Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Agelastus]

I saw Gove said he's repeatedly said he doesn't want to be PM. Then don't?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI7kbY_1hDo

37:15, 42:24, 43:24

[Agelastus]

Who gets to vote for Tory party leader?

The MPs narrow it down to two, then the party members get a vote -

MPs narrow the field to two choices, before a postal ballot of the wider membership of the party is conducted.

The Chairman of the 1922 Committee, which represents Conservative MPs, acts as the returning officer for leadership elections.

If one nomination is received, the new leader is declared elected. If two nominations are made, both names go forward for the members of the party to decide between. In the event that three or more MPs are nominated for leader, a ballot of Conservative MPs is held "on the Tuesday immediately following the closing date for nominations". The ballot is held under the first past the post system. If MPs are choosing between four or more candidates, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and further ballots are held on subsequent Thursdays and Tuesdays until only two MPs remain.

The wider membership of the Conservative party then chooses between these two MPs, with the vote being held via a postal ballot. The returning officer chooses the date by which ballots have to be returned and the count begins at noon that day. The result is announced at a meeting of the parliamentary party and "representative members".

[Sheilbh]

So how are the chances of Gove versus May? Gove is characterized in the German press as a "hard" Brexiteer, meaning he will gladly give up single market membership over freedom of movement, whereas May is characterized as a "soft" Brexiteer, meaning she would likely go for some kind of deal that preserves more the UK's EU membership.

Gove is a hard Brexiteer. I think he's actually said he doesn't want the single market. He was a very ideological Education Secretary - and successful in terms of achieving reforms. He's been a very good Justice Secretary in my opinon, reversing everything his predecessor did with some skill. His style is very confrontational though so he pissed off huge amounts of the education establishment and the general public achieving his reforms. Here's a piece from when he was at Education on his approach:
http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2016/06/30/on-the-worldview-of-dominic-cummings-and-michael-gove/
And a great profile of him by Decca Aitkenhead:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/oct/05/michael-gove-next-tory-leader

May is compared to Merkel a lot (as opposed to Thatcher, the only other plausible model for a female leader ). As I said earlier she's Europe's longest serving Interior Minister and our longest serving Home Secretary since the 19th century. Her pitch and brand is someone who gets on with the job in quite a cold, rational way - in contrast to Gove and Boris. She's pretty hard-line on lots of subjects like immigration but has also, in my opinion excellently, confronted Tory-backing vested interests like the police. In terms of Brexit I think her line was interesting, she was asked if she was the Remainer who would Leave while Boris was the Leaver who would Remain. She said there wouldn't be a new election, that Brexit meant Brexit and that it was the duty of Parliament to deliver. But she also said that she wouldn't activate Article 50 until the British negotiating position was clear and certainly not this year. I wonder, in that, if I hear a bit of Gordon Brown promising that we would join the Euro when we met the five economic tests that he set and judged...
Interesting short profile of May:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/27/theresa-may-profile-beyond-the-public-image?CMP=share_btn_tw
And, stolen from the FT, an excellent long one:

Theresa May: Britain's Angela Merkel?
By George Parker and Helen Warrell

She is the longest-serving home secretary for more than 50 years and the most powerful Conservative woman since Margaret Thatcher. Dismissed by some as 'boring', she's now the bookies' favourite for next Tory leader

It was billed as "the march of the women" but David Cameron decided well before this month's ministerial reshuffle that one woman in his cabinet was going nowhere: Theresa May.

After two remarkable months in which the home secretary has added an unpredictable ruthlessness to her political armoury, the prime minister and his allies are both respectful and wary of May, the most powerful Conservative woman since Margaret Thatcher. "One of the central principles of the reshuffle was that Theresa must not be promoted," says one official close to Cameron.

Theresa May this month became Britain's longest-serving home secretary in more than 50 years, establishing a reputation for cool competence that has won her admirers across the party and made her the bookmakers' favourite to succeed Cameron as Tory leader.

Her success makes her an intriguing figure at the top of his government: too popular with Tory activists to demote, too dangerous to promote. When May publicly clashed with education secretary Michael Gove in June in a row over Islamist infiltration of Birmingham schools, Cameron was furious with both ministers. But as one Downing Street insider confessed at the time: "Theresa is untouchable." A month later, it was Gove – one of Cameron's best friends – not May who lost his cabinet post in the reshuffle.

