The photos, which included Mr Markle being fitted for a suit, browsing photos of the engaged couple in an internet café, and reading a book about Britain, were seized on by the snobbier parts of the British media and were the subject of mild hilarity for a couple of days.

This – understandably – was too much for the very private father of the bride, a retired lighting technician living in Mexico with no experience of publicity. Yesterday, American gossip site TMZ reported that Mr Markle now realises that the photos were “stupid and hammy”, and has decided not to attend the wedding, for fear of embarrassing the royal family and his daughter.

For anyone with an embarrassing parent, or to anyone human, Mr Markle – gauche, exasperating, misguided, but fundamentally decent – is a familiarly endearing figure. He may think that the British public are laughing at him, but really, the best of us, the least cruel, understand just how he’s feeling. Britain is surely cheering him and his whole eclectic family on.

British tweeters are clear. At the time of writing, the most popular tweet on the whole farce reads: “Dear Thomas Markle, please come to your daughter’s wedding, if you are well enough. We all mess up. No really, you should *see* the state of us. We are utterly broken and rubbish. And mostly permanently embarrassed. Come on big guy. We will look after you. Love Britain x”.

Stressful and difficult though it must be for Meghan and Harry, the whole furore has also done a world of good for the Markle image. Meghan’s father – far from being an embarrassment – has proved to the country that poised, beautiful and rich though she is, the princess to be is a real person with the same ridiculous worries as the rest of us. Britain is warming to her.

After far too many years of mating with their own kind, the Royal Family has finally branched out. And it couldn’t be more refreshing. Harry’s previous girlfriends – the Florences and the Cressidas with their baronet fathers and their horses and their internalised copies of Debretts – are history. Self-made, hard-working Meghan Markle and her “hammy” father are the future.

And I, for one, am looking forward to Saturday’s festivities.

And about time too. After the party’s disastrous performance in 2015, there was a general belief among optimistic activists that with a new leader, they would rise – phoenix like – from the ashes of Nick Clegg’s coaltion. It didn’t happen. In fact, if anything, the party slipped even further out of public consciousness.

In a YouGov poll at the beginning of this year, 35% percent of participants said that they “didn’t know” when asked to choose a Prime Minister between Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May – a more popular answer than either of the two leaders. This generous third of the population should have been low hanging fruit for the Lib Dems, but for one reason or another, they resisted Vince Cable’s advances.

So, why the sudden reversal of fortune? Here are a few thoughts.

1. Liberal Democrats take local elections seriously – and almost always do disproportionately well in them.

Lib Dem MPs are more likely than any others to come up through the local councillor route, and it was liberal democrats who popularised the tradition of candidates having some sort of connection to the area they are trying to represent. While the main parties get preoccupied discussing ivory tower politics, Liberal Democrats traditionally concentrate on electing hardworking local representatives – who fight tooth and nail for their area.

2. The party has quietened down (a bit) on Brexit.

For the past 18 months, the Westminster Liberal Democrats (and Nick Clegg) have put all their might into fighting against Brexit in a very specific way which never had – and never will have – mass appeal. Unlike the vast majority of remain voters, who voted to stay in practical reasons and are now resigned to Brexit and bored by it, Clegg et al voted to remain because they feel a deep and visceral affiliation with the European project and the EU.

Despite what Twitter (a platform dedicated to artificially curating an identity) would have us believe, most ordinary people don’t think too much about their cultural identity – and those who do are statistically far more likely to gravitate towards their nation state. Even among those who want the referendum result to be overturned, the Liberal Democrats impassioned speeches about Patriotic Europeanism fall flat.

It was the Tories who used the slogan “bins not Brexit” for these local elections, but the Liberal Democrats were clearly listening. In Leave voting Sunderland, councillors avoided mentioning the referendum result, concentrating instead on domestic and local policies.

With Brexit now very definitely happening, the party – at last – seems to have worked out that to stay relevant, it must talk about something else.

3. They are picking up Liberal Conservative votes

When Theresa May took over from David Cameron, it was clear that the Conservative Party was moving in a less liberal direction. On social policy, May is tough on drug control, staunchly supports immigration targets, and believes in measures like the sugar tax to improve national health. Economically, she has only a passing interest in the free market – and sways towards protectionism.

In her original cabinet, there were four liberal Conservative ministers to balance these instincts: Justine Greening, Damian Green, Amber Rudd, and Michael Gove.

Now, only one of them remains.

Liberal Conservatives who supported David Cameron are politically homeless – and it’s no wonder they’re moving towards the Liberal Democrats.

After a gruelling three years, Vince Cable has every right to look smug today. A year ago, there were predictions his party might collapse entirely before the next election. Now, there’s a chance he could be a kingmaker.

Either through fear of a backbench backlash (remember the derision when her supporter Gavin Williamson was made defence secretary) or a genuine desire for fresh thinking, she has opted for Savid Javid; a bright non-Mayite, with deeply held political beliefs of his own.

It’s been a rocky road to the top for the new Home Secretary. His parents came to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s with one pound to their name, hoping for a better life. The young Javid grew up in a cramped flat in Bristol with his four brothers, and was taught from a very early age by his hard-working father that everything in life had to be earned. He attended the local sink comprehensive school, and is fond of recalling a meeting with the careers advisor who suggested he should take an internship as a TV repairs man – advice he ignored.

Armed with an excellent academic record, ambitious Javid went on to Exeter University (where he co-established the Exeter Enterprise Forum), and a highly successful career in banking. Aged 25, he became a vice-president of the Chase Manhatten Bank in New York, before returning to London in 1997 to join Deutsche Bank as a director. In 2004 he became a managing director at Deutsche Bank and, one year later, global head of Emerging Markets Structuring. He made up to £3m a year through the years of boom and bust, and he now owns a £4m home in Fulham and another worth £2m in Chelsea.

Unlike Andrea Leadsom, whose claims to have been a player were wildly overblown, Javid was a genuine star in the banking world.

In 2009, he left finance to pursue a career in politics, and, in 2010, he was elected as MP for the ultra-safe Tory seat of Bromsgrove. From there, he rose meteorically – and within four years, he had become the first of his intake to make it into the cabinet. As a successful and well-liked culture Secretary with a compelling personal story, he was marked out for great things. Both David Cameron and George Osborne rated him highly.

