Red Box - Friday March 1 2019

Brexit happens THIS MONTH

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Friday March 1 2019

By Matt Chorley

Good morning,

Nothing really makes any sense today, so just assume that each sentence that follows has been burped out by the random news generator:

Nigel Farage is planning to walk from Sunderland to London because, um, Brexit. You can join him. If you pay £50.

Labour's Ruth Smeeth and Tory James Cleverly have taken part in a Challah Bake Off.

And Theresa May has sent fanmail to an Essex drag queen called Amber Dextris. And tweeted: “Must admit I haven’t had a chance to catch up on RuPaul's Drag Race.”

For the avoidance of doubt: This. Is. Not. Normal.

LISTEN: Catch me every weekday morning giving a sneak preview of what's coming up in Red Box at 7.30am with Julia Hartley-Brewer at breakfast on TalkRadio. Listen here

Matt Chorley

Red Box Editor

@MattChorley

The briefing

Britain leaves the European Union this month. THIS MONTH. At least that was the plan, right up until Tuesday when the PM said actually there's a chance we might not.
Is Theresa May planning to spring a surprise Commons vote on Brexit next week? Senior ministers want her to, but only if she can show she is making major inroads into the 118 Tories who voted against her deal in January.
The Times reveals that hospitals will no longer have to treat A&E patients within four hours under plans to axe a key New Labour target.
MPs are to get a 2.7 per cent pay rise, nudging them really, really close to £80,000, like someone at a petrol pump trying not to go a few pence over. The hike is higher than inflation and higher than the 1.5 per cent increase in budgets for their staff.
Westminster is to get a major new Holocaust memorial, just near parliament. But David Aaronovitch says in Times2 that when he looks at it, he doesn't know what he is supposed to feel.
Donald Trump has been speaking about why his talks with Kim Jong-un suddenly broke up. Guess what: it's not his fault.
The Macron government has vowed to reform unemployment benefits after revealing that hundreds of thousands of French workers enjoy a better standard of living when they lose their jobs.
If you’ve not yet caught up on the cracking Red Box podcast episodes this week, listen to my stroll with Ian Austin chatting about why he quit Labour here and my chat with three foreign correspondents trying to cover Brexit here
Today's trivia: Yesterday some eagle-eyed anoraks spotted that the trivia question did not include the constituency which has been represented by female MPs since 1953. Which is it? Answer at the bottom of today's email

Do you want to get out here?

George Eustice, the farming minister who yesterday quit the government so he could support the government's Brexit plan (no me neither) is a fan of a dramatic sudden exit.

I first dealt with him when he was David Cameron's press secretary, back in May 2007. He had agreed to give an interview to the Western Morning News, where I was London Editor.

The Tories needed to win a lot of seats in Devon and Cornwall in the local elections to prove they were on the march to power. Jetset Dave was off to be greeted by grateful voters in far-flung places, so the interview took place in the back of a chauffeur-driven car, heading from Notting Hill to his waiting helicopter.

I asked Cameron lots of really tough Paxman-esque questions like “why should people vote Conservative?” and he burbled on about how much he enjoyed going on holiday in Cornwall. Ten or 15 minutes later I switched off my tape recorder. As anyone who has ever had to transcribe a political interview, 20-minutes tops is plenty.

“Have you got everything you need?” asked George Eustice (for it was he) from the front seat. Oh yes, I said.

“Great,” he said. “Do you want to get out here?”

Here? What right here? Halfway between Chez Cameron and a Battersea Helipad? Are you insane? Well that’s what I thought.

What I actually said was: “Yes of course, that’s fine, great, thanks very much”.

So I gathered up my coat and bag and dignity and climbed out of the car while it waited at traffic lights.

I waved them off, and then realised I had no idea where the hell I was. For the young people, this was back in the days when your phone didn't have GPS. For the older people, one day your phone will have GPS.