Cameron admires May's record at the Home Office but they are not close. Downing Street has long suspected her of being "on manoeuvres" for the Conservative leadership, her activities tracked assiduously, her ambitions seen as a direct threat to Chancellor George Osborne, whom Cameron hopes will one day succeed him. So when William Hague stepped down as foreign secretary in the reshuffle, Cameron did not promote May to the Foreign Office but installed instead the technocratic defence secretary Philip Hammond. One minister close to Hammond said: "Philip is worried he's being used by Cameron."

The minister added that Hammond feared he might end up simply keeping the seat warm for Osborne – thought to favour a move to the Foreign Office if the Tories win next year's election – and was being deployed by Cameron "as a block on Theresa May".

But what have they got to worry about? In the 21st century, could Theresa May, a politician who appears austere and remote, shuns the media and refuses to put her private side on show, ever rise to the highest level? Tory activists apparently think so: a leadership survey by the ConservativeHome website in June found that May was the choice of 35 per cent of respondents, more popular than the ebullient London mayor Boris Johnson and far more popular than Osborne.

One Tory cabinet minister close to Cameron summed up in three words the sniffy but watchful view of May of some at the top: "Dull, boring, ambitious". But at Westminster a reappraisal is now under way, triggered by May's "don't mess with me" handling of the row with Gove and a remarkable speech on police reform, delivered just a few weeks earlier.

Those who know her well say only the slight crack in her voice at the end of her Police Federation speech in Bournemouth betrayed the tension of the moment, but May was relentless. Standing in front of a hall full of mainly male police officers, Britain's home secretary fixed her audience with a piercing stare as she painstakingly listed the corruption, incompetence, racism and gross misconduct that had scarred policing for more than 20 years. In the past she had been jeered and booed by the Police Federation but this time the reaction was different: silence.

"I think it was shock; it was like an icy chill descended on the hall," Sir David Normington, a senior civil servant and adviser on police reform, recalls. "There was almost a wildness about her," remembers Ian Pointon, chairman of the Kent Police Federation. Brian Reade, in the usually hostile Daily Mirror, called it "one of the bravest, most astonishing political speeches for years – she obliterated them." For Tim Montgomerie, a Conservative commentator, the speech in May this year was the home secretary's "reveal" moment. The most common adjective used by MPs across party lines was "magnificent". People knew she could be tough but not that tough; Theresa May had a new steely edge and suddenly people were not quite sure what she would do with it.

After the dramas of the past few weeks, May has reverted to her default political setting. The home secretary's style is as determinedly no-nonsense and clinical as her bob haircut. Earlier this month she was asked by Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, if she would celebrate becoming the longest-serving home secretary since Rab Butler in 1962. "No, I am not somebody who celebrates those sorts of things," she replied with deadly seriousness. "Frankly, I just get on with the job."

Theresa Mary May, née Brasier, was born in 1956 and is one of just two Conservative women to rise this far in British politics. Margaret Thatcher is the only other Tory woman to have occupied one of the four "great offices of state": prime minister, foreign secretary, chancellor, home secretary. But a more relevant comparison is made between May and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor: another non-ideological politician with a ruthless streak who gets on with the job. "If you think of what she's achieved, you know, there are still people who don't rate her, are a bit dismissive, perhaps because of the way she looks and dresses," May said of Merkel in 2012 in a rare personal interview with The Daily Telegraph. "What matters is, what has she actually done?"

Like Merkel, May is the daughter of a Protestant clergyman. She grew up in a household where public service and an adherence to the Conservative faith went hand-in-hand. A self-confessed "goody two shoes" at school in Oxfordshire, she attended a Roman Catholic private school and a state comprehensive before heading up the road to Oxford university to study geography. Her father, the Rev Hubert Brasier, died in a car crash when she was in her mid-twenties but his influence and her mother Zaidee's Conservative affiliations shaped her; by the age of 12 she knew she wanted to be a Tory politician and her Christian faith remains strong. By the time she arrived at Oxford, her friends say the young Theresa Brasier was much the same woman one sees today. "There was no wild side," says one friend ruefully.

