John Harris

Without a centrist path, our perfidious politics will lose its bearings totally | John Harris

Tuesday, August 28th, 2018

Squeezed between Brexiteer and Corbynite tribes, a true national conversation seems impossible. But there is a way forward

The autumn is coming, though it might be better to adopt American English, and think of it as the fall: out of the languid, heady days of summer, and back into the dysfunctional, Groundhog Day-esque deadlock that currently passes for national politics. Conference season will be here in a few weeks’ time. The Conservatives will talk in delusional terms about Brexit, and a lot of what they say will be viewed through the prism of a supposedly looming leadership contest. Labour will also smooth over the realities of leaving the EU, presumably continue to be dogged by evidence of antisemitism – which clearly runs much deeper and higher than some people would have us believe – and possibly have a minor factional scrap about its so-called democracy review.

After a summer that has flagged the realities of a warming planet, climate change will get precious little attention

Related: Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers – review

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Rich, reckless Brexit zealots are fighting a new class war | John Harris

Monday, August 6th, 2018

The likes of Liam Fox seek a Britain that would be disastrous for many leave voters. These ultra-free-marketeers must be stopped

We now know it beyond doubt: however we leave the European Union, the result is likely to be damage that Britain is in no position to absorb. Job losses are certain. A stack of Brexit impact reports from local authorities obtained last week by Sky News identified a catalogue of dire consequences, from farms in Shetland that could be plunged into impossible losses, through social care services in East Sussex already being hit by labour shortages, to the M26 being turned into a giant lorry park. With his characteristic emollience, the trade secretary, Liam Fox, says a no-deal Brexit is now more likely than a negotiated deal; Jeremy Hunt reckons we could fall off the same cliff-edge “by accident”, and reports about stockpiled food and medicines attest to the awfulness of any such prospect.

The referendum was the one meaningful political event in millions of voters’ lifetimes

February 2016

Related: ‘If you’ve got money, you vote in … if you haven’t got money, you vote out’

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