonable. Both agree compromise on both sides is needed. Both repeat they want a deal, “but not at any price”, most recently restated by Angela Merkel. Both carefully refer to the other side as “our friends”. Both sides, in fact, have their own political pressures and have no wish to add to their problems by seeming to be responsible for a historic “failure of statecraft”, in the prime minister’s terms.   More

Ministers, not least Mr Hancock, must hope so. Public approval for the way they have handled the crisis has steadily declined since the spring, taking a particular hit after May when the revelations about Dominic Cummings’s behaviour enraged many. It had a broader political effect too: the Conservative Party’s lead over Labour shrank by some 9 percentage points and confidence in the government’s handling of the pandemic slumped. The “Dominic Cummings Effect” had a pronounced and lasting effect.  Since then a succession of lockdowns, tiering systems, the exams fiasco, testing setbacks, confused messaging, a gradually rising death toll and the second Covid wave has seen the government’s ratings fall still further. The latest polling, from King’s College London and Ipsos Mori suggests that two-thirds of people think the government failed to prepare properly for the second wave, and for the first time more than half the population distrust the government’s response to the pandemic, despite the high profile of liked and respected experts such as Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England. The public may have had some of its faith in experts restored during this crisis. A majority of the country thinks that the government’s performance has been a national humiliation. In Scotland, public attitudes towards Boris Johnson are especially harsh, and he has famously underperformed Nicola Sturgeon, even before he decried devolution as a “disaster”.   More

After four and a half years of circuitous discussions, dozens of broken deadlines and a long but decidedly unproductive telephone call, can Boris Johnson’s face-to-face meeting with EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen break the deadlock?  The decision by the British government to cancel some clauses in the Internal Market Bill and the Taxation Bill certainly helps. This move came as the parallel talks on the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol ended in (apparent) success. This was in fact unfinished business from the  withdrawal agreement reached last year and ratified in principle this year. The EU believed that the British government’s behaviour suggested bad faith, while the British found the EU’s insistence on checks across the Irish Sea frustrating and impractical. At least for now those arguments seem to have been dissolved, and chicken sandwiches can be delivered to supermarkets in Strabane without provoking a diplomatic incident or a return of the Troubles.There is also the pressure of time, the continuing Covid pandemic and the longstanding pleas of business people that are propelling the two sides to compromise.   More

Humiliation; party splits; a long recession; ridicule… the pressures on Boris Johnson to achieve a trade deal with the EU are very well known. Perhaps the only detail still missing is what his fiancee Carrie Symonds will say about the new fishing quotas and the role of the European Court of Justice. No doubt it will be leaked in due course.  Yet while Brexit isn’t obsessing most of Europe in the way it has preoccupied Britain, there are still jobs and national pride at stake, and European leaders face their own domestic Brexit-related challenges.  Thus far only President Macron has allowed talk of a national veto being applied to any Frost-Barnier accord. Maybe it is just for show and to demonstrate how hard he is fighting for les pecheurs (his government has privately advised the French fishing industry to brace itself for change); but a “non” to British ambitions has been used before, albeit in the other direction. General de Gaulle twice refused British membership, in 1961 and 1967, and when Britain finally signed up in 1972, the French people (not the British) had a referendum on the enlargement of the European Community.   More

Peter Mandelson caused a stir this week by suggesting that Remainers, by campaigning to reverse the referendum decision, helped bring about a more damaging form of Brexit than was necessary. The former Labour cabinet minister and EU trade commissioner said the “triumph of hardline Tory Brexiters” was the price the “pro-EU camp will pay for trying to reverse the referendum decision rather than achieve the least damaging form of Brexit”. The country could have had Theresa May’s compromise, which would have kept Britain in the EU customs union, at least temporarily, but in the next few days is likely to end up with “a very hard Brexit, mitigated only by a barebones deal”.Lord Mandelson went on: “As someone who was firmly in the reversal camp, I played my part in this outcome.” The shock of a politician appearing to accept responsibility for the consequences of their decisions has proved too much for many of his enemies and for some of his friends. Especially when he added: “Yet if I could turn the clock back, I have little doubt I would do the same again.” More

It wasn’t meant to be like this.When Boris Johnson scooped a comfortable 80-seat majority in last December’s general election, all seemed set fair for a lengthy period of untrammelled power with no need to fear opposition from the House of Commons to the deep changes he was planning for Britain.With the dominance granted by his ability to order his troops through the Commons lobbies, Mr Johnson was expecting to be able to govern virtually by fiat, able to swat aside protests from the diminished Labour and Liberal Democrat opposition. More

A new study suggesting the number of coronavirus infections has fallen by almost a third during the lockdown in England has raised hopes that the second wave of the pandemic is being brought under control.The React survey of 105,000 people by Imperial College, London, and pollsters Ipsos Mori showed a 30 per cent drop in cases between 13 and 24 November, with big falls in the northwest and northeast.  Yet the findings are a mixed blessing for ministers. The timing was hardly helpful, coming as Boris Johnson tries to limit the size of a Commons rebellion by Conservative MPs on Tuesday against the three-tier system of restrictions that will replace the lockdown on Wednesday.   More

In the run-up to the last Scottish referendum, Jean Chretien, the former prime minister of Canada, warned British politicians of the need to win hearts as well as minds if their union was to stay intact.  Born in Quebec, he led his country the last time his home province held an independence referendum.  The result was incredibly tight.  The people of Quebec voted to remain a part of Canada by a margin of less than 1 per cent.  In the years that followed, he, like many Canadian politicians, had a lot of time to think about the nature of that result.  I spoke to him in London in 2013, after he had been asked to give a speech on his experience in Whitehall.   More