She was introduced to her future husband Philip May by Benazir Bhutto – a contemporary who went on to be prime minister of Pakistan – at a Tory student disco and thus started what her friends say is a rock-solid relationship which has underpinned her political career. Philip was a skilled debater and said to have harboured his own political ambitions but friends say he is a devoted champion of his wife. "He's supportive but not competitive," says her friend Catherine Meyer, charity CEO and wife of Sir Christopher Meyer, former US ambassador. "He's reserved, kind, polite. He's also a bit shy."

While Theresa May went on to hold staff jobs at the Bank of England, Philip became a successful investment banker and now works at Capital International. He remains in the background but they are inseparable, sharing an interest in food and – like Angela Merkel – a passion for Alpine hiking. As with the German chancellor, Theresa May has not had children. "It just didn't happen," she said in 2012, offering a rare glimpse of an inner sadness: "You look at families all the time and you see there is something there that you don't have."

May became an MP in 1997 for the seat of Maidenhead, a solid Tory swath of Berkshire including the Thameside village of Sonning, where she lives and is a regular churchgoer. Within five years she had risen to become the first female chairman of the party, where she came to national attention by making another breathtaking speech. To the extent that May's political credo is evident, she is a liberal Conservative, supportive of gender equality, champion of female representation at Westminster and a backer of gay marriage (although previously opposed to gay adoption). When she addressed the Tory conference in the dark days of opposition in 2002, she confronted her mainly elderly and rightwing audience with the assertion that many voters considered them to be "the nasty party".

"Twice we went to the country unchanged, unrepentant, just plain unattractive," she told the party. "Twice we got slaughtered," she added. The days of the Tories hankering after "some mythical place called Middle England" were over.

It was the first glimpse of May's willingness to take bold political positions. But colleagues say she never acts without first conducting a thorough risk assessment, working through the possible outcomes, making sure she will come out on top. "She's very good at seizing the moment," says one confidant. The "nasty party" speech also showed she had the capacity to connect with voters. Andrew Cooper of the pollsters Populus says: "We were doing focus groups at the time and people watching Theresa May's speech on fast-forward said spontaneously, 'Stop the tape.' They were gripped by it."

May's colleagues say that she has a "six-month rule" that she keeps her head down for long stretches before making a decisive intervention roughly twice a year. But during the long years of opposition from 1997 until 2010, when May held a series of shadow ministerial posts, she barely registered in the public consciousness at all apart from for her "nasty party" speech and – of all things – her shoes.

. . .

Those who worked with May during her pre-politics days do not remember her showing any flair for footwear but ever since that 2002 conference speech where she sported a pair of leopard-print kitten heels her shoes have become one of the few hints that she might have a flamboyant side waiting to be unleashed. According to the Commons register of interests, Russell & Bromley, the shoe chain, thanked her for attracting bumper sales of its leopard heels in 2002 by giving her "three pairs of Hot2Trot shoes" from its new line; the register also shows that since becoming home secretary she has received discount cards from high-street brands LK Bennett, Amanda Wakeley and Hobbs.

May does not seem offended by coverage of her sartorial choices. When she and a Burberry model were both pictured in the Daily Mail wearing the same Vivienne Westwood suit, under the headline: "Is Theresa May the new Cara Delevingne?", May drew attention to the comparison, joking: "I think we can safely say that the answer to that ... is no." Her shoes are a rare conversational icebreaker – often the only smalltalk entertained by May.

Catherine Meyer says that her friend is a "serious woman" but she insists there is another side to her: "She enjoys going out with friends, to restaurants, people's houses. She talks about holidays, clothes. She's quite girly in that sense." Aside from fashion, there is one other insight into May's private life to suggest that she may have a more carefree side: she enjoys cooking but says she is a fan of Jamie "chuck it all in" Oliver and cannot stand the culinary precision of Delia Smith.

Last year there was much interest in her sudden weight loss, variously attributed to a diet, stress, a thrice-weekly visit to the gym or an image overhaul ahead of a leadership bid. It turned out to be none of the above. She discovered to her "shock" that she was suffering from Type 1 diabetes, requiring her to inject herself with insulin twice daily. "It's a case of head down and getting on with it," she said.

