Politics

Last week I chided those in SW1 who were criticising David Cameron for appointing yet more Old Etonians to his staff without first checking their own teams for signs of blue blood. Now news reaches me that Downing Street has not done much to counter the original charge. Etonian stereotypes were alive and well during Jo Johnson’s first meeting with the government’s special advisers. A humble state educated aide could not help but notice that all the OEs gravitated to one side of the table. ‘Jo Jo’ was joined by Cameron’s chief-of-staff Ed Llewellyn. And when Rupert Harrison, the chancellor’s brain, entered the room, he was drawn to the ‘right side’. It

The government’s decision to delay signing off the Royal Charter for press regulation was initially heralded as a dramatic change of heart, before being re-sold by those involved in the process as just a box-ticking exercise to avoid legal action. Either way, there is a growing noise not just about the rival charters now on offer, but also about the way the government’s deal was brought before parliament. Shami Chakrabarti’s disquiet over the proposals was widely picked up at the weekend. But there is also a growing unease in the Conservative party about the way Parliament voted on the legislative aspects of the new plan at such short notice. ‘We

The dust is settling from the County Council elections and, crucially, the Tory party seems to have stayed steady. Yes, David Davis has had a pop at the number of Old Etonians surrounding the PM and 20 MPs have called for a mandate referendum. But there is no sense of mass panic or revolt. Partly this is because David Cameron had already started doing the things he was going to be told to do after this result. As one Downing Street source remarks, ‘the shift is already well under way.’ He points to the tougher measures on immigration and welfare coming up in the Queen’s Speech and Number 10’s new

To the relief of Conservative Campaign Headquarters, relatively few Tory MPs have taken the opportunity of the County Council election results to sound off. The most prominent exception to this rule is David Davis. Now, a DD intervention doesn’t have quite the same purchase as it used to—he’s made rather too many of them in recent years. But his comments are revealing of the huge amounts of class tension inside the Tory parliamentary party. He complains that the rebellions of Jesse Norman and Nadine Dorries have been treated differently because one went to Eton and one to state school. I suspect, though, that the actual explanation is that Dorries crafted

335: total councillors lost by the Tories 291: seats gained by Labour 124: losses sustained by the Lib Dems 139: seats gained by UKIP 147 UKIP council seats after today’s results 10 councils lost by the Tories 2 councils gained by Labour 13 councils now in overall control, up 8 17: the largest gain by UKIP in any council, in Kent 24: the most councillors gained by Labour in one local authority, in Durham 6,505: Emma Lewell-Buck’s majority as the new Labour MP for South Shields, down from 11,109 achieved by David Miliband in 2010