Conservative party

It’s said that Ken Clarke would cross a motorway to pick a fight with a political opponent. His aggression is one reason why he thrived (eventually) under Mrs Thatcher: ambulance drivers, teaching unions and local government were all given a bunch of fives when Clarke reached Cabinet in the late ‘80s. Chris Patten (in the course of saying that he would go into the jungle with Clarke) told the late Hugo Young that ‘the key to Clarke is that he is anti-establishment – any establishment’. Yet pugilism is but one side of Clarke. He is not, by temperament or conviction, an ideologue. What matters is what works. And it worked

It is easy to make a case for why all three main parties should do badly at the next election. After five years of austerity, who will vote for the Tories who didn’t in 2010? And how will they stop those dissatisfied with the compromises of coalition from sloping off to Ukip? As for Labour, why would the public want to put them back in charge just five years after booting them out? This question has special force given that the Labour leadership is so identified with that failed belief that boom and bust had been ended. Then, there’s the Liberal Democrats—they’ve alienated their left-leaning supporters and lost their status

This is the full text of a speech delivered this week by Home Secretary Theresa May to the Reform think tank. We’re delivering more with less – so let’s have the courage of our convictions Thank you.  A year or two ago I appeared on ‘Question Time’, and before the filming Shirley Williams introduced me to somebody.  “This is Theresa May,” she said, “our first female Home Secretary.”  I pointed out to Shirley that Jacqui Smith was Home Secretary in 2007, three years before me.  So Shirley immediately looked at her friend and said, “This is Theresa May, our first tall female Home Secretary.” Thank you, Chris, for your more

Tories preparing the ground for David Cameron’s renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe are to take MPs from other parties with them as they visit European cities, Coffee House has learned. The Fresh Start Project, made up of Conservative MPs campaigning for reform of the European Union, has already visited Prague, Warsaw and Berlin to hold preliminary meetings setting out the need for change. Its next round of visits will include members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for European Reform, which is co-chaired by Fresh Start’s Andrea Leadsom and Labour’s Thomas Docherty. The Conservative MPs organising the visits think including other parties will help them secure more meetings and

Lurk around the Palace of Westminster today and you might hear a strange creaking noise. It’s not the Commons air conditioning, which has broken and is making appropriately eerie noises ahead of an urgent question on the Bilderberg meeting. No, that creaking sound is the Tory Whips’ Office finally limbering up to do something about wayward MPs. Sir George Young summoned backbencher Andrew Bridgen for an urgent meeting today after his letter of no confidence was leaked to the Mail on Sunday and he wrote an op-ed for the same paper saying ‘there is a credibility problem with the current leader’ and that the current situation was ‘like being in

Ed Balls has just told Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics that Labour will include pensions in their welfare cap. This opens up a major dividing line with the Tories who have been clear that George Osborne will exclude pensions from his spending cap. I suspect that Balls and Ed Miliband will now be badgered with questions about whether, if necessary, they’ll cut pensions — or not up-rate them — to meet the cap. Given the power of the grey vote in British politics (Labour estimates that one in every two voters in 2010 was over 55) they are going to come under massive pressure to rule this out. But,

GCHQ’s use of the US monitoring system Prism is threatening to turn into a major political row. Douglas Alexander is demanding that William Hague come to the House of Commons to explain what GCHQ was doing and what the legal basis for it was. But this controversy is going to have an effect on coalition relations too. It is going to intensify Liberal Democrat opposition to the measures included in the Communications Data Bill. This comes at a time when David Cameron has decided, as he made clear in the Commons on Monday, that the measures in it are needed. In the United States, the Obama administration is pushing back

Today must count as one of the most encouraging days for the centre right in British politics in recent times. Labour’s apparent abandonment of universal child benefit is a massive blow to the 1945 settlement. It is akin in significance to when Labour began to accept the privatisations of the Thatcher era. Now, there’s no intellectual difference between declaring that better off pensioners won’t receive winter fuel payments and that better off mothers won’t receive child benefit. But in symbolic terms, the difference is huge. The winter fuel payment is a recent addition to the welfare state, introduced by the last Labour government. It is not fundamental to it. By

I suspect that there’ll be a few MPs and peers nervously waiting for 9pm on Thursday night. For this is when the Panorama special on parliament and lobbying, which has already caused Patrick Mercer to resign the Tory whip, will be broadcast. Today’s Telegraph contains details of the accusations surrounding Mercer. The paper alleges that the MP has been paid £4,000 by a fake lobbying company set up by the Telegraph and the production company making Panorama. Mercer appears not to have declared this money. But he has asked a string of questions on Fiji; the paper claims that the company had told him that ending Fiji’s suspension from the

Patrick Mercer has resigned the Tory whip. But despite his repeated and outspoken criticisms of David Cameron it is nothing to do with the Prime Minister. Rather, Mercer appears to have been embarrassed by a Panorama/Daily Telegraph investigation. In a statement, Mercer has said that he is considering legal action over the coming programme which, he says, alleges he broke parliamentary rules but that ‘to save my Party embarrassment, I have resigned the Conservative Whip. I have decided not to stand at the General Election’. What remains to be seen is if Mercer quits the Commons before then which would prompt a by-election. Given Ukip’s strength at the moment, a

Hardly a day goes by these days without a story about Boris Johnson and the Tory leadership. Yesterday, it was Andy Coulson’s revelation that David Cameron believed Boris Johnson would be after his job once he’d been London Mayor. Today, it is The Economist talking about ‘Generation Boris’, the more libertarian inclined voters who the magazine suggests will sweep him to Downing Street in 2020. Now, for Cameron having as his main leadership rival someone who isn’t an MP is not actually that bad, however infuriating some in his circle might find the press and the party’s love affair with the London Mayor. What’s most striking about Boris, though, is