For four years at the Home Office May has eschewed publicity (her media strategy is essentially to have no media strategy, aside from a few well-placed briefings to the rightwing press). Unlike Cameron and Osborne, she regards Twitter as a waste of time. Her political style is similar to that of her cricketing hero Geoffrey Boycott, an England batsman whose priority was the occupation of the crease, fastidiously accumulating runs at a snail's pace and breaking down the opposition through his sheer determination not to make a mistake.

May admires all that in Boycott. But there were other aspects to Boycott's career which May's critics also see in her: he was a loner, not a team player. His quest for perfection bordered on obsession. In a comment that might have applied to May, the sports journalist Ian Wooldridge once commented: "Boycott, in short, walks alone."

May likes to work through problems herself, aided by an inner core of officials and special advisers, going through documents until the early hours before coming to a decision. "Distrustful is not quite the right word, but she is very, very wary about other people – about other people trying to impose their view on her," according to one close colleague. "She's a bit of a loner. She believes that she's in control of her own area and that's her own business." Philip Augar, a former equities broker and ex-Home Office non-executive director, says: "She is receptive to challenge, she doesn't leap down your throat. She likes to be told the truth but there's a caveat: you have to know what you're talking about."

However, Pauline (Lady) Neville-Jones, the former security minister, left the Home Office after a year because she could not stand working with May, telling colleagues that her former boss was simply unable to delegate. Nick Herbert, former policing minister, recently described his boss as a "fierce" leader with a tendency to micromanage.

May exerts control over her unwieldy department through her political advisers, who filter out advice, defend her interests and bawl out officials who screw up. The pugnacious Fiona Cunningham, who defended May against attacks from fellow Tory ministers, resigned last month in the wake of the Gove spat but she retains Nick Timothy, who provides her with a political edge. "It's very hard to square this calm, cool, thoughtful, reserved, enigmatic person with these incredibly tribal special advisers," says one Home Office insider. "It's like an alter ego really. They play a role that she doesn't play or can't play."

Meetings with May start promptly without preamble. "She may sit in silence for some time and the danger is you end up babbling away," says one official. She does not lose her temper but prefers the power of an icy glare. "She'll say, 'This isn't going to happen again,' says one official. 'Then she'll let silence fill the room.'"

That May has survived four years in the Home Office is down in some part to "good luck", according to one close colleague, especially as she is having to enforce security, tackle crime and control immigration while implementing a 20 per cent budget reduction; her attempts to fight off Osborne over cuts failed. But her record is also one of dogged determination and some bold interventions. She eventually succeeded in deporting the radical preacher Abu Qatada after years of legal appeals and she won plaudits from Tory colleagues for refusing to extradite Gary McKinnon, who hacked Pentagon computers, on the grounds that he had Asperger's syndrome; the White House was furious but the Daily Mail cheered. The economic recession was not accompanied by a crime wave; there has been no major domestic terrorist incident on her watch.

Keith Vaz said this month that recent events at the Home Office had been "somewhat shambolic" – including May's confused handling of an inquiry into alleged paedophilia at Westminster. There have been other problems, including chaos at the Passport Office, the secret relaxation of border controls, the 2011 riots and the failure to meet the government's target of cutting annual migration to the UK to the "tens of thousands". But May has proved that if you do not court the media when things are going well, you are a less of a target when things go wrong. Rather than responding to bad news with a barrage of media interviews, May gives a no-nonsense statement to the House of Commons and retreats to her office.

May's attempts to meet the immigration target have infuriated business leaders and fellow cabinet ministers, who argue that bureaucracy around visas is cutting off a vital flow of talent and tourists to Britain. Osborne, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, and Vince Cable, the business secretary, are among those who have tried and failed to get her to budge. "She just sits there in cabinet looking exasperated in a poised way," says one cabinet minister. Even when May appears to have agreed some modest concession on immigration, colleagues note that months later nothing has actually changed.

May's stance on immigration appeals to the Tory right, but this apparent deviation from her normally liberal stance is driven by her belief that uncontrolled immigration has fuelled the rise of populist, rightwing parties. "Sometimes I think only Theresa and I actually believe in our immigration policy," Cameron once moaned in cabinet. Even if they are not close, Cameron admires the way his home secretary has managed her department, securing his flank in the sensitive area of security and law and order.

. . .