Unfortunately for Javid, he turned out to be a terrible punter. First, he became the protegee of the doomed George Obsborne. Then, under the influence of Osborne, he went against his eurosceptic instincts and campaigned for Remain in the referendum. On the eve of poll he admitted that he only voted to stay in the EU with a heavy heart. Weakened by the result, he was unlucky in the subsequent leadership race when he chose to throw his weight behind his friend Stephen Crabb. The former Welsh Secretary crashed out of the race in humiliating circumstances.

Thanks to his ministerial record, he managed to hold on to a cabinet position under Theresa May, but his extended honeymoon period was over, and his weaknesses were starting to show. Despite a quick mind and a sharp sense of humour off screen, he could give the Maybot a run for her money when it comes to wooden communication. Perhaps because of this, he has struggled to get the rest of the cabinet to listen to his bold proposals for ending the housing crisis.

What he lacks in oratory skills, however, he makes up for in convictions. Unlike the tiny band of May cheerleaders (and perhaps May herself), he knows what he thinks on economic policy and social policy – and he’s not afraid to speak his mind. He’s an ardent free marketeer, who has described Margaret Thatcher as the “greatest Prime Minister of our times” – and he even had a painting of her, dressed in blue, hanging on his office wall.

On immigration, he is moulded in Osborne’s liberal image rather than May’s hard-line one, and has been powerful voice on the Windrush story. In a moving interview with the Telegraph yesterday he said he was “really impacted” by the scandal, pointing out that it could have been his own parents.

By choosing Sajid Javid as Home Secretary, Theresa May has proved – again – that somewhere, deep down, she has a streak of bravery. If Number 10 will allow him to spread his wings, he may just manage to bring some much-needed reform to the unwieldy Home Office – and finally become a serious player in the Conservative Party while he’s at it.

Then Amber Rudd waded in and let slip that she “didn’t know” if any of the Windrush Generation had been wrongly deported. Staggeringly, she appeared to lay the blame for the problem at the feet of her own civil servants (and, perhaps, her predecessor), telling the House that the “Home Office has become too concerned with policy and strategy, and sometimes lost sight of the individual.”

While all this was going on, Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey casually suggested on Monday that rape victims may benefit from recounting their ordeal in order to claim benefits. Cue, a collective raising of eyebrows across the country.

For a leader of the Opposition who thrives on a reputation for kindliness and feeds off the theory that Tories are evil, heartless, money snatchers, PMQs today should have been a doddle.

And yet somehow – bafflingly – Corbyn managed to come off second best.

It all started well for Labour. To the relief of his backbenchers, Corbyn (who has a penchant for skirting round the main story) seemed to recognise that Windrush was the biggest issue of the day. He went in hard on May, citing the shocking case of Albert Thompson – a man who came to Britain over 50 years ago and has had his cancer treatment withdrawn. May shamefacedly explained to the House that the case has been reviewed and Mr Thompson’s treatment will be resumed immediately. It looked like the beginning of a government walloping.

But Corbyn couldn’t pull it off. After questioning May a little on the cruelty of the net migration target, he switched his focus abruptly to the incompetency aspect of the case. This was a mistake. When asked by the leader of the opposition if the Prime Minister, as Home Secretary in 2010, had signed off on the decision to destroy the landing cards of a generation of Commonwealth citizens, May replied, with remarkable poise “No. the decision to destroy the landing cards was taken in 2009, under a Labour government”.

Even after this mic drop moment, Corbyn could have recovered. Everyone accepts that the landing cards are a bit of a red herring, and anyway, Corbyn is perfectly clear that his Labour has nothing in common with Gordon Brown’s Labour. A brighter, better politician would have immediately pivoted back to callousness. Not Corbyn. Unable to think on his feet he ignored the 180 degrees turn of the debate, and serenely went ahead with his rant about “vital records being destroyed”.

A relieved May was able to end the exchange with a big line on antisemitism, triumphantly aware that she had, somehow, got away with it all, while on the Labour backbenches, an ashen Yvette Cooper sat in stunned, miserable silence.

Does it matter? Well, yes. Free market supporting Brexiteers tend to get excited about the Commonwealth because its existence proves that Britain has allies outside of the EU. The most optimistic even suggest that post-Brexit, the UK could help to turn the Commonwealth into a trading bloc, not unlike the old Common Market. There are major feasibility questions about this proposal, but there is logic to it, and it shouldn’t be scoffed at.

Much of the Commonwealth has a shared language, overlapping administrative and legal systems (largely based on English common law) and a shared heritage. It contains half of the world’s top 20 emerging cities, and 60% of its combined population (of two billion) is under 29. It may have begun as a nod to history, but it continues to exist because it’s a useful network in a globalised world – and its members believe that it has a future.

For Britain, which needs all the friends it can get at this particular juncture, the Commonwealth matters, and the question of who leads it is important.

To many the answer is obvious. The success of the Commonwealth so far has been largely down to the dedication and commitment of Queen Elizabeth. Aged 21, she committed her life to the “service of the great imperial family”, and she has stuck to her word. She has steered the organisation through various crises – including apartheid in South Africa – with perfect grace, and deserves the universal respect she holds. She has been supported all the way by her son, Prince Charles, who has taken over many of her overseas visits in recent years, and has spoken passionately on numerous occasions about his own dedication to the organisation. He seems like not just the obvious successor, but the most qualified one too.

Doubting his commitment, as Kate Osamor MP has done, is churlish. The fact that she “doesn’t really know what he’s been up to of late” says more about her and her interest in the Commonwealth than it does about his actions. ‎But his dedication doesn’t necessarily mean that he should succeed.

Thanks to the Queen’s commitment and personal investment, the Commonwealth today is more than just a legacy from the days of empire. It has become a thriving, diverse organisation, with real potential to strengthen and expand in an era where bonds based on geographical proximity matter less and less.

Sixty years ago, when the Queen took over from her father, only a British monarch invested in empire would have been able to keep the Commonwealth together. Now, thanks largely to her, it is cohesive enough to hold shape on its own.

Prince Charles would make an admirable successor, but if the Commonwealth is to modernise, grow, and live up to its promise, now may be time for it to shake off its imperialist roots. And symbolically, that may mean that the British monarch must stand aside to give states such as India a chance to lead.

