“Why doesn’t the Prime Minister accept that his ability to command his Cabinet has simply disappeared?”
Plus: Cameron blew it. So did Hammond. And: My friendship with Tony Benn.
Wednesday’s events in the Commons have laid to rest the ghost of the Iraq War.
It would be pusillanimous not to join France in Syria for fear of an ISIS attack here. But Tory backbenchers should go into any vote with their eyes wide open.
A boost for Len Pen. A blow to Merkel. More Europe-wide security measures. No Commons vote on bombing Syria. And, more distantly, the end of free movement?
Plus: Osborne squeezes the rich till their pips squeak. Prime Minister Corbyn, and other fantasises. Stephen McPartland has balls of steel. And: No breast jokes here.
Pledges on this scale cannot be delivered in this Commons without Conservative consensus. They can only be charmed – not bullied – onto the statute book.
The number of rebels has risen; it is concentrated among post-2005 intake Tories, and in seats that are either marginal or were until recently.
Lansley was accused of having no mandate for his NHS bill. But however ambitious it may have been, it didn’t upend the entire medical profession – as this one does.
It’s time for a Parliamentary prerogative to replace the Royal prerogative.
The Strathclyde proposals are welcome and further change should be gradualist.