While tough on immigration, May has struck liberal positions in areas such as scrapping Labour's plans for ID cards and reforming police stop and search powers. But her reputation as a moderniser is not a central part of her political persona. As with Merkel, ideology is not May's thing. "She is a person who really believes that their function in life is to make things better, neater, more organised and just a bit more effective than they used to be," says a former colleague.

When May did give a speech last year setting out a wider vision outside her brief – featuring rightwing ideas such as profitmaking public services and the leftish notion of an industrial policy – it was seen as such a rare intervention that Cameron immediately interpreted it as a leadership move. Michael Gove, a friend of Cameron's, lambasted colleagues at a cabinet meeting for a lack of loyalty to the prime minister, adding: "I'm talking here particularly about Theresa May." One minister recalls: "Our jaws hit the floor but Theresa's expression didn't change."

She might be a political blank sheet but May is the bookmakers' 4/1 favourite to succeed Cameron, ahead of Boris Johnson. While Johnson paints on a broad canvas, May offers to join up the dots. But if she is to seize the crown, May knows she has to build her base in the House of Commons. Downing Street has clocked the fact that she is stepping up her contact with MPs, including launching a series of "meet Theresa" surgeries in the Commons tea room and working the "rubber chicken circuit" of constituency dinners. May's contacts with journalists are also increasing: this month she drank wine with female lobby correspondents in the press bar, jokingly wagging a finger at any male journalist with the temerity to enter the room.

"The question is whether she'll get out of the Commons," says one cabinet minister, noting that it is MPs who decide which two candidates are put to the party membership in a leadership contest. Osborne has control of the party machine and Tory MPs note that May has no "troops", beyond a handful of former women ministers, and needs to reach out to the right. But one says: "That's not insurmountable: people will back her if she looks like a winner."

Certainly she is respected by her political opponents. "She's a real grown-up, very, very impressive – she's the one," says one member of the Labour opposition top team. Keith Vaz says: "She reminds me a lot of Angela Merkel. Angela Merkel was in the beginning thought of as quite boring, and now everyone is saying what a great gal she is."

Is May preparing for a leadership bid if the Tories lose the 2015 general election? Cameron, Osborne and Johnson will be watching her every move, hoping for some clue to her intentions, her plan. One cabinet minister close to Cameron says: "I admire her but one day she will have to let us know who she is." Or will she?

George Parker is the FT's political editor and Helen Warrell is public policy correspondent

[Sheilbh]

Gove appears to have grabbed most of those who supported Johnson in terms of MPs, I think May was seen as decently likely to beat Boris even before this, now that Gove has pushed Boris out I have to think his odds of beating May are longer.

But Gove often came ahead of Boris among Tory activists who probably noticed Boris's dithering and personal ambition in backing Leave. I also think he's very, very popular for his time at Education.

[Sheilbh]

The FTSE 100 is above pre-Brexit levels, and has dragged the FTSE 350 up with it.

Ironically Euro stock exchanges are all significantly down from where they were were before the vote.

However, the FTSE 250, which is probably more indicative of opinion of the British economy, is still well down; as is, as you pointed out, the pound.

On the pound a lot of that is because the market hadn't priced in Brexit, the expectation was Remain. Conspiracy theory ahead - I do wonder who Farage's chums in the City were and if they had maybe an alternative reason for telling him their indications were that it was a Remain vote. Lots of money to be made on moves that big

On the economy in general FTSE reacted to Carney's speech tonight and it turns out they like stimulus more than they fear uncertainty. Still too little data to judge what the actual economic effects are, how much it's fed through to consumption etc. Some forecasters are predicting a recession (EIU) but I think the consensus forecast is that growth stalls rather than shrinks.

[Admiral Yi]

On the pound a lot of that is because the market hadn't priced in Brexit, the expectation was Remain.

So what?  If the question is how has the referendum affected the pound, how does it matter whether the depreciation took place before or after the vote?

Or are you looking at the exchange rate from a different perspective?

[Sheilbh]

Not clear how much is a permanent devaluation and how much is an overreaction to correct an earlier mistake.

Edit: Incidentally sentiment on the betting markets has moved from Gove to Leadsom as challenger to May - largely because he's alienated Boris's fans and even Tories are put off by that much duplicitiousness. Generally everyone thought she was one of the better Leave performers. Former investment banker, probably a hard Brexiteer.

