Politics

The mini Tory rebellion last night, 15 Tory MPs voted to allow couples to transfer their personal tax allowance, has further strained relations between the whips office and some backbenchers. One complained to me earlier that the whips had been overly heavy-handed in their approach, describing their behaviour as ‘quite terrifying’. Now, these things are in the eye of the beholder and I suspect that the whips involved just thought they were doing their bit to maintain party discipline. One other thing worth noting is that even those unhappy with the behaviour of the whips are going out of their way to say that the chief whip Patrick McLoughlin is

The appointment of Christine Lagarde as head of the IMF is a diplomatic victory for George Osborne. The Chancellor was one of her earliest supporters, was the first to nominate her and hit the phones hard on her behalf. She will be a useful ally for Osborne in this position especially given how choppy the global economic waters remain. But the UK government also used the IMF nomination process to do some diplomatic horse-trading. The government made it clear that UK support for Lagarde was contingent on Paris agreeing that Britain should have to play no part in the coming bailout of Greece. There will be those who argue that

Michael Gove is tenacious. With strikes set to close one in four schools on Thursday, Gove has launched a direct assault on the left-wing teaching unions. In a consultation published today, Gove has announced that exceptional graduates in maths and science will be paid bursaries of up to £20,000 to undertake teaching training. He also indicates that responsibility for teacher training will shift from universities to schools; teachers will predominantly learn on the job, as they do under the successful Teach First scheme. Also, ministers will attempt to close failing training courses, which they see as the cause of extraordinary levels of wastage. According to the Telegraph, 10 per cent

Further to Daniel’s piece about declining immigration in Europe, it is worth highlighting this passage from Iain Martin’s column in the Mail: ‘But once in Downing Street, Cameron was confronted by research from his personal pollster, Andrew Cooper, which confirmed the true extent of public concern about high levels of immigration. Ironically, Cooper was one of the very modernisers in the Tory Party who did not want Cameron to be tainted — as he saw it — by being seen as tough on immigration in the run-up to the election. But now he has changed his tune — and taken the Prime Minister along with him. In fact, Cooper has

Sayeeda Warsi’s upbraiding of Pakistan for not living up to Jinnah’s ideals is another sign of how the government believes Baroness Warsi to be uniquely able to speak to Britain’s most difficult ‘ally’. David Cameron and his circle were thoroughly impressed by how Warsi managed to cool tempers in Islamabad following the Prime Minister’s criticism of Pakistan, in of all places India, for facing both ways in the war on terror and have been using her since to speak to the country’s leadership. Given that the Tory high command does not believe Warsi to be suited to being an election-campaign party chairman or to running a department, this raises the