Conservative party

The mood was grim when David Cameron, George Osborne and their advisers convened for a crunch meeting on 4 February this year. The economy had shrunk in the final three months of last year; the country was on the verge of a triple-dip recession, unprecedented in modern times. The government was in dire political straits. Those present discussed the situation with appropriate solemnity. But the tension was broken when Rupert Harrison, the Chancellor’s chief economic adviser, passionately declared that the economy would be going ‘gangbusters’ by late summer, early autumn. Ed Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, chuckled and joked that he would take a note of that confident

When Ed Miliband announced his eye-catching energy policy, Tory MPs hoped that their party would respond in kind with something similarly interesting to voters but that would really work. They hoped this would underline that the Conservative party is the party of government, while Miliband was only suitable for opposition. George Osborne’s conference fuel duty freeze and his noises about green taxes and levies on fuel bills reassured many of them, but Sir John Major’s intervention yesterday has highlighted the vacuum caused by a refusal by Number 10 to engage with what one strategist described to me as ‘the footling little things’. One MP said after Major’s speech: ‘Number 10

The coalition wants this week to be all about the GDP figures, out on Friday. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, Downing Street is confident that they’ll show the economy is continuing to grow at a relatively decent clip and is already working out how to make political out of that. They have, as Simon Walters reports, already prepared a video mocking Labour’s claims that the coalition’s polices would lead to a million more people on the dole. Ed Miliband’s circle expects that the GDP numbers will again be positive. But they take the view that as long as prices are increasing faster than wages, squeezing voters’ living

More than 140 of the 147 Tory MPs elected in 2010 have written to Adam Afriyie telling him to drop his amendment to the EU referendum bill. Given that Afriyie has previously suggested he’ll drop his attempt to bring the referendum forward to 2014 there is no support for it, it now seems doomed. This loyalist flexing of political muscle by the 2010 Tory intake will cheer Downing Street. It shows that the parliamentary party does, for the moment at least, want to stay united on Europe. It also indicates that a certain discipline is returning to Tory ranks as the next election approaches. Even six months ago, an amendment

Historian turned Tory MP Chris Skidmore will be hoping for something good in today’s reshuffle, especially after he was bigged up by Michael Gove from the stage at the Tory Conference last week as an old friend and one to watch on the backbenches. Praising his former adviser’s brain, the Education Secretary added ‘and most importantly of all ladies, he’s an eligible bachelor’. Which will come as news to Skidmore’s fiancé.

There are two more government resignations ahead of tonight’s reshuffle. John Randall, the deputy chief whip, has gone as has Chloe Smith, the Cabinet Office minister. Randall’s retirement has been overdue for a while now in the opinion of many in Downing Street. There is irritation at the way he put pressure on David Cameron to get rid of Andrew Mitchell during the plebgate affair. His departure and the expected elevation of several whips—Nicky Morgan and Karen Bradley are both in line for promotion—paves the way for a freshening up of the whips’ office. Chloe Smith quitting is going to tempt everyone to dust off the footage of that Paxman

Like so many pundits before me, I had earnestly hoped never to begin a piece on coalitions by quoting Disraeli.  But since I was asked by Bright Blue and the Electoral Reform Society to join Mrs Bone’s husband, as well as Ms Hardman and Mr Oborne of this parish, on the Tory fringe in Manchester to discuss whether the country would ever love coalitions, it has sadly proved unavoidable.  I can only apologise. My answer to the question, in case you were interested, was that England might not learn to love coalitions but that, like Scotland and Wales before it, it has very quickly come to accept them and that,

Simon Burns isn’t the only Tory MP who fancies a crack at the Deputy Speakership, even if, as James has blogged, he might be the preferred Number 10 candidate. Other names include Nadine Dorries and Eleanor Laing. But I’ve just spoken to Brian Binley, who says that he has pretty much made up his mind to stand too. Binley said: ‘I haven’t completely made up my mind but I’ve had a lot of support. I’ve pretty much decided but I just want to be in the House when it is sitting to see what the mood is there. All the support I have had so far suggests that it is

David Cameron’s speech to Tory conference yesterday was supposed to be policy-free so that the media would pick up his list of achievements because it had no other choice. The problem with this, though, was that the papers found a policy in the speech anyway, and if they did splash on the speech, they chose this policy, not the ‘finish the job’ line or any other (although the Mail used the ‘Land of Hope is Tory’ line). It was on housing benefits for the under-25s, but it wasn’t exactly ready to be a set-piece conference announcement, more a fleeting reference to gain more applause in the hall. Because the policy

1. Labour set the agenda for this conference. Ed Miliband might be preoccupied by his row with the Daily Mail about his father, but he can take heart that his shift to the left in Brighton last week had a huge influence over this Conservative party conference. This wasn’t just the cost of living agenda, which Tory ministers felt the need to rebut and respond to in their own speeches, but, as James explains in his politics column this week (get a sneak preview on Coffee House here), Ed Miliband has energised the Tories into being more determined than ever to beat Labour. David Cameron’s own speech contained 25 references to Labour, and