Midway through his final cabinet meeting, David Cameron realised — with some horror — that it had turned into a political wake. Theresa May had just lavished praise upon him, and his eyes had moistened. Then it was George Osborne’s turn: the Chancellor was a bit more humorous, but no less affectionate: ‘Being English, David,
Home Theresa May became Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party when Andrea Leadsom withdrew her candidacy for election by party members. This came after a front-page report by the Times based on an interview with Mrs Leadsom in which she said: ‘I feel being a mum means you have a very real stake
I first met a boyish, sunny Tony Blair more than 20 years ago. Our encounters have always been slightly tense since I reported some clumsy remarks he made about tax when he was still an apprentice PM — and he reacted much as Andrea Leadsom did against the Times last week (though via A. Campbell
Tony Blair has excused himself for the Iraq war by saying that he did what he believed was right. But no one was suggesting that he had done what he believed was wrong. The charge was a matter of integrity: that he deceived Parliament and turned a blind eye to the evidence on weapons of
Nuggets on May Some trivia about Theresa May — At 59, she is the oldest new prime minister since Jim Callaghan, 64, in 1976. — She has the shortest surname of any prime minister since Andrew Bonar Law, who held the post for 211 days in 1923. — She is the first childless PM since
From ‘Terms of peace’, The Spectator, 15 July 1916: As the man in the street might say, ‘The Allies are not going to give the Germans a chance to come at us a second time. Never again! is our motto.’ And if this is the object of the war, it will also be the object of
Lurid about Leavers Sir: Matthew Parris has spent much of the past few months denigrating those of us who want to leave the EU, but his latest article (‘For the first time, I feel ashamed to be British’, 9 July) really does go too far. It is simply untrue to claim that the leaders of the
