Politics

I have not asked anyone out on a date for over 35 years. In fact, the last time I did invite anyone out was, like most of my attempts, excruciatingly bad. It involved a bubbly and charismatic blonde who told me to get lost. Now, as a Conservative MP, I find myself being teased by another bubbly blonde: Boris Johnson. I can’t understand why he is toying with me. Why won’t he accept my party’s offer of a safe seat? Like a desperate suitor, it has given him plenty of options, from a welcoming spot in Hampshire to a more familiar haunt in Kensington. I can’t believe it’s work that’s

As expected, the High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill 2013-14 has passed its second reading in the House of Commons by 452 votes to 41. Cheryl Gillan’s amendment calling on the House to decline to give the legislation its second reading failed 451 votes to 50. The breakdown of who voted (and, more interestingly in this vote when some ministers have opted for a disappearing act, who didn’t vote) will take a little while to come through. What will prevent ministerial resignations will be how the Bill progresses in the Committee stage, which will chug slower than a toy steam train. David Lidington wants further mitigation for his constituents,

Despite a week of rather bruising media coverage, Ukip has moved into first place for next month’s European elections. For the second time this year, Nigel Farage’s party has overtaken Labour. According to poll by YouGov for the Sunday Times, just three points currently separate Labour and Ukip — still touching the margin of error: [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/aVjwf/index.html”] Although Labour and Ukip may continue to swap places over the next few weeks, today’s poll also suggests Ukip voters are more likely to turn out on polling day. When asked from 0 to 10 the likelihood of turning out on polling day, 48 per cent said they definitely would — 34 per

At the start of the year, some of the air seemed to have gone out of the Ukip balloon. The party’s warnings about the scale of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration to Britain hadn’t been borne out by events. But the debates with Nick Clegg enabled Nigel Farage to get his momentum back. In those debates, Clegg was too passive in the first one and then over-compensated in the second with the result that he ended up losing both of them. Clegg’s decision to not engage with Farage in the first debate meant that he missed his best chance to get under the Ukip leader’s skin. Strikingly, Farage admits to Decca

First the godly, then the godless, then the godly again. The public debate about whether Britain is indeed a Christian country, which the Prime Minister kicked off with his article in the Church Times saying that Britain should be evangelical about its Christianity, took legs when fifty-odd self-important atheists took issue with his remarks in a letter in the Telegraph and now the debate has a new spin after a group of academic philosophers wrote to the same paper (lucky letters editor) to contradict the atheists. “In important ways Britain remains a Christian country, as the Prime Minister has rightly claimed”, they wrote. “The establishment of the Church of England enshrines