In this era before GPS mobile phones, I had to call someone in the office to look up an A-Z of London, and I shouted out street names until we realised I was somewhere at the outer reaches of the King’s Road.

I should have mentioned that at this time everyone's favourite spin doctor was known in the lobby as “George Useless”. Can't think why.

Anyway, fast forward to 2010 and Eustice becomes an MP, then later farming minister at Defra, where by all accounts he has been good.

It helps that he has stayed in the job for more than five years (industries don't like constantly changing personnel) surviving the reigns of Owen “badgers move the goalposts” Paterson, Liz “that is a disgrace” Truss, Andrea “about to be sacked” Leadsom and now Michael “is that a plastic straw?” Gove.

As a former strawberry farmer (and former Ukip candidate), Eustice also has plenty in common with the farmers and fishermen he has been dealing with.

So why has he quit? His resignation letter said he couldn't support the prime minister countenancing a delay to Brexit (which he had voted for on Wednesday evening) so he was quitting in order to still vote for her deal, but not for the delay, which the PM herself doesn't want.

He told BBC News it would be “highly dangerous” to beg the EU for an extension, adding: “We will literally be over the barrel of a gun.” Which sounds like a good place to be, but maybe not.

Eustice is the 16th minister to quit over policy since May became PM, higher than all those who resigned under John Major, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Combined. (Thanks to Gavin Freeguard for the stats.) There is talk of more Brexiteers resigning if no-deal is actually removed.

We could spend a long time trying to dissect what it all means. But I'm not sure anyone really knows, and the fundamentals haven't changed.

Most MPs would rather have a deal than no-deal, and would rather have a deal than no Brexit. That is the choice they face, and it is why I have long thought that in the end Theresa May will get her deal through. It is unlikely, but slightly less unlikely than the other unlikely alternatives.

So Eustice has voluntarily kicked himself out of his ministerial car, and can wander around in the far reaches of god knows where for a while until a friendly voice guides him back to where he wants to be. That's politics.

Red Box: Comment

From Brexit to Begum, Britain is divided. Muslims can help to break down barriers

Harun Khan – Muslim Council of Britain

Tweet of the day

When we launched ‘Deal Or No Deal’ in 2005, I remember a really long conversation we had about maybe changing the title, because “‘no deal’ isn’t an expression anyone has ever used.”

@richardosman

Picture of the day

A messy heap of unwanted rubbish which can be used to recycle the same stuff again and again visits a packaging company in west London which has warned of Brexit risks.

Red Box: Comment

Shouting at Johnny Foreigner is no substitute for learning the lingo

John Kampfner – commentator

Yesterday I asked what the chances are of a general election. And you were pretty evenly split. So let's have another vote. (Only joking, we must respect democracy etc etc) Full result here

Have your say

I asked how closely you are following Brexit, and is it boring or exciting?

Guy Clapperton: "Fascinated. It's like watching a child pull the legs off a spider when you can't do anything about it because 52 per cent voted to pull the legs off, meanwhile they are refusing to check this is still what people want now the legs are actually being pulled off and it was actually at least partly your spider in the first place."

Tony Webb: "I have been abroad since mid-January, but regrettably the internet is available and my addiction is therefore still quenchable. Even from this great distance Brexit remains fascinatingly unpredictable and simultaneously tedious in the extreme. With every twist and turn the poor British public is being manipulated and misled as our international reputation sinks lower than ever. Never has a tunnel refused to reveal any light for so long."

David Martin: "Not following very closely, because it is all hot air and posturing."

Mark Simpson: "As a bit of a politics nerd (well I do hang on Matt’s every word …) I’m following Brexit closely. And I’m bored, bored, bored. Meaningless-ful, vote after vote and nothing changes. For pity’s sake can’t they just do something, anything, in or out, or second referendum, I really don’t care which, but do something."

Geoff Batchelor: "I am following Brexit closely: it's not often you get a car crash going on for years ..."