Edit: By the by this piece is excellent and spot on:

Michael made an odd assassin – but then Boris was a strange Caesar
Gaby Hinsliff
The Conservative establishment always calculates how to hold on to power – and swiftly neutralises its weakest link
Thursday 30 June 2016 19.11 BST Last modified on Thursday 30 June 2016 20.16 BST

"Et tu, Michael?" So said Boris Johnson's father Stanley, plaintively, shortly after it emerged that his son was destined after all never to wear the crown.

And it's true there is something about the ruthlessness of it all – Boris felled by his trusted friend and deputy, just as he was within touching distance of the thing he has wanted all his life – that takes the breath away.

This was perhaps the most vertiginous fall in modern political history. Seven days ago the party was bracing itself for BoJo, trying to bury all those nagging doubts about his suitability for high office. Now he is yesterday's man, seemingly undone like all good tragic heroes by his own fatal flaws. What rich insights he now has to draw upon for his most pressing current professional commitment, a forthcoming biography of Shakespeare.


But if Michael Gove makes for an odd assassin then Boris makes for an even stranger Caesar. If anything he was always cast as the party's Prince Hal, ready to cast off rakish immaturity and assume his rightful place as king when the moment demanded. It's just that being king turns out to have been a great deal harder than it looked.

Ever since it became clear in the early hours of last Friday morning that Britain had thought the supposedly unthinkable, Theresa May's camp has been successfully positioning her as the "serious person for serious times", a cool head in a crisis. She might not exactly be brimming with charisma, they argue, but she's proven over six years in a tough cabinet job that she knows what she's doing; not like that slapdash, reckless Boris. Her promise to "just get on with the job in front of me", as she put it during Thursday's launch, was perfectly calibrated for an era when the job has never looked more daunting.

But while she has long tapped successfully into deep frustration about what the business minister Anna Soubry calls "these boys messing about" – a sense among Tory women that they've had enough of men playing power games while others do the heavy lifting – it was Boris who ended up making her case for her.

Thursday's vote created a powerful feeling at Westminster that if you broke it, you own it; that having recklessly incited voters to shatter the political consensus, it was for Brexiters to sweep up the mess. What became painfully obvious very quickly was that Boris barely knew where to find the dustpan.

A shellshocked morning after a press conference during which he failed to reveal any coherent plan for what came next was followed by a Saturday spent playing cricket with Princess Diana's brother rather than visibly knuckling down. When he did choose to set out his thinking on the way forward, it was not in a speech to the nation but in his own highly lucrative column for Monday's Daily Telegraph – and what a muddled column it was.

In it, Johnson basically argued for a magical world of unicorns and rainbows; a deal where Britons were still free to live and work abroad but could somehow have curbs on European nationals coming here, and where we could remain part of the single market with all its economic benefits but not bother with all the cumbersome red tape. It was as if the real Boris – the liberal Londoner who could preach the economic benefits of immigration to elderly Tory activists and get them eating out of his hand – was trying to reconcile himself with the Boris he had been forced to play for the last six months and failing dismally.

Remainers feared the "have your cake and eat it" plan would not survive five minutes of contact with the enemy. But it was the fury of leavers that really blew the doors off.

The leave campaign had indicated throughout that Brexit would mean leaving the single market and thus ending the free movement of people. Could it be that in his heart of hearts he never really wanted to leave Europe, and was now trying desperately to ensure that Britain did not?

To make matters worse, when angry Tory leavers started asking what the hell was going on, the response from the Boris camp was confusion. Boris, we were told, had been "tired" when he wrote the column, so maybe it wasn't phrased right.

The reality of how such policymaking on the hoof might sound coming from a prime minister – someone who can wipe billions off a stock market overnight with one clumsy U-turn – began sinking in. And with the May camp now signalling that the home secretary would be tougher on immigration, the ground began to shift. By Wednesday Boris was no longer the nailed-on favourite, the candidate ambitious MPs felt they had to back whatever their reservations.

