Brian Walker – Page 20 – Slugger O'Toole

Is it possible to leave the EU without wreaking serious self harm? The answer No is all the more powerful, coming from a reforming Brexiteer

Brian Walker on April 8, 2019, 4:22 pm

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Peter Oborne is an often emotional and brutally frank political journalist, an instinctive but very independent minded conservative. For the website Open Democracy he has penned a model recantation from his support for Brexit. It’s nearly three years since I, along with 17. 4 million other Britons, voted for Brexit. Today I have to admit that the Brexit project has gone sour. Brexit has paralysed the system. It has turned Britain into a laughing stock. And it is certain to …

Let’s cut Theresa some slack

Brian Walker on April 8, 2019, 12:47 pm

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In her fireside chat from Chequers, Theresa May spoke with typically unconscious irony. But she surely right when she said people expect political parties to work together to solve Brexit. Such a pity it took her nearly three years to realise it, although whether an earlier epiphany would have produced a Brexit consensus I very much doubt. I suspect a cliff hanger was always on the cards and a breakup of the parties may happen yet. The fact is these …

Tory and Labour splits widen as Parliament gropes its way painfully towards a soft Brexit. Guess who might be about to hop on board?

Brian Walker on April 4, 2019, 1:33 am

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A Twitter blizzard, floods of Live updates and lurid headlines convey the pace and drama of events. Tory Brexiteer fury as May is seen as recruiting Corbyn to pass a soft Brexit. A secret ballot on Theresa May’s leadership *will not* be granted by 1922 committee of all Tory backbenchers – the feeling is it will only add to instability. They can’t hold a formal process because December’s vote gives May a one year grace period. Asked one rhetorically: …

The DUP are finally at loggerheads with Mrs May over how to protect “the precious Union”

Brian Walker on April 3, 2019, 1:01 am

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What an Alice in Wonderland response from the DUP to Theresa May’s belated opening out to the opposition. Robert Peston tells us: According to ministers, the defining issue (of Mrs May’s apparent pivot to Labour and a soft Brexit) was that if there was a no-deal Brexit “we’d have to go to direct rule in Northern Ireland” says one. “Disaster. Huge risk. Of all legacies, the break-up of the Union [of the UK], the worst for a PM. She’ll never …

Message to Macron: be careful of what you wish for. Britain at bay can bite back

Brian Walker on April 2, 2019, 3:02 pm

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Would a crash out No Deal precipitate a Lehman moment, like the crash of the big international trading bank that plunged much of the world into the financial crisis and near catastrophe in 2008? Here are two measured predictions from the financial experts of the (pro-Brexit) Daily Telegraph.The Bank of England and the Treasury can facilitate lending to France to fight deflation much more readily than the constrained ECB, The DT’s other message is that if by refusing to grant …

The common sense solution to the Brexit crisis comes from business, not politics

Brian Walker on April 2, 2019, 2:07 pm

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This suggested solution to the Brexit crisis is offered by Willie McCarter, for many years one of our leading business people, with long experience of north-south and international manufacturing and trade, becoming CEO of Fruit of the Loom’s operations based in the north west, 1987-97. He was also a leading fund raiser in the US for community and heritage projects to promote development and reconciliation here as chairman of the International Fund for Ireland, 1993-2005. As the threat of …

Brexit choices narrow at peak crisis approaches, for the EU and Ireland too

Brian Walker on April 2, 2019, 11:00 am

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As a riven cabinet meets in peak crisis mode, we might tentatively assume that Theresa May would prefer continuity to smash, such as a general election. For good reason , as voting guru Prof John Curtice reveals: Holding a general election could simply make Britain’s Brexit impasse even more difficult to resolve. That is the clear implication of where the parties currently stand in the polls. According to a projection based on the average of each company’s most recent poll, the …

My dream outcome. Ken Clarke, the sanest and oldest, to head up a cross party coalition

Brian Walker on April 2, 2019, 1:16 am

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I could never have guessed it but the bums really did squeak in the Commons yesterday. The failure so far of the indicative vote process was a narrow squeak, but even so, it revealed a genteel amateurishness about the whole process. Clearly many of them failed to heed Ken Clarke’s s advice and vote right down the list. With so little experience of brokering deals and still inured to their party tram lines, they failed to caucus like Americans or …

Squeaky bum time for Brexit, as the roof closes in on Theresa

Brian Walker on March 31, 2019, 5:20 pm

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Image by permission of Parliament “Anything can happen in the next 12, 11, 10 days” This is the pretty safe prediction of the Institute for Government, the think tank of former civil servants and bright young para-politicians who hug the inside track closer than most. One of the institute’s chiefs Jill Rutter would be earning a fortune if she’d been paid a decent fee for all her media appearances in recent days and weeks. Back on the IfG website Jill …

Don’t despair of Westminster. This is what open debate looks like. It’s a big week for Varadkar too

Brian Walker on March 30, 2019, 5:40 pm

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Next week under pressure of a deadline less than a fortnight hence, it may get worse before it gets better. What we’re seeing in the Commons would be perfectly rational if it weren’t happening so late. A minority government formed by a split party has lost control and attempts are being made to form an ad hoc majority in Parliament over the burning issue of the day. It’s a novel situation certainly, but talk of a disintegrating system, much less …

After May’s latest defeat, the DUP are feeling isolated over the border. Is Angela Merkel riding to the rescue?

