Politics

Bids for the 2015/16 spending review will land on George Osborne’s desk today from Secretaries of State across Whitehall. Some, like Iain Duncan Smith and Patrick McLoughlin, are signed up to the idea that their departments need further cuts. McLoughlin, as a former chief whip, prefers to avoid conflict, while Duncan Smith has made it known for some time that he’d like a bit of conflict with the Lib Dems over his budget, with a number of cuts sitting ready on his desk if only Nick Clegg and colleagues backed down on their refusal to touch Work and Pensions spending again. As yesterday’s Telegraph interview showed, IDS is also frustrated

If UKIP thinks it is the victim of a smear campaign in the run-up to the local elections, then it needs to have a little think about whether the chief smearers hail from UKIP HQ itself, or CCHQ, as Paul Nuttall claimed they did when he appeared on the Sunday Politics earlier today. This evening, one of its internal smearers took to the airwaves to remind voters of a few other interesting aspects of the party’s character. Godfrey Bloom, the party’s MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, gave John Pienaar an interview on his show this evening in which he reiterated his belief that businesses shouldn’t employ women of a

‘Arthur Negus’ — Tony Bray — is the only one of Margaret Thatcher’s early loves still alive, though sadly he is now in poor health. Once I had tracked him down, I found him happy to speak about those distant days at the end of the war when he danced with the future prime minister. But he was extremely anxious — 60 years later — that his wife (who is now dead) should not know of my inquiries. ‘If you ring up, please say nothing of your purpose,’ he said, ‘and if you write, please don’t do so in a Daily Telegraph envelope.’ When he married his wife, a couple of years

Britain’s very own EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, Cathy Ashton, has not had a terribly good press after a report from the European Parliament said her department had too many decision-making layers, is top heavy and is indecisive in response to crises. It didn’t help that she was looking for a four per cent increase in her department’s budget, amounting to £18 million for next year. Which is why she will be doing everything possible to make the most of her one diplomatic triumph last weekend, a deal between Kosovo and Serbia. Implementation talks started yesterday. Indeed the one undoubted gainer from the Kosovo-Serbia deal initialled by Hashim Thaci, Kosovo

There was a startling late entry for the first volume of my biography of Margaret Thatcher. On the day after she died, I received an email from Haden Blatch. Mr Blatch’s father, Bertie, was the chairman of the Finchley Conservative Association when it selected her in 1958. I had asked Haden for information before, but he had not got round to it. Now he revealed that his father had come home from the Finchley selection meeting and explained that Mrs Thatcher had not really won the vote. Her rival, Thomas Langton, had just pipped her. Blatch senior, however, was very keen on Mrs Thatcher, and thought that Langton, who ‘was born

David Cameron and the Tory party appear to be emerging from a period of marriage counselling that has gone particularly well. The leader is making more of an effort with his backbenchers generally (James examines this in his column tomorrow), and tomorrow’s papers bring yet more news of reconciliation. The Prime Minister is beefing up his political policy operation by appointing a panel of bright and impressive MPs to help him, and promoting Jo Johnson to be his head of policy and a Cabinet Office minister. Those MPs aren’t just impressive, though: some of them, including Jesse Norman and George Eustice, are also rebels. This is a big gesture to