Tag: Neil Kinnock

The Story: After an extraordinary two weeks of security preparations following the Capitol Hill riot on the day Congress counted the electoral votes, and in...

When Theresa May goes to Brussels for tea with Jean Claude Juncker on Wednesday afternoon, the two leaders will have in front of them a metaphorical Christmas tree of a political declaration. “And every member state has put a bauble on it”, an EU diplomat said. Calls for more ambitious language around the trade elements have been made. This is, he said, likely to be a mere amuse-bouche to the “continuous endless” talks that will open on the UK’s trading relationship with Brussels after 29 March 2019 as the UK finds its way around the EU’s orbit. “It is a classic EU negotiation and the member states are performing their normal way,” Cahn said. “The French always come in late to toughen their negotiating position towards the end, and that’s when they can get some additional things. “The Spanish are copying with Gibraltar – although that is partly a function of domestic Spanish politics with Pedro Sánchez [the Spanish prime minister] being vulnerable at home.” In October, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, promised “around 10 negotiations running in parallel” from 1 April 2019 if a deal could be struck and ratified this year. Agriculture, in particular, will be an area, once the UK is outside of the subsidies of the common agricultural policy, where discussions over market access, tariffs and quotas could be difficult despite the hope in Brussels of continuing the status quo. “Continuous negotiations for ever. Send in the army?’ In the end you have to talk, and we will talk endlessly.”

Theresa May has used her closing speech at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham to announce that she is getting rid of the cap on what councils can borrow to build homes. The amount of extra investment in housing could be around £1bn a year, but this is dependent on how many councils decide to borrow. May told the Tories: The Local Government Association described the move, which involves lifting a Labour policy, as “fantastic”. Stressing her opposition to a second referendum, she warned: She claimed that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party had rejected the “common values” that used to be shared by both main parties. Would Neil Kinnock, who stood up to the hard-left, have stood by while his own MPs faced deselection, and needed police protection at their party conference? Would Jim Callaghan, who served in the Royal Navy, have asked the Russian government to confirm the findings of our own intelligence agencies? Would Clement Attlee, Churchill’s trusted deputy during the second world war, have told British Jews they didn’t know the meaning of antisemitism? That is what Jeremy Corbyn has done to the Labour party. And here are verdicts on the speech from a Guardian panel: Matthew d’Ancona, Katy Balls, Dawn Foster and David Shariatmadari. That’s all from me for the day.