Tickets now on sale.‎ Each ticket includes a free copy of The People versus Tech.

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Corbyn’s most ardent supporters, including Guardian commentator Owen Jones, are defending their hero by pointing out that Jews do not have a collective “world view”. Left wing Jews, anti-capitalist Jews, fervent critics of Israel, and even Jews who dislike other Jews are all equally “legitimate” Jews, and the members of Jewdas should be able to share their opinions without gentiles suggesting otherwise.

Of course, in as far as the argument goes, these supporters are right. Lots of “mainstream Jews”– though they disagree with Jewdas on a number of issues – believe that the group has its place in the Jewish community. There is a richness to the political plurality of modern Judaism, and it should be celebrated.

The problem here is that Jeremy Corbyn is not celebrating plurality. If he were truly trying to repair the badly damaged relationship between the Jewish community and his wing of the Labour party, he would have spent the last few weeks going to all kinds of Jewish events, speaking to Jews across the entire political spectrum and listening, with humility, to what they all have to say.

That is not what he’s been doing. In fact, it seems he’s only been to one Jewish event since he became mired in a huge antisemitism scandal, and it happens to have been run by the only faction of the Jewish community that has placed itself very firmly on the “this is a witch hunt” side of the debate. Jewdas’s official line on the antisemitism row is that it’s “the work of cynical manipulations by people whose express loyalty is to the Conservative Party and the right wing of the Labour Party” – and a “ right wing smear” on Jeremy Corbyn.

So what was Jeremy Corbyn thinking when he went along to this particular Seder celebration? Well, there are two explanations.

The first, and according to many the most plausible, is that Jeremy Corbyn was being deliberately provocative. In spite of his promises to “eradicate the cancer of antisemitism”, his black and white world view (in which Zionists are Public Enemy Number 1) makes him stubbornly blind to the antisemitic behaviour of his far left tribe. When moderate Labour MPs like Wes Streeting point it out – as he did so eloquently as last week’s rally held outside Parliament – Corbyn  cannot take it seriously, and genuinely interprets it as a smear against him.

He can’t say this, because even he realises that the Leader of the Opposition speaking out against antisemitism protesters in his own party would result in a massive backlash, so instead he does the next best thing: he goes and has dinner with those who have spoken out against it, showing, through actions if not words, where he stands.

The other explanation – which seems to be surfacing a lot at the moment – is that Jeremy Corbyn is naïve, tin-eared, and rather stupid. He had a free evening, and, temporarily forgetting that he is the Leader of the Opposition and is at the centre of a massive scandal about antisemitism, went along to spend a relaxed evening with some young people near his home in Islington. In the same way that he only “glanced” at the antisemitic mural before commenting on it on Facebook in 2012, he only vaguely registered what Jewdas’s views on Leftist antisemitism are before going along to their Seder. According to this reading, he is on the verge of meeting a load of other more mainstream Jewish groups, and didn’t see the harm in starting with Jewdas.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Corbyn half wanted to make a political statement, and, because he is a vain man who quite fancied the idea of spending the evening with some adoring young fans, didn’t think for long enough about exactly what that statement should look like.

Politically, one of the most interesting aspects of this whole shocking-but-predictable affair is that for the first time, the cracks are showing in the Corbynista movement. The messy reality of having Jeremy Corbyn as a leader seems to be dawning on the far left pressure group Momentum, finally. Jon Lansman – founder of the group – is at pains to point out that Corbyn’s office knew nothing of the evening, implying that dear old “magic grandpa” just pottered off on his own without consulting anyone. He has gone as far as to say that the Leader of the Opposition should go on a training course to increase his awareness of antisemitism.

The brains behind Corbyn – Lansman and McDonnell – have both, in recent weeks, publicly distanced themselves from him. McDonnell broke with Corbyn on Russia. Although the three see eye-to-eye on how they want Britain to be run, McDonnell and Lansman seem to be getting frustrated with the flip side of their leader’s supposed “authenticity”. Corbyn exhibits tin-eared and clumsy political naivety, mixed in with dangerous obstinacy.

Perhaps, the Labour leader once termed an “absolute boy”, isn’t the Messiah after all. What was it Monty Python said again?

Tory MP Sir Bill Cash, chairman of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee has branded the move “completely wrong and unnecessary”, and Priti Patel has dubbed it a “national humiliation”.

Here are six reasons why they need to calm down.

1. The decision was free, fair, and in line with WTO rules

According to both Single Market and WTO rules (of which Brexiteers are usually so fond), procurement decisions should be made on a procurement basis, without favouring domestic firms or shutting out foreign firms. For simple contracts (eg goods), this means procurements should be on a lowest price basis, and for more complex contracts, the tender should be on a “most economically advantageous tender” (MEAT)

The manufacture of the British passports went out to tender (according to EU & WTO procurement rules) and Gemalto submitted the MEAT.

This was a free and fair competition conducted under well-established procurement rules. If the British company, De La Rue, had submitted a better tender, deemed to be the MEAT, it would have won the contract. It did not.

2. It’s saving the British tax payer £120 million

If legality isn’t a good enough argument for you, perhaps because you don’t think the UK as a sovereign country should have to follow any kind of international rules, the economic angle may resonate more.

By opting for Gemalto instead of De La Rue the UK government is saving the tax payer an estimated £100m-£120m over the first five years of the contract. For anyone who believes in the basic principles of the free market (as the majority of Tory Brexiteers do), this, very simply, is a win.

3. 80% of De La Rue’s revenue comes from outside the UK

De La Rue earns 80 percent of its revenue outside Britain and supplies passports to 40 countries. If we adopted the protectionist policy of opting for a UK firm when a foreign one could do the same job cheaper, who’s to say that those 40 countries wouldn’t retaliate and do the same? As Peter Thal Larsen, EMEA editor for Reuters, puts it “arguing that the UK should only order passports from a home-grown supplier is either the height of hypocrisy, or very stupid.”

4. De La Rue is a big company and will not collapse because it lost this one contract

On BBC Radio 4 this morning, an irate Martin Sutherland, CEO of De la Rue, invited May or Rudd to go and explain to his staff in Gateshead why new British passports will be made outside the UK. The implication was that the treacherous Prime Minister wouldn’t be able to look them (nor, one assumes, their starving children) in the eye.

