David cameron

If only he’d read the job description a little bit more closely, we might have avoided all these rows. Unfortunately for John Bercow, the man who loves the sound of his own voice more than anything else, the role of Speaker really doesn’t do what it says on the tin. Traditionally, the Speaker has taken a definite back seat, bellowing the odd ‘order, order’ in the Commons but otherwise maintaining a rather reticent and impartial position. Judging by Bercow’s behaviour over the past few months, it would seem that he hasn’t got the memo. This summer alone, he’s travelled to Romania, Burma and New Zealand, observing wryly at his final destination

David Cameron is committed to an EU referendum if he’s still Prime Minister after the next election. We also know that he’d like to lead the ‘In’ side if he can get a good enough deal. Given this, the fact that the FT is reporting that Ivan Rogers, the PM’s Europe adviser, is the frontrunner to be Britain’s ambassador to the EU is particularly disappointing. Rogers is a cerebral chap who knows the EU and its institutions back to front. But what he is not is someone who is a natural at driving a hard bargain. As one insider says, ‘he’s not a tough negotiator like Cunliffe’, a reference to

Boris Johnson will not stand for parliament at the next election, The Spectator understands. The Mayor of London has told the Cameron circle that he will not seek to return to the Commons in a pre-2015 by-election, nor will he stand at the general election. Boris’s decision not to be a candidate in 2015 indicates that he expects Cameron still to be Prime Minister and party leader after the general election. He has told friends that he has no desire to spend three years serving under Cameron. He reasons that if Cameron loses, creating a Tory leadership vacancy, he’ll be able to persuade an MP to rapidly stand aside for

A Conservative Home poll, which found that a majority of activists believe that the coalition is good for Britain, is the latest little boost for David Cameron, so says Paul Goodman. The Tories are having a good the summer; confidence is building. Yet there is, as numerous commentators and MPs are keen to stress, some way to go before the party can think of a majority. This means that the Lib Dems, who are likely to hold the balance of power in any future hung parliament, deserve some attention. There is not much meaty polling about the attitudes of Lib Dem activists; but, what there is, is quite telling:   Clegg and Co (or

From David Cameron’s declaration that you could sum up his political priorities in the three letters N H S, to the commitment to increase the health budget every year, the Cameroons have sought to reassure on the health service. They want voters to believe that it is safe in their hands. This is what gives the row over the NHS’s 111 helpline number its political importance. Labour, still fuming at how the Tories used the Keogh review to attack its record on the NHS, is trying to use the help-line’s problems to show that ‘you can’t trust David Cameron with the NHS’. The other problem for the government is that

In the last few months, the Tories have–quite deliberately—behaved like an aggressive opposition. They’ve sought to constantly attack Labour, trying to force them onto the back foot. Even with David Cameron and George Osborne away on holiday, the Tories are determined to keep doing this. On Wednesday, Grant Shapps will launch the Tories’ summer offensive against Labour. He, in the kind of language more commonly used to promote summer horror films than a political agenda, will invite voters ‘to imagine a world where Ed Balls and Ed Miliband end up back in Downing Street.’ This is all part of the Tories’ efforts to link Miliband to Gordon Brown and memories

After weeks of the Prime Minister and his team dancing on a semantic pinhead over whether they discussed plain cigarette packaging with, or were lobbied by, Lynton Crosby, the man himself has made a rare public intervention. The Press Association reports him denying that he had ‘any conversation or discussion with or lobbied the Prime Minister’ on plain packaging. Crosby added: ‘What the Prime Minister said should be enough for any ordinary person.’ But it wasn’t really, because David Cameron did rather lose his cool on the Marr Show at the weekend, telling Andrew Marr that his insistence that Crosby had ‘not intervened’ was ‘the only answer you’re getting’. While

Further evidence of Number 10 finding a hard-headed campaigning zeal reaches this blog, in the form of a campaigning website called Protecting Our Children. It includes a petition ‘to support David Cameron’s call for ISPs to introduce Family Friendly Filters as soon as possible’, and facts about internet safety and what it is that the ‘the Prime Minister and ISPs have worked together to ensure’. If you can hear a faint sound of bells ringing as you browse this site, that’s because it is a carbon copy of the LetBritainDecide website. Tory MPs, including those who don’t always put their hand up to support the Prime Minister, are tweeting away

That senior Tories are urging David Cameron to break up the Coalition early so the Conservatives can fight the election unencumbered by those pesky Lib Dems is hardly going to dent the Prime Minister’s chillaxing this summer: his party is in a good shape and the timing of Graham Brady and Bernard Jenkin’s intervention in the Sunday Telegraph suggests they are genuinely trying to be helpful rather than cause internal party strife to damage the Prime Minister. All the indications from the top are that both Tories and Lib Dems want to go all the way with this Coalition, and those who might benefit from an early split, such as

While David Cameron, assisted by a trio of pyjama-clad children and the Chancellor, was entertaining the ladies and gentleman of Her Majesty’s Loyal Press Corps in No. 10, right-wing elements of the Conservative Party were carousing by the river in Chelsea. IDS, Welsh Secretary David Jones and venerable right-wingers Sir Gerald Howarth and Graham Brady joined former Tory head of press Nick Wood and his cohort from Media Intelligence Partners for a rabble-rouse. Unlike the Downing Street soiree in the Rose Garden, this was not a champagne free-zone. Ûber-wonk Philip Blond was overheard discussing his plans to run for Mayor of London. And as the evening wore on, Blond began to try