TODAY: Who has had the worst start to 2019 in British politics? Email redbox@thetimes.co.uk and we'll use some of the best tomorrow.

The best comment

May could claim unlikely triumph on March 12

Philip Collins – The Times

Britain is not doomed to become a backwater

Iain Martin – The Times

Powerful men engaged in illegal sexual behaviour with less-powerful people? Impossible!

Caitlin Moran – The Times

In this battle of left vs right, millennials vs boomers, everyone's a winner – and that's a problem

Clive Martin - Vice

Fovargue blindness and Boles deafness allow you to think a second referendum is possible

Ayesha Hazarika - the i

The cartoon

Today's cartoon from The Times by Peter Brookes

Need to know

TOP TIG: He definitely, definitely, definitely isn't the leader. That is such old politics. But Chuka Umunna has been named as the “chief spokesman” for the Independent Group of breakaway MPs. While the the other nine have got policy jobs shadowing government, ex-Tory MP Sarah Wollaston has responsibility for “new colleagues”. Which suggests they are expecting more to join... (The Times)

PLEASE, PLEASE: Sir Vince Cable has given an interview in which he almost begs TIG to let him join their party. “We are looking at joining with them, rather than joining them . . . It’s a rather crucial distinction.” (Financial Times)

NO DEPUTY: It's still all going really well in Labourland, where Tom Watson, the deputy leader, spent the day insisting “I am not Jeremy’s deputy” and publicly requesting a meeting with Corbyn, who is definitely not his boss. (The Times)

CUTTING CUTS: Frank Field, chairman of the work and pensions committee, uses the Thunderer to call for the chancellor to “immediately boost families’ living standards” by using moving to “end the benefit freezes that have so wretchedly cut their spending power over the past decade“. (The Times)

LORD AHMED: A high-profile peer is to stand trial accused of three sex attacks on children. Lord Ahmed, 61, was charged yesterday with two attempted rapes and an indecent assault. His alleged victims were a girl and a boy aged under 13. (The Times)

PROBATION CONDEMNATION: A damning National Audit Office report has criticised the government's probation reforms, claiming they failed to reduce reoffending and led to “skyrocketing” numbers of released offenders being returned to prison for breaching their licence. And whose idea was it? Chris Grayling. (The Daily Telegraph)

TRADE FM: Tory Trade Secretary Liam Fox blew more than £100,000 on a podcast "vanity project" listened to by only 8,398 people. (Daily Mirror)

Red Box: Comment

Celebrities have a moral duty to stop promoting dangerous diet fads

Rebecca Pow – Conservative MP

Chart of the day

Net immigration from the EU has fallen to its lowest level in nine years as more eastern Europeans leave the country than arrive, according to figures published yesterday.

Read the full story

Red Box: Comment

Everyone deserves to be paid on time — including small businesses

Mike Cherry and Carolyn Fairbairn – FSB and CBI

The Sketch

Smooth duo are the Torvill and Dean of a parallel universe

Quentin Letts

Body language is an inexact science but John Manzoni, chief executive of the civil service, did not look overjoyed to spend his important morning answering MPs’ questions about Brexit. Was it the lip, curled as a Turk’s slipper? Or the nostrils which kept dilating while he was forced to listen to the Commons public administration committee?

Read the full sketch

TMS

From the diary

By Jack Blackburn

Feminism not Margaret Thatcher’s bag

It seems that some who break the glass ceiling swiftly call the glaziers in behind them. Caroline Slocock, once Margaret Thatcher’s private secretary, gained the role despite having the handicap of being a woman. Thatcher didn’t like them. Slocock tells Iain Dale’s Book Club that a year earlier Brian Griffiths, head of the policy unit, had managed to appoint his first female staffer. Buoyed by his success, he put forward another woman for Thatcher’s approval. The Iron Lady told him: “Brian, I think we had better see how the first one does, don’t you?”