It’s a tear jerker for sure, but it doesn’t actually wash. De La Rue is not a family run, local stationer. It is a large, thriving company with offices in Kenya, Sri Lanka and Malta (where, incidentally, 10% of British passports are currently made), and it is listed on the London Stock Exchange. As well as providing 40 countries with passports, it also sells high-security paper and printing technology for over 150 national currencies.

Its shares may fall temporarily, but this is no different to winning or losing any other tender. If they win another foreign contract (after which Martin Sutherland must presumably go and look his competitors’ starving children in the eye), they will rebound. This is by no means a death warrant.

5. If we want a good trade deal with the EU, we’d have to abide by EU procurement law anyway

It’s all very well saying that the decision was made under EU rules and is an example of why we’re leaving. But realistically, if we want a tariff free, barrier free deal with the EU (which we do) a level playing field on competitive tenders is obvious an trade off – and would almost definitely be the focus of any trade deal.

6. The French are our neighbours and our friends

Snubbing a French company purely out spite (especially when that snub would have a negative economic impact on us) doesn’t seem like a very “outward-looking” way to begin the next chapter in Britain’s story.

Her pragmatic, plodding, detail driven style of politics is finally coming into its own in the Brexit negotiations, and with the Skripal affair she seems to be having a mini Falklands moment. She has recovered remarkably from the bruising she received in last year’s election and gained from it some humility – a rare but very useful quality in politicians. Where Cameron and Osborne might have delighted in goading Corbyn on Russia and gloating about his awful anti-Britain stance, May adopted a melancholy, disappointed tone, which resonated far more powerfully with the country.

The turnaround is helping the Conservative Party poll above 40% in surveys. YouGov’s most recent poll puts the Conservatives on 41% – the same as in July last year, and two points behind a Labour party and its leadership that claims to be sweeping all before it.

There are problems though for the Tories. The government is not in great shape. For someone who professes to be entirely unclubbable the Prime Minister has a funny penchant for promoting her allies above other talent, to the detriment of good government.

Gavin ‘tarantula’ Williamson, who has been a stalwart supporter of May’s since the moment Cameron left office, is clearly unsuited to the job of Defence Secretary. As Chief Whip, he not only alienated many of his colleagues, he came close to bungling the post-election deal with the DUP – getting himself in trouble with Buckingham Palace. He might have been sacked, but instead he was promoted.

In his first major speech as Defence Secretary last week he revealed the depth of his inexperience when he told Russia to “shut up and go away”, immediately making himself the laughing stock of social media and uniting the divided Labour Party in contempt. He seems to think he could one day become prime minister.

His friend Julian Smith, one of six MPs who led the Parliamentary leadership campaign for May, is also under pressure as Chief Whip.

In a meeting yesterday intended to “clear the air” on the Brexit fishing debacle, Smith sparked a furious row with Conservative MPs from Cornwall and Scotland after telling them to accept Theresa May’s Brexit transition deal because “it’s not like the fishermen are going to vote Labour”. In Scotland, it is of course the SNP and not Labour who threaten Tory seats, and in Cornwall it is the Liberal Democrats. As one MP present at the meeting put it, the Chief Whip seems to “completely misunderstand what this is about and who our chief opponents even are.”

The perception persists that May was not brutal or bold enough in her last reshuffle. The government will need to be refreshed.

For now, though, congratulations are due to Theresa May, the prime minister who refused to take “no we don’t want you” as an answer – and is finally reaping the rewards.

Two blunders though, are a different matter. Corbyn, who markets himself as a peaceful, thoughtful man, has had 40 odd hours to reflect, but his jarring and wholly inappropriate response today was no better than the one he gave on Monday.

May’s corker of a speech, in which she outlined a number of proportionate and sensible sanctions against Russia including the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats from the UK, was very clearly in the national interest, and should have been met with support and thoughtful questions from the leader of the opposition. Instead, it was greeted with petty partisan point scoring  – at one point he seemed to blame Foreign Office cuts for the attempted murders – by a man who seems to completely determined to take the side of Britain’s enemies.

And it has gone down badly. On Monday, it was mainly Conservative MPs shaking their heads in disgust. Today, Labour backbenchers were visibly wincing. Yvette Cooper’s thoughtful (and statesmanlike) intervention, in which she made a very thinly veiled attack on her leader “I hope the whole house can come together behind a firm response to poisoning”, was met by enthusiastic nods and cries from “hear hear” from backbenchers. And the irony of Corbyn accusing Boris Johnson of “demeaning his office” was not lost on the opposition.

Inside Parliament, it feels like an uprising is coming. Moderate Labour MPs who have kept their heads down since Labour’s surprisingly good performance in last year’s General Election are finally rallying. The men and women who were ready and waiting to oust Corbyn in the event of a disastrous election haven’t really changed their minds about him since, and today, we were reminded that their dissatisfaction is bubbling pretty close to the surface.

And outside parliament? The problem for moderate Labour MPs has always been that there is no appetite for a Blairite movement. Corbyn has a cult following of wild-eyed young idealists who don’t seem to care which side of the Cold War he was on, or how many IRA terrorists he entertained. Will his despicable position on the Skripal affair really make a difference?

Well, just maybe. Emmanuel Macron, the young, charismatic President of France, is backing the government not Corbyn, on this – and that means something to young, Remain voting, Corbyn supporters.

What’s more, while allegations of IRA involvement seems to be water off a duck’s back to those who think that “history is in the past”, the poisoning of an old man and his daughter in Zizzi in Salisbury in 2018 doesn’t sit comfortably with anyone. We want our politicians to keep us safe, and part of that (obviously) is coming down hard on poisoners.

As Theresa May said today, Corbyn is “way outside the consensus” – and not for the first time. Could it be that his extreme views are finally catching up with him? And if so, might today have been the beginning of the end?

So, just in case you missed it, here are the key points from today’s Spring Statement:

On the Economy:

The Office for Budget Responsibility has upgraded its forecast for GDP growth this year to 1.5 per cent, having put the forecast at 1.4 per cent in November. The forecasts for GDP growth in 2019 and 2020 have been left unchanged at 1.3 per cent, with 2021 and 2022 edging up to 1.4 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively. Inflation is expected to fall back to the 2 per cent target in the next 12 months and employment to grow over the next five years.

