By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter Our Parliamentarians are back in town — and, boy, don’t we know it. There have been two rather cranky, yet noteworthy, Q&A sessions in the Commons today. The first featured Michael Gove, and can be watched in its entirety here. The Education Secretary repeated the main points from his Today […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter It may not normally be part of your diet, but the latest issue of the New Statesman contains some tasty morsels for the political glutton. There’s a useful analysis of the Miliband and Balls axis by Rafael Behr; a flat-out brilliant article about political cartooning by Helen Lewis; and an […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter As a former broadsheet Comment editor, I over-estimate the importance of comment pages, both on paper and online. Since the blogs, such as this one, now compete with them, fewer people read them – especially since the rise of the paywall. Then there's TV. Then there's Twitter. Then there's […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter ConservativeHome doesn't run full-scale obituaries (yet). But it does offer a means of publishing a brief appreciation of a former Conservative Parliamentarian who has died. So it is in the case of my predecessor as MP for Wycombe, Sir Ray Whitney. Margaret Thatcher's army had generals, such as Nigel […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. The People's Pledge campaign group, which argues in favour of a European referendum, has just announced the result of two referendums it held in the Greater Manchester constituencies of Cheadle and Hazel Grove, voting for which closed at 5pm today. The two Lib Dem seats, which would be Conservative […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter ConservativeHome understands that, despite earlier reports, the date for the Corby by-election is still not set in stone. At the moment, there are two options. Here they are, with some of the considerations that will factor in the choice: 15 November This is the date that has been mentioned […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Lord Ashcroft's latest megapoll found that 10% of the people who supported the Conservative Party at the last election are now supporting UKIP (see item three). Peter Kellner has warned that the rise of UKIP could cost the Tories the next election. If Nigel Farage wins 2,000 to 3,000 unhappy […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter The Politics.co.uk website has named Nadine Dorries MP as the best MP on Twitter. The website's Ian Dunt recommends following the Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire for representing the Tory right and for her general outspoken-ness. He also commends her humanity: "There is a disarmingly charming side, where Dorries offers […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter On the margins of last night's Lords vote there were a couple of unpleasant incidents and stories are doing the rounds that aren't 100% accurate. One allegation is that four junior whips confronted Jesse Norman in a very aggressive manner and told him to leave the parliamentary estate. Norman, […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter I'm sorry not to be able at this stage to give summary of speeches during yesterday's first day of debate on the Lords Reform Bill, and sorry again if I've missed anyone out in the wake of my whirlwind reading of Hansard this morning. But even if I have […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Another move on the Lords Bill chess board this evening, as speeches on the measure continue in the Commons. Jesse "Captain Sensible" Norman has released a letter from Lord Pannick asserting that "the Bill does not adequately address the central issue of constitutional concern: the fact that a House […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. Since the interview with a recently-departed senior Nick Clegg aide, Richard Reeves, in this morning's newspapers, which intimated there would be consequences for the Government's boundary review if backbench Tories vote against stopping debate on Lords reform, a number of Tory MPs have appeared in the media to express their […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. 2.30pm Steve Baker MP has called for Bob Diamond, the Barclays CEO, to resign: "Yes I do think Bob Diamond should resign, and I think more than that – the various authorities should be looking extremely carefully at whether any offences have been committed." 2pm David Cameron appeared on […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. 5.45pm Update: Expanding upon his earlier remarks, Jesse Norman appeared on The World At One, and described the reform proposals as "a constitutional monstrosity", saying the Bill "should never have reached the House of Commons": "Unfortunately the Conservative manifesto didn’t contain anything like the commitment that everyone’s pretending it […]
By Harry PhibbsFollow Harry on Twitter The death of the Conservative peer Lord Maples has been announced. Before standing down as an MP in 2010, John Maples was a Treasury minister in John Major's government and went on to be Shadow Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2000 during William Hague's leadership. David Cameron appointed him Conservative […]