Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Cicero Trilogy, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer & A Spy, Conclave, Munich, Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion
No group of politicians has done more damage to this country than the 50 or so hardline Tory Brexiteers. They have infected the UK with their poison, concealed their real aims, evaded all responsibility, & now knife their own leader for failing to deliver their fantasy
The failure to reprimand, let alone dismiss, Dominic Cummings — but instead to defend him — is the moment the government lost its moral authority to lead the country during this pandemic. What a pathetic shower.
Philip Hammond, ex-Chancellor, seriously suggests in today’s Times that one reason the Prime Minister may want a hard Brexit is so that his backers in the City don’t lose billions — corruption on a scale I wouldn’t dare put in fiction
Upwards of 60,000 have died, the economy has contracted by 20% and we are still intent on a no deal Brexit. What shall we talk about? I know: Winston Churchill’s statue
Personally I'd love to see the Brexit Party fight a general election and outline their policies on the NHS, tax, welfare, schools, etc, & parade the brilliant fresh faces who would form a govt (Ann Widdecombe?). They're not even a single issue party; they are a single word
Devastating story about David Cameron in today’s Sunday Times, alleging he sought to make money out of the wages of NHS staff coping with the pandemic, and the government tried hard to accommodate him. If true, surely the greatest ethical scandal in British political history
Bletchley Park was run by historians (Hinsley, Briggs), classicists (Knox, Adcock), musicologists, papyrologists, pure mathematicians (Turing, of course) — people whose degrees would fail Sunak’s test, yet who did more for this country than any number of well-paid City analysts
How absurd for both Conservatives & Labour to say the message from last night was “get on with Brexit” when the biggest gainer was a party unequivocally opposed to Brexit!
The quality of Brexit coverage would be vastly improved if Dominic Cummings was named as the source each time he briefs a journalist. In 40 years I've never seen so much hyperbolic garbage treated as serious news
Sorry to bang on about that Gove speech, but when he analyses the “morbid symptoms” of the age he fails to see that he and Johnson — newspaper columnists with little experience of ordinary life but now in charge of the country — they ARE the morbid symptoms
Boris Johnson has set up a six strong Brexit war cabinet that meets on Monday to plan for no deal. Members: Gove, Javid, Raab, Cox, Barclay. See Sunday Times
I've spent years writing about how democracies collapse. Now look at us. Elected representatives physically intimidated. Parliament denied its rights by a minority executive. Going back to the people for a second vote denounced as a 'coup'. This is how it ends
I’m genuinely surprised at how bad a public speaker Boris Johnson is, whether impromptu, platform or in the Commons. Mumbling, meandering, poor jokes, fluffed delivery, swallowed lines, distracting hand gestures... Classicist he may be, Cicero he ain’t
Is there literally no government minister with the guts to say that what Cummings did was an error of judgement, let alone wrong? Are you really so frightened of him? Oh you feeble fools!
UK has arrived at a situation we fought successive wars from C18th onwards to avoid: an entire continent united against us. These naval patrol vessels are a parody of our former power. Sink a French trawler, French fishermen will simply blockade Calais, etc. A national folly.
Why does the PM keep saying that she “knows the entire country is frustrated” we haven’t left the EU when she must be aware around 16 million of us are mightily relieved? What possible purpose does this constant, glib, almost surreal falsehood serve?
The day after a British woman is murdered on British soil by agents of a foreign power, Boris Johnson, the Churchillian upholder of British sovereignty, has apparently gone missing to ponder the only thing that interests him: his career
Listening to Johnson on the BBC just now reminded me of Orwell’s last diary entry, on overhearing “upper-class English voices... And what voices! A sort of over-fedness, a fatuous self-confidence, a constant bah-bahing of laughter about nothing... No wonder everyone hates us so.”
The Single Market is probably Britain’s greatest foreign and economic policy achievement since the Second World War. And we’re leaving it! Future generations simply will not understand why. The govt is in the grip of a mass psychosis
Moral authority now visibly draining from Brexiteers. They daren’t have a 2nd referendum. They are at one another’s throats on the exit terms. They could not mount a march one-tenth the size of Saturday’s, or remotely match the 5 million signatures for revoke. It’s collapsing
Amazing that 3 years ago relatively few people bothered about the EU and yet now it entirely dominates our politics. No Kaiser, no Hitler: this is entirely an existential crisis of our own imagining. Thanks so much, David Cameron.
This Brexit refrain of “Just get on with it” is as irritating as kids in the back seat of a car constantly asking “Are we nearly there yet?” No, we’re not nearly there yet. In fact we’re nowhere bloody near.