On public finances:

Borrowing is expected to come in at £45.2 billion this year – £4.7 billion lower than previously forecast. It is expected to fall to £37.1 billion in 2019, falling each year until it hits £21.4 billion in 2022/23.

Debt is forecast to fall as a share of GDP from 2018-19 and the OBR has revised down debt and borrowing in every year. It will peak at 85.6 per cent of GDP in 2017-18, then fall to 85.5 per cent in 2018-19, 85.1 per cent, 82.1 per cent, 78.3 per cent and finally 77.9 per cent in 2022-23.

On business:

There will be a revaluation of business rates in 2021, a year earlier than expected. Subsequent revaluations will take place every three years.

On tax relief:

There will be a consultation on changes to entrepreneurs’ relief to make sure that it doesn’t give entrepreneurs a disincentive to seek external finance.

On Brexit:

The government will allocate £1.5 billion for government departments to prepare for Brexit.

On plastic:

The government will launch a consultation on a tax to cut down on single-use plastic waste. Universities and businesses will be given £20 million from existing budgets to research ways to reduce the impact of plastics on the environment.

On investment:

There will be a consultation on creating a fund structure within the enterprise investment scheme for digital startups.

On productivity:

There will be help provided for the least productive companies to learn from the most productive.

On digital tax:

The government will consider solutions to ensure that digital giants such as Google and Facebook pay their fair share of tax.

Conclusion:

This was a political statement rather than an economic one. The Chancellor has a reputation for being a politician with not much of an ear for politics, and is unpopular among both his Brexiteer colleagues (for obvious reasons), and among many free marketeers who believe that some of his spending decisions verge on Milliband lite.

It was them – and not the country – he was speaking to today when he reiterated his Budget promise of putting aside 1.5 billion for Brexit, and them he was speaking to when he repeatedly mentioned the benefits of fiscal conservatism. He attacked Labour’s big spending policies as a ‘train wreck’, and even sounded somewhat more passionate than usual about the market economy.

Overall, his tone was positive and “practically tiggerish” – an attempt to dispel his reputation for being “an Eeyore” – and he delivered okay if not great news on growth forecasts with the sort of smug flourish we haven’t seen since the Osborne days.

Policy wise, big announcements were thin on the ground, but that was to be expected as the Chancellor explained in the autumn that all announcements will now be made in the budget.

As a last hurrah to spring statements, the 26 minute speech wasn’t much to write home about, but thanks to some good news from the OBR, Hammond managed to hold his own. And he flattened his Labour opposite number John McDonnell, when the shadow chancellor spoke of “Tory bully boys.” McDonnell has still not apologised to Esther McVey, Work and Pensions Secretary, for repeating remarks suggesting she should be “lynched,” Hammond pointed out, making McDonnell squirm.

The right wing anti-immigration, anti-common currency “League” conquered broad swathes of Italy’s north, while Five Star – the populist anti-austerity party – saw its strongest show of support in the young, poorer south. The ruling centre left lost ground, with Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) securing only 18.9% of the vote. La Repubblica described its failure to win a fifth of the votes as a psychological blow. It is certainly a damning indictment of Renzi himself, the man who grabbed power without winning an election. He is resigning.

Forming a government may now take weeks of negotiation and coalition-building, and it’s not sure how the fractured political system will reform itself. Below are some options.

· Five Star Movement was the biggest party with almost a third of the vote, but its leader Di Maio did not win enough seats for a majority and is unwilling to form a partnership with a rival. This poses a serious problem, because under new Italian electoral law a party with so few seats can’t rule on its own.

· There’s a chance Di Maio may relent and try to form a coalition with Renzi’s Democratic Party – but there’s no knowing if Renzi would accept such a proposal. The leader of the Democratic Party is in a precarious position, and may feel that opposition is preferable to a partnership with a populist group mistrusted by PD’s core voters.

· The more likely option is a coalition of the right-wing parties. League – which dramatically increased its share of the vote – said prior to the election that it would consider a partnership with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party, and the far-right Brothers of Italy. And it’s worth remembering that its leader, Salvini, has his eyes set on the premiership and will be prepared to compromise. For more, read here.

· On paper, this seems like quite a neat solution – the coalition still wouldn’t reach the 316 seats needed for a majority, but it could form a pretty strong minority government. In reality, it would almost definitely lead to infighting and yet more instability. While League is adamantly anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-common currency (Salvini called the Euro a “crime against humanity”), Forza Italy was the only party to run on an unapologetically pro EU platform. It’s hard to see quite how these two positions could be reconciled. For in-depth analysis, read here.

· The other option being touted by Italian pundits is a coalition between MS5 and League. Although Di Maio’s party with its anti-austerity rhetoric is on the left of the spectrum and League is on the right, the two have a lot in common. Both are populist, anti-establishment, and very critical of the European Union.

· Numbers-wise, this option makes the most sense (between them, the League and MS5 reach the 316 seats needed to form a government) and it would go down well with Italian voters if it was the two big winners of the night were the ones who led the country. But would Renzi and Berlusconi in the centre allow it? And could MS5 sell such a partnership to its young, southern voters? For more read this.

Coalition talks begin today, and will be led by the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella. Rather him than me.

The draft legal text would, if brought into force, also establish “a common regulatory area comprising the Union and the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland”.

The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, over which a lot of blood has been spilt, has long been one of the biggest points of contention in the Brexit negotiations, and the uncompromising legal text published by the EU today has elicited some of the strongest reactions we have yet seen from all of the many different parties who would be affected.

So what does it mean? Below is a breakdown:

The European Union:

Michel Barnier claims that the plan is not new and should come “as no surprise” to the UK government as it “is only a formal interpretation of what Theresa May agreed in broad terms when she struck a preliminary deal in December”. Speaking immediately after publication, Barnier explained that the agreement was only a “backstop” (a default if no other agreement could be reached), and the EU would happily consider “alternative proposals” put forward by the British Government if such alternatives could “work in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement”.

Of the claims that the move would create a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK he said: “In ports and airports there will be controls, but I would not refer to a border … I am not trying to provoke anyone here”

He also reminded reporters that Brexit day is only 13 months away, and this document had to be published in order to “up the pace” of negotiations.

