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The way to think about the Tory leadership contest is—I say in The Sun, this morning—that it is like a tournament with two sides of the draw, with each side sending one candidate into the final, membership round. One side of the draw is for full-on Brexiteers. Here Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom, Steve
After three long years, she’s finally gone. The Prime Minister decided to face the music on the steps of Downing Street yesterday, her voice audibly cracking with emotion as she announced the date of her resignation on 7 June, while her husband Philip May and her Downing Street staff watched sadly on. May’s departure should
The politics professor Matthew Goodwin made an interesting observation on Twitter this week. He pointed out that many of the characteristics of the ‘paranoid style’ in American politics — a phrase coined by Richard Hofstadter to describe right-wing populists such as Barry Goldwater — apply to left-wing anti-Brexit campaigners. They are convinced that the 2016
The Tory leadership has two stages: MPs will choose two finalists from what might be more than a dozen candidates, a process that should take about ten days. Then the final two will embark on a five-week campaign to win over the 125,000 Conservative Party members. If Boris Johnson makes it into the second stage, it
The mother of a little girl in my son’s year at school recently committed suicide. On the surface she was a radiant person, smiling and full of light. Devoted to her daughter, successful at work, always good for a laugh at the school gates. No one — save those loved ones who knew her private
Almost everyone agrees it is a pity that so few pupils from ‘disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds’ get into Oxford. But no one has successfully proved that it is Oxford’s fault that they do not. (I went to Cambridge, by the way, so I do not have a dog in this fight, except that I imagine the
Looking back on Narendra Modi’s first five years in office as India’s Prime Minister, it’s hard to find good news. Record-high joblessness, a stagnating economy, and continued widespread government corruption. With any other person, this would spell electoral defeat, but not for Modi. This week, the 68 year-old leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Labour’s constructive ambiguity on Brexit has served it well since the 2017 election. But as the country votes in European elections this week, has the party miscalculated in being too ambiguous? Nick Cohen writes in this week’s cover article that Labour should have positioned itself as the party of Remain, and now it faces being
The door of Number 10 had barely closed after Theresa May’s resignation statement this morning when Tory MPs began debating who would be the best person to replace her. Brexiteer and ERG deputy chairman Steve Baker certainly wasted no time today, but revealed that the candidate he was really thinking about was… Steve Baker. Asked by
After Theresa May announced that she will step down on Friday 7 June as the leader of the Conservative party, the race to find her successor is due to officially commence the following Monday. Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis, along with the vice-chairs of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, have issued a joint statement
Theresa May has been forced from office by her own MPs because they concluded there would be no progress on delivering Brexit, or on anything important, while she remained their leader. But if they thought her government was characterised by factionalism and chaos, they ain’t seen nothing yet. Because the big facts of her failed
A few months before he died in 2007, Bill Deedes asked if I would come to see him at his home in Kent and bring Boris Johnson along with me. I was writing a biography of Bill at the time, and I knew he was miserable because he had broken his hip and could no
Pretty much all the bad things that people are saying today about Theresa May are true. She’s bad at politics, bad at communicating, bad at dealing with colleagues. She created the conditions that made her job as prime minister handling Brexit almost impossible. Her ‘red lines’ in the autumn of 2016 gave Britain almost no
Now that Theresa May has officially announced she is resigning as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, the various leadership contenders hoping to take her place will be furiously canvassing their colleagues and stepping up their campaigns. But who are the favourites to succeed her so far? According to the betting exchange $Markets,
It is official. Theresa May will resign as Tory party leader on 7 June and will continue as caretaker prime minister for a few short weeks. An emotional moment, possibly for much of the nation, certainly for her: she gulped and her eyes became tearful at the close. Her three years in office have been
One of the aims of Theresa May’s resignation statement was to try and shape the Brexit debate in the Tory party ahead of the forthcoming leadership contest. Her decision to emphasise the need to find consensus in parliament was a clear pop at those such as Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom
After a tumultuous premiership, Theresa May has finally announced her resignation. She will step down as leader of the Conservative Party on June 7. Here is how Tory MPs have been reacting: Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, seen as a Brexiteer favourite, tweeted: Dignified as ever, @theresa_may showed her integrity. She remains a dedicated public
