Politics

There was something inevitable about Milo Moire’s naked protest in response to the New Year’s Eve sex attacks in Cologne in the name of feminism. Moire stood in the square outside Cologne’s Cathedral, utterly clothesless except for a pair of red trainers. She held a placard that said ‘Respect us! We are not fair game even when we are naked!’ Moire is of course just another attention-craving narcissist, although in her defence it should be said that she does have an impressive pair of (fake?) breasts. According to her Wikipedia entry, Moire places ‘herself at the interface of art and pornography’. Judging from her saucy Twitter account, I would say she tends

Jeremy Corbyn’s Today interview was a reasonably good stint for the leader after a bad week. He had clearly worked out better ways of talking about terrorism that make him sound reasonable – although he deliberately left in tell-tale references to what he thinks of the West. While he refused to say whether or not he would back a drone strike against the new British jihadi militant revealed in an Isis video last week, he also told the programme that France was no more responsible than any other Western government for terror attacks: ‘Of course the French government are not responsible for the attacks on the streets of Paris any

David Cameron has strong views about the family; often ones that ought to remain inside his head. He quite is keen on marriage and good parenting, but how to make this into a government policy? He offers some thoughts in his speech today. His words: ‘In the end, getting parenting and the early years right isn’t just about the hardest-to-reach families; it’s about everyone. We all have to work at it. And if you don’t have a strong support network – if you don’t know other mums or dads – having your first child can be enormously isolating… Of course [kids] don’t come with a manual, but is it right

In the past the Conservative party has been accused of not being in tune with the British public. Matters have not been helped by a number of ‘out of touch’ gaffes including David Cameron’s confession that he does not know the price of a loaf of bread because he prefers to use his £100 bread-maker. However, at least one Tory MP’s heart is in the right place. Adam Afriyie, the MP for Windsor, has today shared his views on why it’s time for driverless cars to come to Britain. Rather than the eco-benefits of the car-sharing options it could bring, Afriyie says Britain needs ‘driverless cars’ on the roads so everyone can ‘enjoy the benefits

Liam Fox’s new year party at the Carlton Club has become the traditional start to the Tory Party’s year. This year there were 11 Cabinet members including the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Business Secretary and Boris Johnson. I’d say that most of the Tory MPs there are ‘leavers’, who have this week been given permission to campaign freely against a ‘remain’ campaign expected to be led by the Prime Minister.  So in this way, the old Tory wars are about to start again. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today. This is not Eurosceptic vs Europhile. This will be a battle between Eurosceptics: the ones who think

Michael Dugher was sacked while his key ally and Labour deputy leader Tom Watson was out of the country, Coffee House has learned. Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle may have been limited, but it included a clear attempt to undermine alternative Shadow Cabinet powerbases, including the notion that Tom Watson can protect his allies on the frontbench. But Labour’s Deputy Leader was on holiday in Lanzarote when the reshuffle started, apparently unaware that there was going to be a reshuffle at the start of the week when Parliament was still in recess. I understand that he was told that Dugher would be sacked on Monday night. The Shadow Culture Secretary lost his

It’s safe to say this week hasn’t been the best for Labour. As well as a never-ending reshuffle saga, Corbyn was accused of ‘low-level non-violent misogyny’ over the lack of women in the top roles in his Shadow Cabinet by Labour MP Jess Phillips. So with the cabinet officially reshuffled, brains at Labour HQ decided it was time for a very special announcement: they had increased the number of women in their Shadow Cabinet by one! A press release entitled ‘NEWS FROM LABOUR: Following the reshuffle women now occupy 17 out of the 31 shadow cabinet positions’ was sent around which included the number of women in both the shadow cabinet

Funnily enough, after Ken Livingstone told the Daily Politics that the defence review that he is co-chairing with the new Labour Shadow Defence Secretary Emily Thornberry would consider whether Britain will leave Nato, the party has issued a statement shooting down the former Mayor’s suggestion: ‘The terms of the defence review are still to be agreed but will not look at our membership of Nato.’ Livingstone said the following to the BBC: ‘That’s one of the things we will look at. There will be many people wanting to do that. I don’t think it’s a particularly big issue because in the Cold War it was; it isn’t now. Russia is

After Diane Abbott falsely claimed that Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds was a former special adviser on last night’s Newsnight, Reynolds hit back by describing her as a ‘sell-out’. Now — just when it seemed Labour’s in-fighting couldn’t get much worse — Ken Livingstone has appeared on the Daily Politics to offer his take on the incident. Asked if Abbott was wrong to falsely claim that Reynolds used to be a spad, Livingstone wasn’t so sure. It turns out that the former Mayor of London doesn’t always think it is a bad thing to insult someone live on television with false information. Instead, the real problem here is of course Blairism: ‘Diane is responding to this wave of