Politics

While the G8 begins today with splits already clear on Syria, David Cameron will be aware, as he sits down for talks with world leaders, that the splits in his own Parliament are becoming increasingly vocal. It’s not just Boris Johnson’s column in today’s Telegraph in which the Mayor of London warns that ‘we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs’. Tory MPs have started openly discussing the lack of support for arming the rebels. Johnson’s intervention could be read by some as yet another attempt to undermine the PM who appears to be considering arming the rebels out of a deep personal conviction, given

David Cameron and Vladimir Putin have just concluded their pre G8 talks, the main topic of which was Syria. Cameron wants to use the next few days to try and persuade the Russians to stop backing Assad; the weapons they’ve been sending him have enabled him to gain the upper hand on the rebels militarily. Cameron instinctively wants to do something about the slaughter in the Levant for both strategic and moral reasons. As one figure intimately involved in British policy making on Syria told me earlier, ‘The one certainty is that, if nothing is done, not only will lives be lost, not only will Assad not negotiate, but we

The victory of Hassan Rouhani has stunned pundits, and it seems even Iranians can’t quite believe it. He is a moderate (if not, quite, a reformer) who defeated five conservatives. He was helped by the fact that other moderates had stood back to give him a clear run. His victory was massive – 51pc of the vote – and the Iranian authorities seem to have made no attempt to conceal it. There was no need for a second vote. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has congratulated the 64-year-old Glasgow-educated Rouhani:- “I urge everyone to help the president-elect and his colleagues in the government, as he is the president of the whole nation.”

David Cameron was pressed on Barack Obama’s decision to give assistance to the Syrian rebels when he spoke to journalists in the Downing Street garden this afternoon. He gave a long answer, the transcript of which you can read at the bottom of this post, along with the audio. But here are the key points on the Prime Minister’s current thinking on Syria. 1. He agrees with the American stance. He told the press conference: ‘I think it is right that the Americans have said what they have said and I wanted to back that up with the information and the involvement that we’ve had in that assessment.’ That included

There was plenty for David Cameron to sing about at today’s PMQs when it came to the ONS’ latest labour market figures, and sing he did. He said: ‘First, it is worth announcing to the House what today’s unemployment figures show. They show that employment – the number of people in work in this country – is going up, that unemployment is going down, and that – I know the Labour party does not want to hear good news, but I think it is important that we hear it. The claimant count – the number of people claiming unemployment benefit – has fallen for the seventh month in a row.