Politics

John McDonnell has tried to explain why he U-turned on the fiscal charter this afternoon, saying that he has only ‘changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics’, not the principles of the matter. He told Sky News: ‘I have changed my mind, but I haven’t changed my mind on the principles of what the charter is standing for which is we need to tackle the deficit and we will tackle the deficit. Labour will tackle the deficit – we are not deficit deniers, I haven’t changed my mind on that. ‘But I have changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics. Originally what I said to people was look that charter

Whenever the Parliamentary Labour Party meets, journalists gather outside the room in the hope that those leaving the meeting will reveal what went or that the argument will get so heated that they will be able to hear what is going on behind closed doors. Those of my colleagues who turned up to tonight’s PLP meeting were very much in luck. George Eaton reports that Ben Bradshaw, the former culture secretary, left declaring the meeting ‘a total f*** shambles’ and that Emily Thornberry could be heard loudly upbraiding MPs for texting journalists about what was going on inside this supposedly private meeting. So, why was his meeting so rowdy? Well,

At this year’s Tory conference Jeremy Hunt defended the government’s tax credit cuts, claiming they would make the British people work as hard as the Chinese. While Hunt has since claimed that his comments were misinterpreted, tonight Labour’s Helen Goodman hit out at the Health Secretary for the comments. She says if things are so great in China then why did Hunt’s wife Lucia — who is from Xi’an, China — move to Britain: Given that the personal dig hardly fits in with Jeremy Corbyn’s promise of ‘a new kind of politics’, Labour supporters have been quick to call on Goodman to apologise. Speaking on Westminster Hour this evening, Lady Basildon — the Labour

Geoffrey Howe, the former Conservative chancellor, has died aged 88. Lord Howe was Margaret Thatcher’s longest serving cabinet minister and chancellor from 1979 to 1983. The following profile of him, titled ‘Sir Geoffrey Howe: An advocate who believes’ appeared in The Spectator on 20 July 1973, soon after he had reached the Cabinet. When Sir Geoffrey Howe, said to be the most brilliant man in the Cabinet, appears at the dispatch box or on television, his eyes look through his owlish spectacles not out but down, and he talks rapidly in a cultured undertone, more or less in the same hurried, dedicated way he smokes cigarettes — constantly. Slightly over-plump, he

In Mhairi Black’s maiden speech in the House of Commons, the young SNP MP voiced her opposition to the Tories by criticising George Osborne over his party’s housing policy. However, despite calling the Conservatives ‘a really dangerous party’ in an interview with the Guardian, it appears Black has at least softened in her approach to some members of the party. The SNP MP says that she has a lot of time for Jacob Rees-Mogg, adding that she could listen to the eurosceptic Tory MP all day: ‘I could sit and listen to him all day, I disagree with him 99.9 per cent of the time, and that wee percent is just because he’s got good