All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Sajid Javid is the new Culture Secretary. Javid has impressed as a junior minister at the Treasury. He has learnt the political ropes fast despite only becoming an MP in 2010 and having done very little in politics before that. Javid’s appointment will please modernisers and the right alike. The right will be pleased that
As the two leading British political weeklies, the Spectator and the New Statesman, have for many years enjoyed a relationship of jocular antagonism. This amiable sort of rivalry can been maintained as their differences are over relatively trivial matters such as how the country should be run and the world ordered. But now they have come head to head
Why has Maria Miller finally decided to resign this morning? The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss in this mini-View from 22 podcast on what the resignation of the Culture Secretary means, the damage it has done to the Prime Minister and No.10 as well as what to look out for at
Who are the ministers who could replace Maria Miller? Some of the muttering over the past few days has been about the Prime Minister’s desire to keep women in the Cabinet, and Miller herself boasted of being the only mother in the Cabinet. [audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/2059892-maria-miller-on-her-resignation”]Maria Miller: Resigning is ‘the right thing to do’[/audioboo] There are
Listen: Fraser Nelson, James Forysth and Isabel Hardman discuss Miller’s resignation listen to ‘Podcast special: Maria Miller resigns’ on Audioboo Maria Miller has bowed to the inevitable and resigned. For days now, it has been clear that Miller’s Cabinet career was essentially over and the question was when, not if she went. By quitting this
[audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/2059892-maria-miller-on-her-resignation”]Maria Miller: Resigning is ‘the right thing to do’[/audioboo] Yet again, the Conservative Party has reminded us that it is quite capable of losing the next election. The Maria Miller episode is entirely consistent with a party that is so gauche, so addicted to self-harm that it can make Ed Miliband seem positively presidential
Listen: Fraser Nelson, James Forysth and Isabel Hardman discuss Miller’s resignation listen to ‘Podcast special: Maria Miller resigns’ on Audioboo In the past few minutes, Maria Miller has resigned. The issue wasn’t going to go away, thanks in no small part to the way that the Culture Secretary and Number 10 had handled the story.
Ed Miliband faces a big decision tonight, does he use PMQs tomorrow to call for Maria Miller’s resignation. So far, he has limited himself to saying that Cameron has questions to answer about how this whole business has been handled. But if Miliband went for it at PMQs, it would keep this story going for
It’s not often I would, in the fashion of the late Tony Benn, pass lightly over the personalities in a row in favour of discussing what he liked to call the ‘ishyoos’ but in the case of Maria Miller, it might do no harm. It does rather look, as Isabel Hardman has already intimated, that
Maria Miller’s PPS Mary Macleod seems to have been trying to emulate what Jeremy Hunt’s former aide Rob Wilson (now PPS to the Chancellor) did for his boss as Culture Secretary in trying to round up support for the minister. The problem is that while Wilson operated below the radar, with his work only surfacing
Day five into the Maria Miller debacle and the calls for her resignation keep on coming. As Isabel reported earlier, more MPs are starting to break cover. Many of the critical Tories are speaking to the press anonymously, but some have been more vocal, especially the younger MPs who sit in marginal seats – who
The Commons is in legislative limbo at the moment, waiting for the Queen’s Speech, which has just been delayed another day to 4 June. But one thing that could well keep MPs rather well occupied before then is the Immigration Bill, which suffered a defeat in the House of Lords last night – as predicted
Tory MPs now feel it’s acceptable to pile in on the Maria Miller row and offer their views. Mark Field has just told the World at One that her apology to the Commons was regarded as ‘unacceptably perfunctory’. listen to ‘Mark Field on the ‘toxic issue’ of MPs expenses’ on Audioboo
Senior 1922 Committee members are quite surprised by the suggestion that tomorrow’s end-of-term meeting with the Prime Minister represents the deadline for the Maria Miller problem to be resolved. But while you won’t find a Tory backbencher who thinks the impact on the public of this story is negligible – one tells me that ‘whatever
Mr Steerpike longs for the day that he has a bar named after him, so he went to doff his cap to Gerald Scarfe at Scarfe’s Bar last night. Cartoonist Scarfe has spent the last four months decorating the bar at the Rosewood Hotel in Holborn. Politicos or royal junkies will love it: Farage, Brown,
The head of the British Army has given the clearest sign yet that women will soon be given the right to fight on the front line in a combat role. General Sir Peter Wall, chief of the general staff has said that lifting the ban on women serving in combat units was ‘something we need
Poor Jeremy Browne. Sacked for believing in the government in which he served*. Then again, no-one claims politics, or life, is fair. So it is good to see Mr Browne taking his revenge. He has written a book and been speaking to the papers, telling the Telegraph that: “Our lack of self confidence and our willingness to