“In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way." Nigel Farage, Daily Mirror, 16.5.16, when he thought Leave would lose. Now listen to him denouncing today's march. What a word-class hypocrite he is
What she should have said is “We are only in this mess because I called an opportunist election, lost my majority, and became dependent on the DUP and the ERG. It is my fault. I apologise. I resign.”
The British PM has today flown to Berlin to plead for help from the German chancellor. As a spectacle of national humiliation, Brexit makes Suez look like VE Day
I’m sick of “the bad boys of Brexit” hijacking British patriotism in the second world war. If they’d been alive at the time most of them would have been selling nylons in the blackout.
One beneficial side-effect of the pandemic is that it has provided an infallible guide to spotting a total fucking arse: someone who refuses to wear a mask
Prime Ministers invariably shape their governments in their own image. This blustering, bumbling amateurishness is not temporary. It will go on as long as Johnson is in No 10.
Woah, hold on a second: Gove has just casually announced the U.K. will after all apply tariffs on imported food to protect British farmers. That both demolishes one of the rationales for Brexit, and raises the spectre of an issue that crippled the Tories in the 1840s & 1900s
On the eve of tomorrow’s rushed Commons vote I keep thinking of the journalist Phillip Knightley’s memo to the executives of the Sunday Times just before they published the Hitler Diaries
Driving past the magnificent Chateau Leoube this afternoon — Mediterranean home of Lord Bamford, Brexit-backing funder of Boris “the people” Johnson — one marvels anew at their sheer effrontery in labelling their opponents “the establishment elite”
Brexit has turned the U.K. into precisely the kind of politically unstable, crony-ridden, economically rackety European nation the Brexiters used to mock!
Staging a coup, incidentally, requires a degree of managerial competence that is utterly beyond this shower. What is happening in the Tory party isn’t a coup. It’s a civil war.
It’s a desperate & tragic coincidence for the UK that we should have the worst prime minister in our history at the same time as we have the worst leader of the opposition. Can’t think of a more dispiriting time
For 30 years we were told, especially by the Conservatives, that the U.K. had flourished thanks to inward investment attracted by our membership of the Single Market. The damage we are inflicting on ourselves is unparalleled in postwar economic history
“Brexit chaos” makes it sound as though the mess in Westminster is the fault of 17.4 million Leave voters. It’s not. It’s the fault of those politicians who, after promising to respect the result, spent three years blocking it.
Strongly suspect there will be 2nd referendum, not for any noble reason, but because MPs will desperately want to hand the screaming, defecating, vomiting baby back to its parents — the electorate — & let them decide what to do with it
Honda at Swindon receives 2m components per day thanks to free movement of goods. After a no deal Brexit, to store the minimum 9 days' worth of components on site, they would need to erect the 3rd-largest building on Earth: 300,000 sq m = 42 football pitches. (source: FT 26.6.18)
Living in the U.K. now is a bit like being a passenger on an aircraft, noticing the flight attendants banging on the cockpit door but not being admitted while through the window the ground seems suddenly closer
British party politics is a rotten worm-eaten structure that could collapse with amazing speed. This is a much more propitious time to launch a new party than 1981. I wonder where we may be in a month’s time. I say good luck to the Independents
Right-wing thugs on the streets, parliamentary paralysis, an inert conservative government, a dogmatic & self-absorbed Left, the demonisation of minorities... All we need now is a post no-deal economic crisis and, meine Damen und Herren, we proudly present... Weimar!
Con MP sacked by voters for fraud, minister suspended after assaulting female protestor, likely next leader involved in a domestic row & police summoned, party 3rd in polls with one-fifth of the vote... Have the Tories ever had a worse day, or been in a more dire state?
With neither of the two main parties reflecting their views, 50 per cent of the British public remains stubbornly committed to membership of the EU. That is a remarkable statistic.
Peerages for Evgeny Lebedev, Eddie Lister, Dame Louise Casey, ex-Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox, Boris's brother Jo, Ken Clarke, Philip Hammond, Nick Herbert, Mark Lancaster, Patrick McLoughlin, ex-Corbyn staffer Katy Clark, & many more
A knighthood for Theresa May's husband Philip
Unless I have missed it -- in which case I apologise -- I have not detected much reference in the BBC's coverage of the death of Stephen Hawking to his lifelong socialism, opposition to Brexit, the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq
For 250 years, since at least the days of the Elder Pitt, British foreign policy has been predicated on not having Europe united against us. Brexit has achieved exactly that. It is a stupendous national folly
I would find Michael Gove slightly more convincing on the benefits of Brexit if he hadn’t used exactly the same tone to announce that he too, “on occasion”, had driven his car to test his eyesight
Never thought I would see such a breakdown of responsible governance in the UK. That such economic self-harm could be contemplated by the very party that helped create the European Single Market: shattering
This fellow Sajid Javid is a villain. Posing on anti-migrant ships in the Channel. Unilaterally rescinding citizenship. Endlessly playing to the gallery. A bad lot.
