Politics

Why isn’t Ed Miliband at the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference? Ed Balls tried to defend his boss this morning as he arrived at the event, saying it was ‘getting a bit trivial’ to ask who was attending which conference. The Shadow Chancellor said: ‘Ed Miliband has spoken at this conference a number of times… They’ve got me and Chuka Umunna and this has been tabled and agreed for months and months and months. We’re setting out Labour’s position. As I said it’s the position of me and Ed and Chuka and the whole of the Labour party. Ed has spoken at the conference many times before.’ To be

As part of David Cameron’s efforts not to appear as the leader of the party of the posh, the Prime Minister is rarely seen in black tie. Last night’s Black & White Ball was no exception, with guests told to dress in ‘winter cool’ for the lavish Grosvenor House bash. Mr S isn’t sure what ‘winter cool’ looks like but judging from the number of scantily clad women in attendance it doesn’t involve very much material. While Cameron opted for a lounge suit, one man who definitely stood out in his smart attire was Peter Stringfellow. During an interview on the Daily Politics, the 74-year-old strip club owner defended his decision to wear black tie to the ball.

With the Tory’s Black & White Tie Ball to prepare for yesterday, it’s understandable that the brains at Conservative HQ may not have been 100 per cent focussed. This could explain why an error on the website appeared to reveal the party’s non-target seats for the election. Images of the varying candidates on the Conservative website showed in the url if they were listed as a ‘non target candidate’. Memo to Conservatives: including “Non%20target%20candidates” in URLs is a bit of a giveaway https://t.co/QGy7v7aphm pic.twitter.com/M6WCraLDVn — Phil Rodgers (@PhilRodgers) February 9, 2015 Included in the list of non-target seats were South Thanet, Boston and Skegness, and Rochester and Strood. If this is the case, it would mean the Conservatives are not

After being told by the Tories that he has ‘questions to answer’ on the BBC story about HSBC, Ed Balls has decided to tell the Tories that they have ‘questions to answer’ on the story too. The Speaker has just granted Shabana Mahmood an urgent question in the Commons demanding that the Chancellor answer Labour’s questions about the story. The Shadow Chancellor said that ‘there are very serious questions for George Osborne and David Cameron to answer today’. His questions are why has there only been one prosecution out of 1,100 individual implicated in allegations about tax evasion and why Stephen Green, former Chairman of HSBC, was appointed a minister

Boris Johnson’s campaign to woo Tory MPs is continuing as the General Election approaches. I hear that he held another one of his suppers for colleagues at his home in the last fortnight, and that the MPs who did attend were seriously impressed. One says: ‘It was a really uplifting experience. I feel very conflicted between him and Theresa [May] as potential leaders.’ Another described the evening as ‘great fun, relaxed. He arrived with a rucksack clanking with booze and we had a takeaway curry and shot the breeze. No heavy canvassing.’ Number 10 is allowing these dinners, which involve a mix of MPs loyal to Cameron and rebels, to

It was his contempt for nuns that got shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt into trouble on last week’s Question Time, but there was another notable line worth revisiting. A tetchy Hunt hit back at an audience member who accused him of failing to understand the needs of small business owners, struggling to pay their bills: ‘My wife runs a small business, so I know about the challenges facing small business in my family, so don’t give a lecture on that.’ Now that Hunt has brought his wife into the debate, Mr S wondered how tough life has been for Mrs Hunt, the small business owner. Juliet Thornback is a designer of upmarket homeware. Her company,