The big picture
It’s Monday, which means the start of a week in which we will find out the first two Tory leader wannabes to be kicked off the list; we might find out if a Labour MP (or two) is going to launch a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn; and we certainly won’t find out what’s going on with the whole leaving-the-EU thing.
It also means Boris Johnson fulfilling his contractual obligations to the Telegraph with a column telling us that there really ought to be a plan for Brexit:
It was wrong of the government to offer the public a binary choice on the EU without being willing – in the event that people voted leave – to explain how this can be made to work in the interests of the UK and Europe. We cannot wait until mid-September, and a new PM.
Despite not being one of the people in line to be that new PM, Johnson does, in fact, have a plan. It’s a five-point plan, although strictly speaking only four of them – EU nationals should be told they can stay in the UK; there should be a free-trade deal with the EU; there should also be free-trade deals with the rest of the world; we should chat to EU countries about security and suchlike – really scrape through as points.
The fifth is:
The future is very bright indeed.
Which possibly means Johnson has seen the latest polling on Michael Gove’s leadership chances. Or indeed what Johnson’s former campaign manager, Ben Wallace, has been saying about Gove’s alleged “emotional need to gossip, particularly when drink is taken, as it all too often seemed to be”.
There are no mentions of Gove in Johnson’s column, which seems more concerned for the emotional needs of remain supporters, or “Lefties”, as he prefers to call them:
There is, among a section of the population, a kind of hysteria, a contagious mourning of the kind that I remember in 1997 after the death of the Princess of Wales.
No hysteria, I’m sure, in the Conservative party, where the whittling-down of leadership candidates begins tomorrow. Andrea Leadsom launches her official campaign today amid accusations that she is the Ukip choice for Tory leader. Ukip and Leave.EU funder Arron Banks is certainly on Team Leadsom, and Tory MP David Jones (a Theresa May backer) has warned:
There is no doubt that elements of Ukip are intending to try to steal a Conservative leadership election.
In the meantime, how about that plan? Chancellor George Osborne has come up with one and his also has five points, key among them a proposal to cut corporation tax to below 15% – the lowest of any major economy – to encourage businesses to invest in post-Brexit Britain. The others, as revealed in an interview with the Financial Times, are:
- ensuring support for bank lending.
- a push for more investment in China.
- a focus on delivering the Northern Powerhouse.
- maintaining Britain’s fiscal credibility.
No word from the chancellor on the brightness of the future, though he does urge everyone to stop “moping around”.
Which brings us to Labour. As last week’s frenetic stand-off between Jeremy Corbyn and much of the parliamentary party appears to be cooling/stagnating/freezing in terror and indecision, it is still unclear whether someone – Angela Eagle, Owen Smith, Someone Else – might launch a rival bid. Or (and this sounds familiar) is there a third way? As the Guardian reports today:
One option could be a collective leadership with a ‘kitchen cabinet’ representing different wings of the party … Under such a plan being discussed by some left-leaning MPs, Corbyn could become chairman rather than ‘supreme leader’.
Another alternative is for him to assume a more presidential role, with a consensual leader of the PLP being appointed who would satisfy MPs.
Have we Brexited yet?
No. Will we? Well … In another twist – are we back where we started yet? – solicitors at Mishcon de Reya, acting for “an anonymous group of clients”, have launched pre-emptive legal action, arguing that article 50 (which sets running the two-year deadline for leaving the EU) cannot be triggered without an act of parliament.
Writing in the Guardian, former Lib Dem leader and deputy PM Nick Clegg says we ought to have a general election before article 50 is triggered:
The notion that it should be left to Conservative members to handpick a new prime minister for what in effect will be a new government pursuing new priorities is absurd. This election would also give all parties the opportunity to set out their stalls on what our new relationship with Europe should be.
The would-be PMs vary in their hastiness to push the article 50 button, with May saying not this year, Gove by the end of the year, and Leadsom being the most impatient:
We just need to get on with it.
While we all talk knowledgeably about the Lisbon Treaty, the question of what happens to EU nationals living in the UK (and vice versa) also dogs the Tory leadership debate, as well as the lives of the actual EU nationals living in the UK (and vice versa).