Brian Walker on March 29, 2019, 7:35 pm

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Theresa May’s hopes to bring her Brexit deal back to parliament again next week after it was rejected for a third time by MPs – and appears poised to trigger a general election if parliament fails to agree a way forward. Although decisive the reduced margin has put the alliance between the ERG and the DUP under great strain. As the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg has tweeted: “A brief marriage ends. DUP learning today that many in ERG = Brexiteers first …

This wasn’t what was supposed to happen on Brexit Day

Brian Walker on March 29, 2019, 12:02 am

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True to form, the gambit to separate out withdrawal terms from the rest of the package has failed in advance. For the DUP this wheeze may be even less attractive than the May deal as it doesn’t even include the legal assurances they rejected (courtesy Sam McBride of the Newslettter for the thought). Yet again the figures don’t add up for the Daily Telegraph and the entire media. On Thursday night Mrs May still needed to persuade 52 Tory rebels …

Brexit? It’s the Union, stupid

Brian Walker on March 28, 2019, 1:20 am

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“It was like binge-watching Borgen,” somebody said. But after all the drama , nothing is certain today – Theresa May’s “ back me then sack me” resignation, a third meaningful vote, even Brexit with a deal – except that the DUP will not vote for the withdrawal agreement. Nigel Dodds should have removed any lingering doubt: “The DUP do not abstain on the Union.” The deep state of main party disintegration was revealed in last night’s votes. In what …

And now the fate of the entire country could be placed in the hands of Sammy &Co

Brian Walker on March 27, 2019, 12:09 am

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I may have forecast the isolation of the DUP too quickly. First Boris – sidling backwards into it supporting Mrs May’s deal. And now Jacob Rees Mogg has had his Damascus moment and appears to have placed the fate of Theresa May’s deal in the DUP’s hands. But is there less to this than meets the eye? If anything the DUP’s position has hardened. It has dawned on them that the likely final settlement will take on the shape of …

The real battle of Brexit is about to begin

Brian Walker on March 26, 2019, 1:15 pm

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Oliver Letwin Rather than the hoped for negotiated peace, Brexit skirmishing is shaping up into a formal struggle between Theresa May’s crumbling minority government and the inchoate majority of soft Brexiteers in the House of Commons. Battle is finally joined between those who want to retain a close relationship with the EU and the committed minority of MPs who long for a clean break. It has polarised to a contest between No Deal and No Brexit in which the default …

The DUP and Theresa May, the EU and Leo Varadkar, are all at sixes and sevens over the backstop and a hard border

Brian Walker on March 25, 2019, 6:55 pm

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At this late stage of the game, the DUP are furious that Theresa May is still defending the backstop when it appears it may not be so vital after all. This new last minute dispute goes to the heart of why the DUP is still refusing to back her deal and is complicating the search for a Brexit agreement and with it Mrs May’s prospects for remaining in office. Just to add to the complications she went to say that …

Theresa May ponders pact with Brexiteers to quit in exchange for passing her deal

Brian Walker on March 25, 2019, 12:02 am

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So far from being immediately ousted, Theresa May will only permit her divided and supine cabinet to get their first sight of her draft plan to reassert control of Brexit one hour before the cabinet meeting at 10 o’clock this morning. The secrecy is designed to prevent the sort of leaks which have kept predicting her imminent demise and recording their own disarray. The plan reports say contains her own series of indicative votes to rival those of the …

My Deal or No Deal no longer. Flying blind to Brexit with a choice of deals. Theresa’s desperate plan for survival

Brian Walker on March 23, 2019, 12:09 am

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Call it a lottery, call it chaos. Call it parliamentary democracy adapting to an unprecedented situation. From Laura Kuennesberg Theresa May has told MPs that a third vote on her Brexit deal may not take place next week “if it appears there is not sufficient support“. In a letter to all MPs, that was one of four “clear choices” she outlined, along with revoking Article 50 which she says would “betray the result of the referendum”, leaving with no deal, …

The DUP smash up their agreement with Theresa May and are headed for isolation

Brian Walker on March 22, 2019, 6:29 pm

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The DUP’s Westminster leader Nigel Dodds has denounced Mrs May’s entire approach in a statement that all but guarantees her deal will not pass next week. The outcome of yesterday’s EU summit seems to have been the last straw. The DUP rejection also casts severe doubt on whether the confidence and supply arrangement that gave her a working majority can survive, at least under her leadership and without a hard Brexit prime minister succeeding her and able to deliver it. …

Theresa May is stuck with presenting an alternative Brexit to the EU

Brian Walker on March 22, 2019, 12:30 pm

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This is an interative post.. Friday is usually a day of anticlimax in public after the excitements of an EU summit This one is no exception. It leaves three days for the contending forces to prepare their battle plans for the next three weeks. But this week, the Friday truce is less than complete. The immediate note of anxiety came with the question of whether Mrs May would default to No Deal if MPs fail to approve her deal for …