The Prime Minister had a busy afternoon speaking with a host of world leaders yesterday, including two key European players. Upon becoming Prime Minister, Boris announced a commitment to unilaterally guarantee the rights of EU citizens currently living in the UK. May belatedly made the same pledge after years of facing accusations of using citizens as bargaining chips. It’s worth remembering that she was the only leadership candidate back in 2016 not to have made a unilateral pledge on the matter….

Now the supposedly benevolent EU that is refusing to make any kind of declaration on UK citizens living in its countries. But Boris’ unilateral gesture seems to be paying dividends. Upon speaking to the Prime Ministers of Belgium and Portugal yesterday, Boris reiterated his promise to the EU citizens in the UK and both European leaders individually said they were committed to doing the same for UK citizens living in their own countries, “whatever the circumstances”. May should have, as Vote Leave argued, taken this approach from the start…

After several days of opaque backroom dealings and horse-trading between 0.000005% of the EU’s population, the EU’s slate of new ‘Presidents’ was finally unveiled last night. Not a single one was on a ballot paper anywhere at the last EU elections, it’s a ragtag collection of undistinguished second-tier politicians unloved in their own countries and scandal-ridden appointees from the Davos circuit. Meet your new EU overlords:

European Commission President: Ursula Von Der Leyen. Who?

• Daughter of a senior Eurocrat who was born in Brussels, she’s been German Defence Minister under Angela Merkel for five years. Her scandal-ridden stint in charge is widely regarded as a failure back home in Germany.
• She thinks Brexit is a “burst bubble of hollow promises by populists”, supports a “United States of Europe” and is an enthusiastic cheerleader for an EU army, she even wrote about the importance of preventing “more democratic involvement” from “impeding Europe’s ability to act.” Nick Clegg eat your heart out…
• It turns out she also plagiarised large parts of her doctoral thesis, her university let her off as they said there had been no intent to deceive. She’ll fit right into Juncker’s shoes…

European Council President: Charles Michel

• Former Prime Minister of Belgium who was ousted in a no confidence vote last December, naturally because it’s Belgium he’s still ‘interim Prime Minister’ more than six months later. He now gets rewarded for failure and doesn’t even have to move cities. Theresa May must be gutted she didn’t think of it first…

European Central Bank President: Christine Lagarde

• Everyone’s favourite scandal-hit oompa-loompa is back, evidently the EU didn’t decide that being criminally negligent with €400 million of taxpayers’ money was a barrier to giving her the keys to the Central Bank.
• She might actually have to take a slight pay cut from her whopping half a million tax-free a year from the IMF. Will she still be able to keep her delightful suntan topped up?

High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs: Josep Borrell

• Spain’s pugnacious Foreign Minister and onetime European Parliament President has been embroiled in more scandals than Juncker’s had boozy lunches. He was forced to resign from the European University Institute over an undeclared €300,000-a-year conflict of interest. One insider tells Guido the board were just relieved to have any excuse to get rid of the worst president the EUI ever had…
• He was fined €30,000 just last year for a “very serious breach” of insider trading rules on the Spanish stock market, his defence was that it was only 8% of his portfolio. I’m rich, it doesn’t matter!
• He’s fiercely hawkish over Gibraltar and says that the UK will split before Spain, and would welcome an independent Scotland into the EU. Despite his visceral opposition to an independent Catalonia…
• He says that “you have to live with” how Iran wants to wipe out Israel and also likes being highly aggressive with journalists and innocent Catalan protesters. Makes Trump look diplomatic…

You didn’t vote them in, you can’t vote them out, in fact they can do pretty much whatever they like while living off hugely generous salaries and expense accounts funded by your taxes. EU democracy at its finest once again…

The House of Lords will tomorrow morning quiz experts about the EU’s proposal to ban words associated with meat to describe vegetarian food. The EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, chaired by former Lib Dem MEP Lord Teverson, will discuss whether the ban would be “in the interest of consumers.” The proposal would forbid the words “steak”, “sausage”, “escalope”, “burger”, or “hamburger” from being used to advertise non-meat products…

Guido is not generally a fan of meat substitutes, however this seems to be another example of over-regulation by the EU, if producers want to call bean patties “bean burgers”, so be it. No harm in it, unless you are a French farmer…

The Vegan Society, which will give evidence to the committee on the issue hit out at the EU proposal saying is “has little to do with consumer protection and instead is motivated by economic concerns of the meat industry. Trying to ban widely-used, conventional phrases describing vegan products is anti-competitive and unfair, whilst there is no evidence that consumers find them confusing.” The EU pushing anti-competitive policies to defend big agri-businesses from market competition? Bring on Brexit…

Last night Maastricht played host to this year’s first Spitzenkandidaten presidential debate between the leaders of the pan-European parties vying to win the most European Parliamentary seats next month and become President of the European Commission, succeeding Jean-Claude Juncker. Naturally the person almost certain to be installed as the next president of the Commission, Manfred Weber, declined the invitation to the debate and another candidate, Oriol Junqueras missed out because he’s in prison in Spain…

Despite the UK leaving the rapidly federalising bloc, the entire debate was conducted in English. The language of Brexit…

Strangely, none of the pro-EU parties in the UK were getting involved in this seismic political event that will determine who holds supreme executive power over the United Kingdom for as long as we are members of the European Union. No tweets from the Tiggers, the Green Party, or the Liberal Democrats. Lord Adonis was seemingly too busy tweeting political cartoons to get involved. Why are the Remainers so keen to hide away the reality of the European Project..?

Those household names vying to become your next president are:

• Manfred Weber – EPP (Christian Democrats)
• Frans Timmermans – S&D (Socialists)
• Jan Zahradil – ECR (Conservatives)
• Guy Verhofstadt – ALDE (Liberal Democrats)
• Violeta Tomic – GUE-NGL (Hard Left)
• Bas Eickhout – Greens (Greens)
• Oriol Junqueras – European Free Alliance (Pro-EU Separatists)

It’s almost as if the Remain parties think that highlighting the centralising realities and foreign voices of the EU might not be all that popular…

In a little noticed regulatory announcement from Martin Selmayr this morning he has dictated that the European Union will switch to a blue passport in 12 months time. The loss of the blue passport for many Britons was a symbolic example of the EU trying to suppress the nation state. This of course means Britons could get a blue passport before Britain leaves the European Union. Is Selmayr trying to sway voters in a second referendum?

This morning the EU announced it has “completed” planning for the event that the UK leaves the European Union on WTO terms, saying that it is “increasingly likely” that the UK will leave without a deal in mid April. They have hired 2,000 new customs officers and built 20 new border posts. What has the UK done..?

Interestingly, when asked if there will be checkpoints at the Irish border, the EU said that they are “working very closely with Irish authorities to try and perform controls away from border”. The EU is happily talking about checks away from the border in the event of No Deal, but they refused to countenance those sort of alternative arrangements with the UK in the event of a deal. Guido can’t see this as anything other than blatant bad faith on the part of the EU…