David cameron

David Cameron has vowed he will ‘not waver’ in his commitment to free schools and has announced another 500 will open over the next five years — creating 270,000 new school places by 2020. Eighteen new projects have been given the go-ahead today, adding to the existing 252 free schools and the 52 new schools opening this week. As the chart above shows, the government’s target is ambitious. To see the commitment through, two waves of new free schools will be announced every year in March and September. The Prime Minister said the announcement shows that the government is focused on ‘delivering an excellent education and giving parents across the country real choice for

The Great British Bake Off has been praised for getting the nation cooking. Now, it seems the fever has become political, as anti-austerity campaigners get baking ahead of this year’s party conference in Manchester. Activists have been tasked with baking their best anti-Tory cakes for a picnic due to be held as part of the action against the Tory conference. But rather than a poisoned creation for a Conservative politician of choice, the winning entry will be fed to the homeless. The lucky winner will be given a ticket to ‘Laugh Them Out Of Town’, a comedy event taking place during conference featuring Frankie Boyle and the Thick of It‘s Sara Pascoe, which hopes

Just a few months ago, almost everyone thought that David Cameron was a goner. That he was about to go down in history as a one-term Prime Minister who failed to win against a bad Labour leader in 2010 then lost to a worse one in 2015. During this period, Anthony Seldon spoke to a long line of well-placed people for his biography of David Cameron; people who would have imagined they could talk freely because his book would be an autopsy. As a result, the former Master of Wellington College seems to have drawn plenty information from people who perhaps regret their candour now. David Richards, the former head

Oh dear. Although Lord Ashcroft said he would be pleasantly surprised if Anthony Seldon’s biography of David Cameron offered anything more than ‘a sanitised account’ of his time in Number 10, an excerpt in today’s Mail on Sunday should make interesting reading for Boris Johnson. In Cameron at 10, Seldon writes of tensions between the leadership hopeful and the Cameron camp, which culminated in the Prime Minister telling Johnson to ‘f—ing shut up’ ahead of the election after he listed all the Old Etonians who had gone on to make it into Number 10: ‘One Number 10 insider says: ‘There was a sense in this building that the PM and Chancellor were getting on taking the

Here is a preview of Martin Vander’s Any Other Business Column in this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow… Asked to name Britain’s greatest living industrial designer, most people might cite Sir Jony Ive of Apple or Sir James Dyson of the bagless vacuum cleaner. I’d certainly shortlist Ive, but I traded in my unreliable Dyson for a brutally efficient German machine called a Sebo and I’ve always thought Sir James was overhyped. I might also mention Dumfries-born Ian Callum, the director of design for Jaguar cars responsible for the sleek F-Type. But surely the top prize must go to Andrew Ritchie, the former landscape gardener whose one perfect product, the Brompton

What will David Cameron do with his final few years in power? On election night, he said he wanted his party ‘to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost: the mantle of one nation’. This raised the prospect of Cameron trying to succeed where so many of his predecessors failed: in making it clear that conservatism actually delivers the fairness, the poverty reduction and the social cohesion that Labour can only talk about. Cameron has spoken about this agenda over the years, but there’s seldom much of a follow-up – raising questions about how serious he actually is. But today, we seen a signal of harder intent: he has

Will David Cameron really consider staying on as Prime Minister for the 2020 election as well? Ever since the Sun on Sunday reported that some of the Tory leader’s colleagues were agitating for him to continue, there has been feverish speculation about whether he will. Those MPs in favour of a longer reign from Cameron claim that he made his commitment to go before the next election while chopping vegetables in his kitchen and that he wasn’t really thinking. But he has reiterated that commitment since the election, and so clearly doesn’t think it was a mistake worth correcting. But the chatter about the PM going ‘on and on’, as

Kids Company staff and service users have been protesting outside Downing Street today after the charity announced it was closing its doors. But the Prime Minister isn’t there: he’s on holiday. He did, however, give this clip to broadcasters in which he defended his ministers’ decision to overrule officials’ concerns and give the struggling charity a further £3 million: ‘Well, the government thought it was the right thing to do, to give this charity one last chance of restructuring to try to make sure it could continue its excellent work. Sadly that didn’t happen, not least because of the allegations that were made and private donors withdrawing their money, but

Tories tend to think that Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader will be fabulously useful for their party, returning them an even bigger majority in 2020 and pitching his own party into such turmoil that it struggles to work as an effective Opposition. But one benefit of his leadership to the existing Tory majority has been overlooked, which is the effect it would have on the Democratic Unionist Party. Sources in the DUP point out to me that given Corbyn’s friendship with Sinn Fein, they would be unable to work with Labour to exert pressure on the Conservatives in key votes. This may mean that the eight DUP MPs are more likely

After David Cameron’s former speechwriter Clare Foges kicked off her new career outside of No.10 with a blistering editorial in the Times criticising her former employer over a range of issues including the bedroom tax, doubts began to surface that she was not a true blue. Still, even Mr S was surprised to read in an interview with the Evening Standard that the Prime Minister’s old political advisor is ‘rooting for Jeremy Corbyn’. What’s more, the gesture is not simply part of the jovial #ToriesForCorbyn movement: ‘Foges lives alone in Archway where Jeremy Corbyn is her MP (she’s rooting for him because she lives in the area, not as part of a Tory plot).’ Foges —

Water cannons at the ready: the Tory leadership contest is officially underway. How does Mr S know this? Well, in a clear sign that George Osborne means business, he has changed his Twitter profile picture. Osborne is now in Conservative blue, offering a confident grin as he embarks on his campaign to move into Number 10. The new photo also displays a slimline Osborne in contrast to the old photo, which depicted a more laid back Chancellor. While Mr S will of course keep readers updated as Boris Johnson and Theresa May develop their online presences, Steerpike can’t help wonder why Osborne didn’t opt for this week’s cover image of Octo-Osborne…

With the newspapers frequently filled with tales of former public schoolboys misbehaving abroad, Mr S was unsurprised to hear reports that a Westminster School alumnus had enjoyed a rather lively flight from Asia to Britain. Still, given that the man in question was aboard the Prime Minister’s private jet, perhaps he ought to have known better. Step forward Patrick Wintour. Word reaches Steerpike that the Guardian‘s political editor has become the talk of David Cameron’s Malaysia trip after being the life and soul of the party on the flight back to Britain. According to Mr S’s mole the journey got off to a bad start when Cameron failed to call Wintour by his name on board, instead