May has been criticised for saying their status would be part of Brexit negotiations, while both Leadsom and Gove have said residency rights would not be threatened. Stephen Crabb, also in the running, has offered reassurance:
I would allow EU citizens already in UK to continue their lives here, and expect same for Brits in EU. People are not bargaining chips
— Stephen Crabb (@scrabbmp) July 3, 2016
You should also know:
- A group of MPs could seek to impeach Tony Blair if the Chilcot report – expected on Wednesday – criticises his actions in going to war in Iraq. The relevant law, last used in 1806, could ensure he never holds office again but its use against Blair, the MPs concede, would be largely symbolic.
- A memorial to the late Labour leader Michael Foot in Plymouth has been defaced with swastikas and extremist graffiti.
- Leadsom and May have been pressed to publish their tax returns.
- Angus Robertson is the early favourite to become SNP deputy leader.
Diary
- Andrea Leadsom officially launches her campaign to be the new Tory leader. The first round of voting among Conservative MPs is tomorrow.
- At 10am Nigel Farage makes a speech in London on Ukip’s plans for the months following the referendum result.
- At noon, also in London, Tory leadership contender Liam Fox gives a speech entitled “New Priorities: New Vision”.
- In the Commons at 2.30pm, we have education questions, presumably involving Labour’s latest shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner.
- At 4pm Jeremy Corbyn appears before MPs on the home affairs select committee following the publication of Labour’s antisemitism review.
- And in Ireland, the North South ministerial council meets to discuss the implications of Brexit.
Read these
There’s more to Boris Johnson’s column in the Telegraph than his five-point plan:
On Friday I heard a new dawn chorus outside my house. There was a rustling and twittering, as though of starlings assembling on a branch. Then I heard a collective clearing of the throat, and they started yodelling my name – followed by various expletives. ‘Oi Boris – c---!’ they shouted. Or ‘Boris – w-----!’ I looked out to see some otherwise charming-looking young people, the sort who might fast to raise money for a Third World leprosy project.
(The redactions are, of course, the Telegraph’s own.)
In the Times, Clare Foges – a former speechwriter to David Cameron – says Gove is no master manipulator:
He knows from experience that pushing change through the system can be like trudging through a swimming pool filled with sand – so he hits the task with uncompromising velocity. He gets things done …
To set this aside in light of last week would be a profound shame. If Gove is Machiavelli then Ant and Dec are the Kray twins. His concern for the national interest simply trumped etiquette. That is the long and short of it.
Sylvie Kauffmann, writing in the New York Times, says a Frexit is not on the cards – whatever Marine Le Pen might think:
Anticipating the possibility of victory for the Leave camp, the National Front had posters on hand proclaiming, ‘And now, France?’ In the current tense domestic and global situation, with a presidential election only 10 months away, Ms Le Pen’s party, which got 28% of the vote in the regional poll held last December, couldn’t have dreamed of such a godsend.
But France doesn’t seem to be ready for Ms Le Pen’s Frexit dream. A TNS Sofres poll taken in the immediate aftermath of the British vote … showed that less than half of the electorate, 45%, would favour holding such a referendum. If it were held, 45% of French voters would have chosen Remain and 33% would have voted Leave. Three days later, after giving it cooler thought, 55% of French voters rejected the idea of a referendum … and the Remain camp had grown to 61%.
Sobering claim of the day
Politics has jumped the shark. Or as Simon Blackwell, a writer on The Thick Of It, puts it:
Lot of tweets saying we should do a Brexit Thick Of It – a) too bleak, b) TTOI found comedy in chaos behind the facade. No facade any more.
Celebrity intervention of the day
Lily Allen, finding herself at a garden party with Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage, Liam Fox and Evgeny Lebedev – and who hasn’t had one of those days? – decided to document the Pimms and palling about on Twitter.
I'm at a garden party. Hope I'm not sitting next to Voldemort or Fromage. I might be sick pic.twitter.com/ILsuu6kDPM
— lily (@lilyallen) July 3, 2016
Which prompts my Question of the Day: are Farage’s shoes bespoke or is there a shop that actually sells such things?
The day in a tweet
What have we done?
-exit is the new -gate pic.twitter.com/Yt6HTtbWwr
— Bridie Jabour (@bkjabour) July 3, 2016
(And for those wondering what’s going on in Queensland, a primer.)
If today were a one-hit wonder ...
It would be The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades, by Timbuk3:
Things are going great, and they’re only getting better.
And another thing
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