Russians have donated £826,000 to the Tory Party since the EU referendum. Imagine the outcry if Labour had received a similar sum from the citizens of a country apparently behind a terrorist attack on UK soil
Odd that so many proud (rightly) of UK’s defiance of fascism in the Second World War should be so fearful of a democratic vote in a second EU referendum in case it antagonises fascists
Can’t help thinking that if Labour had won the general election and the U.K. had gone on to have the highest death rate in Europe we would be hearing more outrage about government incompetence
Brexiters will cry betrayal whatever happens. May's deal betrays Brexit. Second ref betrays the People. A chaotic no deal will be a betrayal because the govt didn't prepare for it. If EU won't renegotiate that will be a betrayal of the brave UK. It is the religion of betrayal
Two years before they came to power, Berlin Nazis successfully disrupted screenings of the anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front, and it was banned.
We must resist any group that thinks it has the right to decide what we see or read.
First the Tory party caved in to the hardline Brexiteers. Then the UK was told it had to accommodate them. Now they demand that the entire EU dance to their crazy tune. When will someone have the guts to stand up to them?
Not a reassuring picture. This has to be the least talented government for 75 years, facing the most serious crisis, with no Parliamentary scrutiny (something which never happened even in WW2) and at the moment no functioning Opposition
Quite nauseating to read Michael Gove’s pious sermon about the elites and ordinary people in the context of Richard Desmond and Robert Jenrick and his donations to the Tory Party.
Apart from the discourtesy to Parliament and Cabinet by pre-recording his announcement, I think a PM shows leadership by having the nerve and sense of drama to broadcast his address to the nation live
The referendum campaign was asymmetric warfare, in which Remain had to defend 40+ years of EU membership, while Leave was able to mount constant attacks and defend nothing. They couldn't get away with that in a 2nd referendum -- hence their desire to avoid one
I can’t think of any precedent for this. Two former professional heads of the Foreign Office publicly denouncing the language of a serving Foreign Secretary. And this is supposed to be the sensible one, not the clown he succeeded
I agree with
@LordRickettsP
, my predecessor as Permanent Secretary
@foreignoffice
. Whatever you think about
#Brexit
, shocking failure of judgement for British Foreign Secretary to compare European Union with Soviet Union....
The Prime Minister said at 5pm there were 174 lorries on the M20. Turns out it’s 945 and counting. Why did he say haulage firms weren’t travelling to Dover any more? Why is his first instinct always to hide the truth? He just can’t help himself, can he?
Glad to read in the Spectator that Boris Johnson enjoyed
#rscimperium
. Surprised he didn’t recognise that the patrician cynically whipping up the mob to gratify his own ambition is actually him
If Johnson doesn’t follow through with his threat and withdraw the whip from the rebels, he signals to the EU he is a bag of hot air. If he does, he cripples his government and shows the EU he is a busted flush. Is this an example of Cummings’s genius?
This is the lead story on the BBC News website. Why is this absurd backbencher, who has never held any office, treated as a significant figure? Because he’s posh, I suppose
Dyson is Brexit’s J. Bruce Ismay, chairman and managing director of the White Star Line, who luckily for him stepped into a lifeboat when the Titanic began to go down
Brexit now taking on a slight railway-timetable-in-August-1914 vibe, with people trusting that “good sense will prevail” because “conflict is in nobody’s interest”. History suggests unwise to bet on it.
The U.K.’s two major post-war traumas (military weakness in the Middle East and our relationship with Europe) seem to be coalescing, just as the P.M. most ill-equipped for the job in our history is about to take control...
Statement from
@Arron_Banks
: "I am pleased that the Electoral Commission has referred me to the National Crime Agency. I am confident that a full and frank investigation will finally put an end to the ludicrous allegations levelled against me and my colleagues."
Keep thinking of all those businesses struggling through the pandemic who now don’t know whether they will face tariffs in 3 weeks’ time, or even if their import/export channels will work. The Tories were supposed to be the party of business, before they became a sect.