Michel Barnier is being deeply disingenuous. He is well aware that any proposal which would draw a line across the Irish sea could not be accepted by any British Unionists, in England or Northern Ireland. He claims he is being “happy to work with Northern Irish politics” while at the same time patently ignoring the express wishes of the largest political party in the province. He claims that the draft is just an “opening position” and says that the EU will listen to proposals from the British Government, but it’s hard to see in what concessions he could make on such an uncompromising position. As Emily Thornberry pointed out today (in relation to Boris Johnson) a border is either there, or it isn’t – there’s no such thing as a “little bit pregnant”.

The UK Government:

Speaking during PMQs today, Theresa May said: “The draft legal text the Commission has published would, if implemented, undermine the United Kingdom common market and threaten the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom by creating a custom and regulatory border down the Irish Sea.”

The Prime Minister added: “No United Kingdom prime minister could ever agree to it. I will be making it crystal clear to President Juncker and others that we will never do so.

“We are committed to ensuring that we see no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.”

This is all very well, and it’s refreshing to see an embattled Theresa May being decisive, but it still doesn’t actually answer the question of what is to be done about the Irish border. If she will neither accept a hard border between Britain and Northern Ireland, nor stay in The Customs Union (rightly so) she is going to have to come up with a clearer solution than “we can probably do something techie”. And fast.

Dublin:

Simon Coveney, Foreign Minister in Dublin, said he was “very happy” with the legal document. “People will judge for themselves. They will see it is an accurate reflection of what was politically agreed in December,” he went on. “It will be faithful and true to the agreement.” He said that Ireland and the EU were of “one mind” and that there will be “quite a lot of detail” but “some additions will be needed over time”.

President Leo Varadkar agreed saying: “We are also committed to exploring specific solutions to be proposed by the UK. At the same time, there is now the necessary legal provision to implement the backstop of maintaining full alignment in Northern Ireland with the rules of the Single Market and Customs Union necessary to protect North South cooperation and avoid a hard border. This is very much a default and would only apply should it prove necessary. This is about delivering on our shared objectives of protecting the Good Friday Agreement and the gains of the peace process, no less, no more.”

This is an uncompromising approach. Veteran Irish politicians like Bertie Ahern (who worked with Tony Blair and Jonathan Powell on the Good Friday Agreement) have suggested Varadkar should persuade the EU to allow the governments in Dublin and London to work out a solution to the border themselves – but the Taoiseach has not paid heed. It is said that he does not get on well personally with the Prime Minister, and his lack of confidence in the British Government is evident. It is worth noting that just yesterday he took the unprecedented step of urging Sinn Fein to take seats in Westminster to “make things better in Ireland”.

Democratic Unionist Party:

Speaking to Radio 4 this morning, Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said: “The EU has been trying to manoeuvre the negotiations to ensure that the United Kingdom as a whole stays within the single market and customs union and have been using — or abusing — Northern Ireland to try and bring that situation about. It seems that the EU have made it quite clear that the only option they are interested in is regulatory alignment which would either remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, separate us from our main market and politically create an issue where we are separated from the rest of the United Kingdom, or else force the whole of the United Kingdom to stay in the single market and the customs union.”

The DUP’s Westminster leader Nigel Dodds said his reaction to the publication was one of “amazement” that the EU thought it “could possibly fly with either us or the British government”.

“We did not leave the European Union to oversee the breakup of the United Kingdom,” he told the BBC, adding that it would be “catastrophic” for Northern Ireland to be “cut off” from UK markets.

This furious response was completely predictable, and should have been foreseen by the EU, perhaps it was. Tom McTague summed it up pretty well this morning when he tweeted: “Imagine for a moment the UK accepted the Commission’s proposals for Northern Ireland. What does Michel Barnier expect the reaction to be in Belfast? When I worked in the city there was a riot over the removal of the union flag from the town hall.”

Labour:

Labour says it would solve the Irish border question by entering into a new customs union with the EU, meaning checks are not needed as people and goods pass between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Kier Starmer said: “The EU-UK Government war of words needs to end.

“There can be absolutely no deviation from the solemn commitments made to Northern Ireland at the end of the first phase of Brexit negotiations. That means no hard border or any agreement that would undermine the Good Friday Agreement.

“Theresa May’s failure to offer any viable solution to the border in Northern Ireland has come back to haunt her.”

The Labour Party is (fairly) rather smug today. Where Theresa May has failed to solve the Irish border question, Jeremy Corbyn – by promising to keep the UK in a customs union – claims to have succeeded.

The only problem is, the Labour leader’s plan to cherry-pick the aspects of EU membership he wants, while refusing to accept the bits which would stop him nationalising everything, wouldn’t – when it came down to it – actually wash with the EU. And if a Corbynite version of a customs union wouldn’t work, then the Corbynite solution to the Irish border doesn’t work either.

So, we’re back to square 1.

This year, we are very excited to be launching our first work experience programme, open to all A level pupils and university students aged 17 and up.

Work experience at Reaction isn’t like your normal work experience. We are a small team who genuinely needs your help – so with us, you won’t be spending your time going on endless coffee runs.

If you are successful in your application, you will be given the opportunity to get involved in  producing and writing, working with our editors, from Day 1.

Placements will last 2-4 weeks and applicants are accepted on a rolling basis. There is no deadline for applications.

If you are an enthusiastic, would-be journalist who wants to make great connections in the industry, please send your CV and a short covering note to News Editor, Olivia Utley on olivia@reaction.life.

We will offer feedback upon request to every applicant, whether or not you are successful at this stage.

To anyone who still doubted Corbyn’s political savviness, today was an eye-opener. Corbyn may play the befuddled and ‘pure’ granddad part to endear himself to his young fans, but he is an opportunist. He is speaking now because he knows that with the hardline Tory backbench group (the ERG) producing increasingly demanding ransom notes on one side, and pro EU Tory rebels becoming ever more active on the other, embattled Theresa May is in a difficult spot.‎

On Saturday, Tory select committee chairmen and three former ministers put their names to an amendment tabled by Anna Soubry that would force the prime minister to put Britain’s membership of a customs union back on the negotiating table. Eleven of the so called “Tory mutineers” have already said that they will back it.

Given today’s speech, it looks likely that Labour MPs would be whipped into supporting it too, meaning potential defeat for the government – although there are a handful of Brexiteer Labour rebels who would vote with May against the Customs Union.

