Channel 4 News Political Editor gives his take on the latest news and gossip from the corridors of power in Westminster and beyond.
Gary Gibbon has been Channel 4 News Political Editor since 2005. He gives his take on the latest news and gossip from the corridors of power in Westminster and beyond.
Gary has worked on four general elections for Channel 4 News. His interview with Peter Mandelson in 2001 triggered the Northern Ireland Secretary's second resignation from the Cabinet.
In 2006, he won the Royal Television Society Home News Award with Jon Snow for the scoop on the Attorney General's Legal Advice on Iraq. Gary also revealed details of Blair's pre-War meeting with George Bush n 2008 and won the Political Studies Association Broadcast Journalist of the Year award.
What a difference a day makes. Last night, the first reports began to emerge. Today, we hoped to learn so much, but so far, no grand plan has been published. And ministerial resignations? Not yet anyway. Is the centre holding fast? It is too soon to say.
Senior Cabinet ministers have been summoned, a draft Brexit deal with the EU is on the table, but the real work is only just beginning – selling it to the Cabinet, parliament, if not the country at large.
We have two documents in Downing Street being read tonight: the Withdrawal Agreement (500 pages or so) and the outline political declaration (some four pages or so). That tells you how much work is still to be done in working out the future relationship. The negotiators haven’t even been able to hand in half their…
Brexit negotiators were burning the midnight oil in Brussels last night, with scant detail about what might, if anything, be put to the cabinet tomorrow.
How do you deal with rising populism? That was the dominant debate in the corridors at the EPP Summit in Helsinki this week. As populist movements continue to grow in Europe and beyond, what is motivating them and where is it all heading? In conversation with me for this week’s podcast is Professor Matthew Goodwin, author of ‘National Populism: The…
The race is on to see if a Brexit deal can be signed off at a special summit of EU leaders later this month. For that to happen negotiators need a breakthrough – especially on the Irish border issue. European Council President Donald Tusk has warned it’s likely to be the beginning of next week before enough…
I asked European Council President Donald Tusk if there could be a deal within a week. He said: “I hope so … but still we need maybe 5, maybe 6, maybe 7 days.”
Could there be a Brexit deal in November? The Prime Minister today stressed to her Cabinet the importance of reaching an agreement this month but said this must “not be done at any cost”.
There had been plans for today’s Cabinet to be the one that signed off the Brexit deal and there are signs (see earlier blog) that the decisive Cabinet might not be far off. So, for your interest, here’s are some proposals drafted by a Comms official in Whitehall on how the plan, if and when it lands, should be sold.…
Today’s Cabinet had a better atmosphere for the PM than the last one -according to one who was around the table. One minister said it felt like the penultimate Cabinet before the deal is put before ministers for sign off. “That [scenario] wouldn’t surprise me at all,” the Minister said. The Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox,…
Rumours are swirling about how close, or not, we are to a Brexit deal. Theresa May called the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar this morning to discuss how the backstop solution to the Northern Ireland border would work.
Politics: Where Next? is the podcast where we talk about where politics is going, with people who might have some idea. In the week of the Budget, I talk about the politics of ‘Tax and Spend’ with two former Treasury advisers who between them worked on dozens of fiscal events. Rupert Harrison, who was formerly…
The highly addictive machines can lose gamblers hundred of pounds in minutes. But the proposed reduction in the highest stake was delayed for a year.
A giveaway for some and a promise that austerity is finally coming to an end. Philip Hammond produced his final scheduled budget before Brexit with a flourish of income tax cuts for millions of workers and a series of one-off pledges for the “little extras”.
Theresa May went into this evening’s meeting of Conservative backbenchers knowing that some of them want her out of her job, and with the added pressure of a damning report into her own government’s readiness for Brexit. At least forty of them are threatening to vote against her Brexit deal if and when it’s agreed, if it keeps Britain…