Ever since I first stepped through the door behind me as Prime Minister, I have striven to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few, but for everyone. And to honour the result of the EU referendum. Back in 2016, we gave the British people a choice. Against all
Theresa May has become the latest Conservative prime minister to be brought down by party divisions on Europe. Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister gave a statement in which she confirmed that she will step down on June 7 to pave the way for a leadership contest to find her successor the following
Theresa May has announced that she will be stepping down as Prime Minister on 7 June. In a statement outside 10 Downing Street, May said that although it was a ‘deep regret’ that she had not been able to deliver Brexit, she had failed three times and: ‘So I am today announcing that I will
Theresa May isn’t leaving at a time of her choosing, nor has she been able to focus on the domestic policies she listed in her inaugural speech on the steps of Downing Street. But today, as she announced she was resigning, she still tried to set out what she believed was her legacy in tackling
You won’t find a more committed and passionate opponent of president Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. than Nancy Pelosi (witness yesterday’s blowup at the White House, in which the president walked out of a meeting on infrastructure over Pelosi’s earlier comments about a Trump-ordered coverup). The two-time Speaker of the House and long-time politician
The Daily Telegraph this week has a ‘scoop’ about the UK government giving permission for the Mueller inquiry to talk to former MI6 officer Christopher Steele about his evidence, which said Donald Trump was compromised by the Kremlin. The Telegraph story certainly sets the mood for President Trump’s state visit to Britain in eleven days’
Put 10th June in your diary. Because that is when the contest to elect a new Tory leader, and therefore a new prime minister, will begin, I am told. Why am I confident of that? Well it is the last possible date for the contest that the shop stewards for Tory MPs, the executive for the
Brexit may yet kill the Conservative party but it is exacting a cruel psychological torture on liberalism. Liberals are supposed to be the measured voice of reason – earnest, insufferable but reliably level-headed. Not anymore. Liberals – or at least some of them – have gone quite mad over Brexit. There is almost no intrigue they
In the end, Boris Johnson has proved to be Theresa May’s unassailable nemesis (if that’s not a tautology); he is the agent of her downfall. Which is not to say he will succeed her as Tory leader and prime minister. He may be the favourite to do so, but – as Sunder Katwala has pointed out –
On Friday, Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, will go and see Theresa May. It is expected that she’ll tell him and then the country the date of her departure as Tory leader. If May tries to hang on, Brady will have to open the sealed envelopes which reveal whether the ’22 executive
It would not normally be an act of great courage to vote Conservative in true-blue Sussex, but I feel I have to screw myself up to do so in the European elections this week, so great is the ill feeling here against the Tories for not achieving Brexit. Yet do it I will. In extenuation,
Natural death might be non-partisan, but that hasn’t stopped it being politicised by liberals and socialists alike. One writer recently calculated that, assuming birth and death rates in Britain stay steady, Remainers will be the majority in 2022. Now, sitting around watching the clock and waiting for the right kind of pensioners to pop off
In a UK first last year, doctors at University College London operated on two unborn babies with spina bifida, a birth defect characterised by a gap in the spinal cord which can cause paralysis of the legs and incontinence. Around 1,000 foetuses a year develop spina bifida in the UK; of these, 80 per cent or
The results of the European elections will be announced tonight. We will have an initial projection from the EU around 10pm and an overall outline of the UK result at 11pm. The specific results will be declared as the night rolls on, leading into tomorrow morning. Both the Conservatives and Labour are anticipating bad results,
The Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, in which she announced a ‘ten-point offer’ to parliament for a ‘new Brexit deal’ has gone down like the proverbial cold cup of sick with many Conservative MPs. The rage isn’t just confined to the 28 Brexiteer hold-outs who voted against the deal on 29 March either – so far, another 40
It is hard to exaggerate the level of shock caused by Scott Morrison’s Australian election victory. The re-election of the country’s Liberal party prime minister – and the defeat of left-wing Labor leader Bill Shorten – took the polls and plenty of Aussies by surprise. Earlier this year, Shorten told a bemused Arnold Schwarzenegger “I’m going to be the next
After the 1922 executive of Conservative backbenchers decided this evening to wait until Friday to speak to the Prime Minister about announcing an exit date, there had been a view that Theresa May was safe in her position – at least for 36 hours. That is now in doubt. Andrea Leadsom has tonight announced her