A defeat would be a massive blow to the Prime Minister, and could catalyse the fall of the government – perhaps triggering a snap election which Corbyn might win.

But if the speech was clever politics, policy wise it was anything but.

The leader of the opposition began by mocking the government’s contradictory and vacuous Brexit “strategy” (an easy hand to play, but it must be said, he played it well) before launching into his own strategy – which it turned out was just as riddled, if not more riddled, with contradictions and vacuities.

You can read the whole thing here, but the long and short of it is that Corbyn would introduce a customs union with the EU, but only one in which the UK could negotiate its own new trade deals and wouldn’t have to accept the EU setting its rules. He wants a bespoke Brexit deal “that includes tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections” but also seeks to secure “protections, clarifications or exemptions” to the Single Market directives relating to privatisation, public service competition, state aid and procurement. He added that he would “not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others”.

For a Marxist opposition leader who wants to appeal to the young Remainers but secretly hates the EU because it would prevent him nationalising left, right and centre, and turning the UK into Venezuela, it is a clever bit of fudge. But for a politician claiming to be providing the country with a practical and workable alternative to the Tories’ Brexit strategy, it is a ridiculous line.

As multiple experts have pointed out – including Labour’s own Frank Field – it is extremely likely that the European Union would say a hypothetical ‘no’ to what he is asking for: a say in future trade deals alongside this new proposed customs arrangement. And Corbyn has no back up plan whatsoever. The government is negotiating hard to cherry pick certain aspects of European Union membership – and as we are all aware, it is having limited success. To anyone who understands the EU and its treaties, the suggestion that Jeremy Corbyn would have any more success by simply choosing different cherries won’t go down too well.

The problem for the Prime Minister, of course, is that lots of people don’t understand the EU and its treaties. Many hardcore remainers will listen to today’s speech and hear only that Jeremy Corbyn wants to be closer to the EU. Business – which inexplicably seems to be more worried about Brexit than a Marxist Corbyn government – seems impressed with Corbyn’s talk about the benefits of Single Market, and even ex Tory Chancellor George Osborne has indicated in the Standard today that he thinks Cobyn’s speech is a move in the right direction.

On the face of it, it looks like Corbyn has achieved the unachievable. He has delivered a speech explaining how his Labour Party would use Brexit to achieve his nationalisation agenda, while appearing to give a speech celebrating the EU and the UK’s relationship with it.

It seems unlikely that such a cynical strategy filled with impossible promises can work for long, but unless Theresa May can discipline her rebels and prevent her government falling, Jeremy Corbyn may not need very long to see it through.

In other words, the chances of a young adult on a middle income owning a home in the UK have more than halved in the past two decades.

The findings are dire, but to anyone who has had half an eye on the situation for the past 15 years, they don’t come as a huge surprise. Ever since the early days of George Osborne and David Cameron, government housing policies trussed up as “solutions to the crisis” have focussed around rehashing various subsidy models for first time buyers. We’ve had Help to Buy, the Lifetime ISA, and most recently, stamp duty exemption.

But as anyone with a basic grasp of economics understands, in a tightly regulated housing market (that is, a housing market where there is inflexible supply), subsidies for the buyer have a negative effect on home ownership because the price effect – through increased demand – more than offsets the income effect from the subsidy. In less regulated markets (with flexible supply), subsidies do have a positive effect on home-ownership rates, but only for higher income groups.

Here in the UK, and especially in the South East, we have an extraordinarily inflexible planning system. Thanks to antiquated ‘green belts’, strict controls on height, lack of fiscal incentives at the local level to develop and ‘not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) behaviour, a vanishingly small 2% of England is built on.

Far from “solving the crisis”, government policies are exacerbating the problem. Thanks to huge demand, properties bought under the Help to Buy scheme rose by a whopping 12% between 2016 and 2017 – and in the same timeframe, the average total applicant household income under the scheme rose from £50,302 to £54,019. The rest of the market is not in much better shape. According to senior research economist and author of the IFS report, Andrew Hood, house prices have risen around seven times faster in real terms than the incomes of young adults over the last two decades.

The sensible answer, as has been said time and time again, is to build, build, build. But as the Conservatives don’t have the guts to do this, and (with the exception of Sajid Javid) it doesn’t look like they do, they should start seriously thinking about reforming the enormous private rental sector – which houses an incredible 70% of 25-34s.

It is now treated as common wisdom that the Conservatives lost the youth vote because the youth have no capital “and you can’t be a capitalist without capital”. But I’m not sure if it’s entirely true. Modern millennials aren’t as big on ownership as their parents were: we take out Netflix and Spotify subscriptions instead of buying DVDs and records, and because we settle down later and travel more in our 20s, we are often happy to rent and defer the responsibility of home ownership.

As the situation stands, though, renting doesn’t work. Middle earning millennials in London are spending well over half their income on rent, and are rewarded by landlords who turf them out with no notice and forbid them from putting the odd nail in the wall.

Jeremy Corbyn claims to understand this, and has focussed his housing promises on renting. He has promised to impose rent controls and has said he will tackle the uncertainty that many renters feel by scrapping laws that make it possible for landlords to turf out tenants with little notice and no explanation.  This week, he even suggested making it illegal for landlords to ban their tenants from having pets.

If the situation in New York is anything to go by, rent controls are a bad idea. But the government shouldn’t be afraid to regulate the rental market better. European countries have far bigger rental sectors than we do, but they also have is much tighter regulation which lends some much-needed balance to the landlord/tenant relationship.  At the moment, Britain’s landlords (who have also managed to hold onto to quite a few rather attractive tax breaks) have it all ways.

Most Millennials, of course, would like to buy a home at some point. But while Theresa May’s ministers work out what the hell they’re going to do about the housing supply problem, it should stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes with subsidy policies, and start thinking about how to make renting work. Millennials would thank them more than they know.

In an article criticising Adonis’ “sneering” and “threatening” attacks on the BBC, Alastair writes:

“Adonis is going against the spirit of what Remain should properly represent. I voted Remain because I am European and I think the European Union…  works as a bulwark against the enemies of a tolerant West that is everywhere under attack. I thought a vote to Remain was about defending British liberalism – tolerant, outward looking and pragmatic.”

