Politics

Priti Patel is on her way back to Britain to face the music following her strange holiday-cum-lobbying operation in Israel. Yesterday it emerged that the International Development Secretary had not told Number 10 that she had suggested giving humanitarian aid to the Israeli army in the Golan Heights. It has been so heavily briefed that she is expected to be sacked that there is little chance that the minister will get away with just another reminder of her responsibilities. But there’s an awkward extra element for Number 10 this morning, which is the claim reported in the Jewish Chronicle that the British government did in fact know about Patel’s meeting

As Gordon Brown’s new memoir, My Life, Our Times, sends mild ripples across the political play pool, the rest of the country tends to its own business. But there’s an episode from Brown’s turbulent spell as Prime Minister that merits revisiting: ‘Bigotgate’. Not only was it the moment that perhaps secured Labour’s dramatic fall from power but Brown’s finessing of what happened has worrying signs for politicians’ private frankness. You remember it well: while pressing the flesh in Rochdale as part of the 2010 election campaign, Brown found himself in conversation with a lifelong Labour voter. For a savvy politician, this was a golden opportunity to play the crowd and

Priti Patel could well follow Michael Fallon in making a departure from the Cabinet today. If she does leave, she’ll be the second minister to go in the space of only a week. So, is this bad luck on the part of the government? Not so, says the FT. The paper says this is a ‘symptom of a deeper malaise’ and ‘two domestic incidents have highlighted the sense of drift’ at the heart of the government. Boris Johnson’s blunder in suggesting an imprisoned British-Iranian citizen was ‘teaching people journalism’ is typical of his ‘blasé attitude’. The FT goes further though, saying that Boris ‘may be the least distinguished figure to

As Prime Minister, you get something of a pass on those Cabinet members that you inherit from your predecessor. So, Michael Fallon’s resignation as Defence Secretary was not a devastating blow to Theresa May. After all, it was David Cameron who had first appointed Fallon to that job. But the responsibility for Damian Green’s presence in the Cabinet is Theresa May’s alone. Green is as close a political ally of hers as it is possible to be. He was heavily involved in her leadership campaign and on becoming Prime Minister, she immediately elevated him to the Cabinet. After the election disaster, she turned to him to shore up her position.

After former Met police assistant commissioner Bob Quick told the Sunday Times that ‘extreme’ pornography was found on Damian Green’s computer during a 2008 investigation into government leaks, Green issued a statement denying the accusation. Here it is: This story is completely untrue and comes from a tainted and untrustworthy source. I’ve been aware for some years that the discredited former Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick has tried to cause me political damage by leaking false information about the raid on my Parliamentary Office. No newspaper has printed this story due to the complete lack of any evidence. It is well-known that Quick, who was forced to apologise for alleging that

The latest competition called for a safe poem that Boris Johnson could have on hand to quote from when out in the field. The kerfuffle caused by the Foreign Secretary’s murmured quotation of a few lines from Kipling’s poem ‘Mandalay’ during a recent visit to Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar led me to wonder whether it might be wise, given an ever-increasing number of no-go areas subject matter-wise, to challenge you to fashion an all-purpose poem unlikely to offend. Barbara Jones’s Blakean-flavoured entry — ‘And did my feet in foreign clime/ Trample on sensitivities?’ — caught my attention, as did Tim Raikes’s patter song. But they were outflanked by the winners