As backbenchers apparently gang up on Maria Miller, she’s seen Conservative and Lib Dem colleagues trying to defend her – and dampen down Esther McVey’s comments – on the airwaves this morning. Boris Johnson told the Today programme that he felt Miller was being hounded (although he didn’t give a view on whether she should
Esther McVey is known as a plain-speaking Tory. That ability to avoid mincing her words might propel her into the Cabinet one day – possibly as a replacement for Maria Miller, the way things are looking. But tonight her plain-speaking nature hasn’t been that helpful to her ministerial colleague. McVey has told ITV’s The Agenda:
Iain Duncan Smith’s speech today setting out the moral mission behind his welfare reforms (his series of interventions doing this was previewed in the Spectator at the start of this year) has attracted the usual criticism from Labour for having ‘nothing to say about the cost-of-living crisis’ and a programme ‘in complete disarray’. The opposition has
There are always all sorts of bizarre petitions calling on politicians to do this, that and the other. By and large, politicians tend to ignore them. But the petition calling for Maria Miller to pay back £45,000 in expenses claims or resign has managed to garner 70,131 signatures since it was set up on 4
The Prime Minister’s position on Maria Miller has shifted a little in the past few days – but only on the wider issue of self-regulation. At this afternoon’s lobby briefing, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘There are I’m sure a number of ways in which Parliament can consider this, I’m not going to try
The Maria Miller problem is not going away for the government. Tory MPs who went back to their constituencies over the weekend have come back to Westminster depressed about how big the issue is playing on the doorstep. There is fear that the whole story is playing straight into Nigel Farage’s hands. The 2010 intake
The funeral of Clarissa Dickson Wright: cook, television personality, countryside campaigner and, at the time, the youngest woman ever to be called to the Bar, was held in Edinburgh this afternoon. Best known for her eccentric and amusing Two Fat Ladies cookery programme with Jennifer Paterson, her life also encompassed law, alcoholism (and subsequent recovery),
Mark Wallace has a fascinating post on ConHome reporting that Andrew Bridgen has written to the Prime Minister withdrawing his letter calling for a leadership contest. Bridgen, if you remember, is the only MP to publicly confirm that he has written a letter to 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady calling for a contest, and while
Maria Miller is losing friends, fast. Furious briefing over the last 24 hours has seen a host of Tory MPs withdraw their support for the embattled Culture Secretary – and question the judgment of the Prime Minister. One ‘senior minister, speaking on condition of anonymity’, twisted the knife in the Telegraph: ‘In my view she has clearly behaved
While he was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, Tony Judt found the breath to educate those who believe they could ameliorate pain with soft words and bans on ‘inappropriate’ language. “You describe everyone as having the same chances when actually some people have more chances than others. And with this cheating language of equality deep
How do you solve a problem like revenge porn? It’s a strange new social evil. More and more men are getting back at women who dump them by posting sex videos and/or photos of them online, along with their name and contact details for all to see. It’s not just a nasty man thing, either
Readers of yesterday’s Mail on Sunday were treated to what appeared to be the perfect ‘Tory Sleaze!’ story. But appearances can deceive. Here’s what the Mail reported: ‘A Tory Minister is involved in an extraordinary row over claims that taxpayers’ money was used to fund gay sex parties. The politician is said to have been in
I know this because I have now sat through five series of One Born Every Minute (Channel 4) and three series of Lambing Live (BBC 2), and compounded it all with a weekend on a farm, watching teeming sheep deliver one, two, sometimes three lambs at a pop. Pop! Out tumbles the afterbirth. Shepherds let it trail. The lambs
The papers are trying to keep the momentum going in the Maria Miller row this morning, with a fresh angle in the Telegraph. Such is the seriousness of an adviser’s threat that a valid investigation into a politician’s expenses could restrict the freedom of the press, and such was the inflammatory nature of her non-apology apology
It’s unfashionable to talk about the battle for the centre ground these days. The fight to win political credibility is conducted through a new prism. Populists versus the establishment, centralisers versus decentralisers, radicals versus those in favour of shrinking the offer. But the fundamentals remain the same, and much of the hard-fought credibility that Tony
David Cameron’s plan to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the European Union has long been regarded as a major obstacle to a second Tory-Lib Dem coalition. But, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, this is no longer the case. The Lib Dem logic is essentially that any deal that other European leaders are prepared
Today’s newspapers do not make happy reading for Maria Miller – or David Cameron. After informing the press that it was ‘time to draw a line’ under Miller’s expenses, he ought to have known what to expect. The Sunday Times splashes with ‘MPs can’t be trusted on expenses’ while the Sunday Telegraph quotes an anonymous minister