He goes on: “In opposition to the creeds of nationalism and neo-fundamentalism, which detest a public space which is free and open and diverse, we must remind ourselves that those things are hard-won. They are protected by a robust and independent press and public institutions that are independent of political influence. In wildly attacking the BBC, Adonis undermines all that.”

I’m as big a fan of some BBC programmes as the next British person. I have an embarrassing addiction to Sunday night period dramas (embarrassing because I’m 24 not 64), and though I whinge endlessly about the Today Programme, I’d feel lost without it in the mornings.

Here is where Alastair and I diverge, I do not feel that it – nor any British institution for that matter – should be above criticism.

In fact, I believe that our long and very British tradition of challenging, mocking, “sneering” at and “threatening” the BBC exemplifies the very best aspects of tolerance, liberality and pluralism. It is a sign of a functioning and healthy “outward looking and pragmatic democracy” that state TV is under constant scrutiny, and must justify itself to the people it serves.

The BBC itself seems to understand this. It is constantly making programmes poking fun at the BBC (although W1A might be a double bluff to make light of the organisation’s waste and incompetence.) Its senior staff relish criticism. James Harding, Director of BBC News until last month said in an interview last year that the “BBC must be alive to its critics” and Nick Robinson recently told reporters that that the BBC’s job was “be ready to listen and learn and correct any errors we may make”.

Before he digressed into bizarre comments about the BBC’s pro Brexit bias (?), Adonis’ offending ‎tweet was a punchy, timely and useful criticism of the BBC – of the kind it needs. And the debate which followed on his Twitter timeline was the perfect example of the “free exchange of ideas” which Alastair rightly points out is one of the “best British traditions”. You can read it here.

In the age of Netflix, Sky, YouTube, Now TV etc, it is only sensible at least to question, as Adonis implicitly does, whether the BBC still deserves its license fee. An excellent report by Martin Le Jeune for the Centre for Policy Studies argued in 2016 that “there is no reason for providing that universal service via a compulsory tax, when people could choose instead how to spend their own money on what they really want.” He called for “radical changes to the BBC” to make it “much smaller” saying that if it “specialise[d] in what no-one else could do… it would become even more compelling over the next few years”.

Whether or not you agree with the argument, it is clearly a reasonable one. Even for its most staunch defendants, state television is only useful insofar as it gives the public something it could not get elsewhere; something, as Martin Le Jeune puts as being “important to [a country’s] social, political and cultural wellbeing”. As Adonis points out, in a rapidly changing media era, the definition of “something the public could not get elsewhere” is changing.

If the BBC is to justify itself, it must recognise this, and stay on its toes. To do this, it needs to be criticised. Some of the best content on the BBC was produced after a period of sustained criticism – and that’s not a coincidence. Blue Planet II is a classic example of the BBC at its best –  a seriously high quality educational programme – and it was created in the aftermath of a huge discussion about the future of the BBC following a charter.

As far as bias goes, I firmly believe that the BBC does its best to be impartial – but impartiality is a thorny concept, and of course, sometimes it will slip up. For those times, the BBC depends on the public to weigh in and tell it where it’s going wrong.

Personally, I like the BBC, and think it does an important job well. But it should never rest on its laurels. Liberal democracy is a noisy, messy business, and it depends on fierce and robust debate. We in Britain pride ourselves on our teasing and self-deprecating humour, precisely because it means that nothing is held sacred, and everyone must be held to account. If we are to be a thriving Western democracy of the kind Alastair describes, we must not fetishize our state TV service, but mock it, laugh at it, and challenge it.

1. Why South Africa matters to the world This is why you should care what happens to President Zuma this afternoon. Gideon Rachman, The Financial Times  

1. The withdrawal of public funds is the best thing that could happen to Oxfam Andrew Gimson, Conservative Home 

1. Jeremy Corbyn has a new enemy: Mumsnet Are the women who made Jeremy Corbyn about to unmake him? James Kirkup thinks it’s possible. The Spectator 

1. A reckoning with women awaits Trump David Remnick, The New York Times 

On Twitter, niche stories are everywhere – and it’s all too easy to mistake them for big news. When Chris Grayling was mistakenly announced as the new Conservative Party chairman after a CCHQ employee misfired a tweet, I thought it was an absolute hoot. When I made a passing remark about it at a party and was greeted with an awkward silence and a lot of non-plussed faces, I realised that I’m a weird anomaly who probably should get out more. In a country where 41% of people don’t know who the Prime Minister is, Twitter in-jokes about an obscure cabinet minister go down like a lead balloon.

This week, it is Anna Soubry who has fallen into the Twitter bubble trap. In a blistering interview with BBC Newsnight, the Broxtowe MP dramatically announced that she is willing to leave the Conservative Party if the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg take over. She is peeved her suggestions, to remain in the single market and customs union or to negotiate membership of the European Free Trade Association, have all been dismissed by No 10 – and blames the influence of Tory Brexiteers, who she accused of not being real Tories.

Presumably – since her comments will only antagonise her colleagues and can do no possible good for her cause – she is after publicity and attention. If that’s the case, she’s nailing it on Twitter. J.K Rowling herself (the queen of Twitter) has offered to buy her a drink, and she’s gained nearly 2,000 new followers in 24 hours.

Offline, she is not nailing it. For the simple reason that almost no one has heard of Anna Soubry. Busy people don’t much contemplate politics, and most of those who do only think about it for long enough to figure out that the Conservative party in 2018 is pro-Brexit, the Liberal Democrats are anti-Brexit, and Labour don’t have a clue. Anyone who has the time to distinguish between the stances of individual MPs is almost definitely sitting firmly inside the Westminster bubble. And tweeting their niche opinions to their fellow bubble dwellers.

Even an attack in the Daily Mail won’t register with most people. Andrew Pierce’s monstering of Soubry in the Daily Mail this week was nasty and, by common consent, woefully unfair. But if Soubry and her followers think that pointing it out will shame him, or change her reputation in the eyes of the public, they are sorely mistaken. When Ms Soubry rants about her love for the EU and lays into her parliamentary colleagues the public sees a generic Tory MP who, for reasons they don’t have time to fathom, has gone rogue.

If Anna Soubry means what she says about her party, it’s time for her to leave. She may think that she is garnering herself a devoted and influential following that will eventually stop Brexit, but as soon as she surfaces from Twitter, she’ll realise that she is a tiny drop in a very large ocean. Brexit is happening.