Boris's second great mistake, however, was to risk making the rightwing press look ridiculous. Both the Mail and the Sun backed Brexit, promising their readers a rosy economic future where all their fears about immigration would be solved; now Boris looked as if he was weaselling out of the deal. The Mail's editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, has long regarded Boris as morally reprehensible, because of his serial affairs, and fundamentally unserious, enjoying a much warmer personal relationship with vicar's daughter May. Rupert Murdoch, meanwhile, does not take kindly to being made a fool of. Enter perhaps Wednesday's leaked email from Gove's wife, the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine, urging her husband to get more specific assurances from Boris.

If he wouldn't give the rightwing press everything it wanted then perhaps, of course, that is ultimately to Boris's credit. Perhaps at the very last minute he was clumsily trying to do the right thing, to plot a more liberal way forward. Well, too late now, and it's easy to conclude he has nobody to blame but himself. But perhaps that's not quite the whole story.

If nothing else, what the last 24 hours have shown is the sheer ferocity of the Conservative party's instinct for survival. But it is also testament to the enduring power of the Conservative establishment in Westminster, Fleet Street and beyond; to the ruthless efficiency with which it calculates how it can best hold on to power. It has correctly identified and neutralised its weakest link, even though until last week he was seemingly its strongest.

Already there are signs of leavers and remainers starting to bury differences over the referendum, moving on to the pragmatic question of who is best placed to manage the crisis ahead – and of course, where their own personal interests lie. The country may still be as broken and divided as it was last Thursday, and the Labour party perhaps even more so, but an apparently devastated Tory party is rebuilding itself at astonishing speed, like a cyborg regenerating. Life will go on. The king is dead. Long live the king or queen.

Edit: Incidentally apparently Eurocrats were also very intrigued by May's repeated references to an 'initial deal'. I think the suggestion is we move to Norway while negotiating a more bespoke/messy full divorce.

[Zanza]

It's unclear to me how many of the EU leaders are "hard" Brexiteers. I could imagine a lot of people in the EU not willing to even offer the UK a Norway-like deal. Especially not if Britain makes clear upfront that it is just an intermediate stage towards yet another deal.

[Sheilbh]

It's unclear to me how many of the EU leaders are "hard" Brexiteers. I could imagine a lot of people in the EU not willing to even offer the UK a Norway-like deal. Especially not if Britain makes clear upfront that it is just an intermediate stage towards yet another deal.

Same at the minute I'd guess Ireland (with the caveat that they want to help Scotland as much as they can), Slovenia and Finland - based on comments made by senior politicians.

I think the point - and the attraction to Brussels - is that legally we can't negotiate a separate trade deal until after the member state has left the EU. So this offers the least disruptive route out of the EU which then enables the actual negotiations to begin.

The irony is despite being the face of the Leave campaign Boris was probably the best chance of potential Tory leaders of a soft Brexit - that's part of the reason Gove jumped in. As the journo asking May commented he was a Leaver who'd deliver Remain.

It'll be interesting to see the effect on the mainstream right in France. In 2012 Juppe was running on 'a Europe of borders, a Europe of security' it seems unlikely he'd have moderated and Sarko is now pushing his Schengen 2 idea.

[PJL]

So basically ever further separation, the exact opposite of ever further union.

[Sheilbh]

I find Sarko's language of a 'Christian Republic' reaching back to Clovis as troubling

Edit: Meanwhile in the Labour party that full front-bench in full, holding the government to account:


All MEPs and most MSPs have now called for Corbyn to go.

[PJL]

I don't recall any republics ever being that Christian....

[Agelastus]

On the pound a lot of that is because the market hadn't priced in Brexit, the expectation was Remain.

From what I've read the belief was that up until a couple of days before the referendum the market had priced in Brexit, at about 5%. Then the brakes came off and just before the referendum it climbed almost to its' current "natural" level.

And then it dropped like a stone upon the referendum result; hence why I was so taken aback last Friday - I'd been anticipating a fall of only about half the actual.

The FTSE 250 still being down about 10% (I think) is also concerning; the FTSE 100 has a history of being inconsistent to actual economic conditions in the UK due to its' make-up.

[The Minsky Moment]

All MEPs and most MSPs have now called for Corbyn to go.

Amusing that despite all the vacancies, Corbyn has prioritized maintaining a full complement of whips.

[The Minsky Moment]

On the economy in general FTSE reacted to Carney's speech tonight and it turns out they like stimulus more than they fear uncertainty

But IIRC the Leavers want to take down Carney as well.