On tonight’s LIVE with LITTLEWOOD:
- Boris Johnson’s conference speech – Will his wind farms turbocharge Britain? Or is it just hot air?
- The Chancellor’s Choices – how Rishi Sunak could avoid tax rises and boost the UK economy
- The Covid fiasco – how were 16,000 C-19 cases lost on Excel? And can central planning ever work?
Host Mark Littlewood will be joined by the Spectator’s Kate Andrews; Conservative MP Philip Davies; the DUP’s Sammy Wilson MP; the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush; John O’Connell from the Taxpayers’ Alliance; the Adam Smith Institute’s Matt Kilcoyne and president-elect of the Oxford Union, James Price.
Join us LIVE for the issues that matter – TONIGHT at 6PM – HERE or on YouTube.
Do the new COVID restrictions point to another lockdown? Or is the government overreacting?
Can Boris Johnson urge people to obey the law when his own government seems prepared to break it over Brexit?
Should the furlough scheme be extended? Or would that just be delaying the inevitable?
And could Donald Trump win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Join host Mark Littlewood tonight for a whirlwind 90 minutes of discussion and debate with author and journalist James Delingpole, former CEO of Vote Leave and the TaxPayers’ Alliance Matthew Elliott, Conservative commentator Alex Deane, Terry Kibbe from the Washington-based Free the People and DUP MP Sammy Wilson.
Also taking part will be journalist and commentator Benedict Spence, founder of The Democracy Institute Patrick Basham and author Kristian Niemietz, the IEA’s Head of Political Economy.
Be sure to join in the debate – LIVE at 6 – here or on YouTube.
Tory MPs turned out in force for last night’s weekly ERG meeting, with around 80 MPs in attendance as well as notable guests including Chief Whip Julian Smith and May’s Deputy Chief of Staff, JoJo Penn. Jacob Rees-Mogg informed the ERG of the outcome of his and Steve Baker’s earlier meeting with Nigel Dodds, where Dodds made clear that the DUP would support the Government in any confidence motion if the Withdrawal Agreement was rejected. If the Withdrawal Agreement went through their support was far from certain…
Also in attendance were DUP MPs Sammy Wilson – who was “cheered to the rafters” by Tory MPs – and Ian Paisley Jr, who made the point directly to Julian Smith’s face that while the DUP had been very happy working with the Tories, they would “rather be shafted by Labour” than accept the backstop. As Dodds pointed out later on Peston, you don’t need a General Election to bring down a government:
You don't need a General Election to bring down the Government @NigelDoddsDUP tells @Peston #Peston pic.twitter.com/nUtZmE6EYK
— Peston (@itvpeston) December 5, 2018
Smith himself addressed the meeting later on, while he didn’t get a hostile reception from the ERG, his points were all shot down in the detail. Smith suggested that some tinkering was possible but gave an impression of a government that was reluctant to ask EU member states for any further changes. The overall message remained clear: it’s the PM’s deal or nothing, the Government has no other plans. And they wonder why the EU has been able to play them like a fiddle from start to finish…
Dom Raab: “We will do nothing that would draw a customs border down the Red Sea. Irish Sea. Irish Sea.”
Sammy Wilson: “You can draw as many borders down the Red Sea as you want…”
Give him a chance, he’s only been in the job a few days…
