Politics

When Conservative leaders come to address the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, they are required to stand outside Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons until the rest of the agenda is completed. When Conservative leaders come to address the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, they are required to stand outside Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons until the rest of the agenda is completed. Only then are they summoned in. David Cameron likens the experience to ‘waiting outside the headmaster’s study’. But it is worse than that — as he waits, half a dozen journalists watch his every move. If he perspires, it’s on Twitter. Cameron

One of the first things David Cameron will tell Barack Obama when they meet during the American President’s state visit to Britain next week is that hundreds of British soldiers are going to be withdrawn from Afghanistan this summer. Of the 10,000 British troops currently based in southern Afghanistan, around 450 are to be brought home, with the promise of more to follow, as Mr Cameron cashes in the peace dividend he believes will accrue following the welcome demise of the world’s most infamous terrorist. Huzzah, I hear you cry. And about time too. Never understood what we were doing there in the first place. What’s the point of our

A beginner’s guide to investing in commodities The arrival on the London Stock Exchange of the Swiss-based mining and commodities behemoth Glencore, valued at £40 billion, has provided a rare insight into the mysteries of the natural resources world. This remains a relatively little understood sector even though the first commodities trades can be traced back to biblical times (there are whole Talmudic tractates on the subject) and the modern world of trading financial futures owes its origins to pork- belly and corn trading at the Chicago Board of Trade. What we have learned from Glencore’s initial public offering is that many transactions in physical commodities, natural resources and precious

What do the public think of Ken Clarke after his gaffe on Wednesday? According to a YouGov poll conducted during the 48 hours since his comments, a slim pluarlity think he should resign from his post as justice secretary: Perhaps unsurpisingly, the majority of Labour supporters agree with their leader’s call for him to go, although a majority of Tories and two-thirds of Lib Dems think he ought to stay. When it comes to the issue at the centre of the furore – reducing the sentence for someone who pleads guilty by up to half (as opposed to a third, as it stands now) – the public is much more

‘Brown makes pitch for IMF job with plea to rich nations to meet education pledges’ reads the headline on page 3 of The Guardian today. This is all part of a growing body of evidence that Gordon Brown really does think he is in with a chance of succeeding Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Certainly, the usual suspects are out and about talking up his chances. Realistically, Brown is not going to get the job. But if Brown really does want to have a go, it is bizarre that he’s not tried to contact either David Cameron or George Osborne to reassure them about how he’d behave if he got the job; Danny

As the weekend drifts closer, there is a case that Ed Miliband has just enjoyed his best week as Labour leader. Not really from anything he has done — although his PMQs performance had more vigour than usual — but thanks to the backwash from the Ken Clarke calamity. MiliE’s spinners could barely have dreamed, even a few days ago, that their man would gain the the fiery approval of The Sun on matters of law and order. But that is effectively what they gained yesterday. “Labour is now tougher on crime,” bellowed the paper’s leader column, “than our Tory-led government.” Even today their editorial laments, “so much for David

The personal and the political. They mesh to readable effect in David Laws’ interview with the Times (£) this morning, his first since resigning from government last year. There are the observations about his personal life, about why he concealed his sexuality and the relief of having it out in the open. And there are the political ramifications that tumble on from that. We know that Laws came close to standing down as an MP when the scandal over his expenses first emerged, but here it is revealed that, “he would have quit as an MP last week had the commissioner rejected his explanation that his Commons claims were to

It is hard to overstate the fury with Ken Clarke in the Cameroon circle today. One well-informed Tory source just told me, ‘they [Cameron and Osborne] just can’t wait to see the back of him’ before pondering whether Clarke was now just too old for frontline politics. Another bemoaned that Clarke had managed both to deepen the party’s problems with women and further undermine its reputation as the party of law and order. While one more couldn’t believe how on a day when unemployment fell, two men were charged with the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the Queen and PM were marking a new era in Anglo-Irish relations, the coalition