Conservative party

Of all the red warning signs for the Conservatives, the choice of the Brexit party’s candidate for the forthcoming Peterborough by-election is blinding as they come. Not only was Mike Greene a lifelong Conservative until a few weeks ago; he is a self-made man brought up in council house who has gone on to set up businesses and serve in several charitable roles such as trustee of Peterborough cathedral. If the Conservatives cannot attract and retain such a person as a member, then what is the point of them at all? They are either the party of self-reliance, of hard work, entrepreneurship and public service – or they might as

The Tories have lost over 1000 seats as both major parties were hit by a Brexit backlash in the local elections overnight. The Conservatives are down 1323 councillors, while Labour lost 77 representatives compared to 2015. Theresa May said voters had sent the ‘simple message’ that her party had to ‘get on’ with delivering Brexit. Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the results were a clear sign of voter dissatisfaction over Brexit: Labour’s council leader in Barnsley, Stephen Houghton, echoed McDonnell’s message: ‘We have been out and about across the borough and the message we are getting loud and clear is all about Brexit, and the residents are telling us they

When a political party is in trouble, we see infighting, leak inquiries, resignations, mass loss of council seats, dismissals and botched attempts to depose the leader. But when a party implodes, something different happens: it loses the ability to defend or explain itself. An imploding party can and will lose any argument, no matter how strong its track record. The Tories entered this terminal stage under John Major after the disastrous local elections of 1995, which were followed by their landslide defeat of 1997. With the party now having had its worst set of election since 1995, it looks very much like they might be entering it again. When John

The Tories have a debate on their hands about what direction they should go in. Do they return to the politics of the Cameron coalition? This delivered majority government, won over a greater percentage of AB (better off) voters, won more university towns, more professionals but fewer rural areas. Or should the Tories double down and become the Brexit party, moving towards what Nick Timothy says is the “National” party, with a rural, less affluent base led by someone like Boris Johnson? The choice is far from straightforward and there are five big considerations for the party to take into account on this issue before deciding which path to take:

Rory Stewart has just been appointed international development secretary. Last week, he explained to Katy Balls why he would make a good Prime Minister: Almost nobody in Westminster admits to wanting to be prime minister. Rory Stewart is a cheerful exception. Most leadership hopefuls prefer to plot in dark corners and woo supporters in candlelit bars. The Prisons Minister is happy to sit in the sun in Hyde Park and talk openly about his ambition. It’s a tricky time for this country, he says. ‘In a normal situation I probably wouldn’t want to run.’ One of his friends thinks he’s mad: what’s the matter with just being MP for Penrith

This afternoon the government announced the official launch date for its age-verification scheme for online pornography. As of 15th July, X-rated websites (or at least some of them) will have a three-month grace period to ensure that all UK visitors are over 18. If they fail to do so, the government will block them from UK servers entirely.   This so called ‘porn block’ has been in the works for some time. It’s been dogged by criticism, with everyone from online privacy campaigners (who fear the potential repercussions of creating a giant database of porn-viewers) to LGBT campaigners (who say it disproportionately affects minority groups) calling for it to be

‘Get some boomerangs,’ Liz Truss says to her aides. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury isn’t looking for something to throw — she is referring to the short videos on Instagram for which she is becoming famous. She has carved out a reputation in Tory circles for her love of social media, which she uses to poke fun at friends, rivals and herself while promoting her upbeat brand of liberal, free-market conservatism: what she calls ‘Tories with attitude’. If a battle is to be fought for the soul of the Tory party, it’s one she intends to join. Once described as a Cameron cutie, Truss has been on a journey

Pretty much everyone I meet says they want all the Brexit uncertainty to end, one way or another. But that is now impossible: even agreement – which seems remote – on some version of the PM’s deal to take us out of the EU would only be a beginning of a sort, not an end, with so much left to decide on what kind of future relationship we need and deserve with the EU. And if there is no backing from MPs for the Withdrawal Agreement that is the divorce from the EU, then we are into a series of choices whose consequences would be to lead to various forms

Theresa May has this evening found enough people to fill the various ministerial holes left in her government by the recent slew of resignations. Some of these holes have been gaping for rather a long time: there has been no Minister for Disabled People since 13 March, for instance. But their lack of replacements until now has excited very little attention, largely because it’s not clear what else the government aspires to do at the moment other than exist. The appointments announced this evening are as follows: Justin Tomlinson MP to be a Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions. James Cleverly MP to be a Parliamentary

Management books often repeat the dictum: ‘If there’s one thing worse than making mistakes, it’s not learning from them.’ So let’s apply that smug little idea to Brexit. Before I start, a couple of housekeeping points. I voted Remain, but believe we must leave the EU and honour the referendum result. Second, as a former Brexit minister, writing this is a form of therapy for me. Failure no. 1 — from which many other failures flow — was a lack of honesty. Brexit is the biggest challenge we’ve faced since 1939. It’s complex, existential and will take years. It demands a sense of national endeavour, of ‘let us go forward together’.

Despite a number of MPs announcing that they will back Theresa May’s Brexit now that she has said she will leave within weeks of it passing, senior members of the European Research Group have come out fighting this evening to insist the deal still doesn’t have the votes. Steve Baker received what one source described as an ‘enormous standing ovation’. The source said: ‘His voice was cracking with emotion, so much so that at the end he was hugged by Jacob [Rees-Mogg] and others at the top table. We are not a hugging group.’ Baker’s speech included the following lines: ‘What is our liberty for if not to govern ourselves?’

The Commons has just erupted into a bizarre row over an insult thrown across the Chamber. Normally, in these situations, the Speaker ends up scolding the MP who deployed the insult, but in this case it was John Bercow himself who provoked the uproar in the first place. Demanding that Tory MP Greg Hands come to order, the Speaker told the Chamber that Hands hadn’t been a very good whip when he had held the role, which immediately led to angry roars from the Tory benches, followed by repeated shouts of ‘withdraw!’ Initially, Bercow stuck to his guns as Conservatives complained in points of order that he had only recently