Jesse norman

He might want to stay Prime Minister until 2020, but who will succeed David Cameron once he’s gone? In this week’s Spectator, Bruce Anderson offers his own tip for the next Conservative leader: David Cameron has announced that he would like to stay in No. 10 until at least 2020. That is excellent news for one Old Etonian candidate for the succession. Although he is at least as good as anyone else in the 2010 intake (an outstanding vintage), this fellow could not promoted in the last reshuffle, because he had played a splendid innings as the captain of the revolt over House of Lords reform. He earned the gratitude

The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards are being held this afternoon at the Savoy Hotel. In total 14 awards were presented by Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, who was invited to be  guest of honour in recognition of his parliamentary achievement. The award winners were: 1. Newcomer of the Year – Andrea Leadsom MP (Con) 2. Backbencher of the Year – Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP (Lab) 3. Campaigner of the Year – Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP (Lab) 4. Inquisitor of the Year – Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP (Lab) 5. Speech of the Year – Charles Walker MP (Con) & Kevan Jones MP (Lab) 6.

The Spectator hosted a packed-out debate last night on the motion — ‘George Osborne isn’t working: we need a Plan B’ — and you can now hear the outcome for yourself. As Isabel reported earlier, it was an evening of intense discussion and disagreement, so we have recorded the entire evening for you to listen at your leisure. The event lasted nearly two hours, so here are the timings for the individual speakers: 03:12 – Alistair Darling (for) 10:25 – Jesse Norman (against) 19:04 – Matthew Oakeshott (for) 27:42 – Fraser Nelson (against) 36:10 – David Blanchflower (for) 47:13 – Norman Lamont (against) 54:30 – Question and answers with Andrew Neil 1:39:08 – Final

What should worry David Cameron about tonight’s meeting of the 1922 Committee on Lords reform was that it was not just the usual suspects who spoke out against it. The two MPs presenting the case against were members who have never defied the whip: Jesse Norman and Nadhim Zahawi. Those present were particularly struck by some polling data that Zahawi, who used to run YouGov, presented. It showed that when asked what issues were a priority for them zero per cent of the electorate mentioned reform of the Lords. Even when prompted, this number only rose to six per cent. But Zahawi’s polling shows that if reform does go ahead,

This week, breakage. Next week, super glue. Given the noises emanating from Downing Street, there’s little doubt that the Tory and Lib Dem leaderships are going to do a repair job on the coalition once the AV referendum has been decided. As Rachel Sylvester puts it in her column (£) today, “Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg have had several amicable meetings to discuss how to handle the fall-out from the referendum. Both agree that whoever wins should be gracious, and allow the lower to take a bit more of the limelight in the weeks after the vote.” They will be looking for quick and easily triggered bonding mechanisms, not least

Asking PFI contractors to voluntarily give back some of the money that they are due from the government might seem like rather a hopeless task. But the PFI-Rebate campaign launched today by Jesse Norman, one of the smartest of the new intake of Tory MPs, has a better chance of success than appears at first blush. Norman is pushing for the contractors to take a 0.5 percent cut which they might well decide is worthwhile to deal with all the negative publicity that further scrutiny of PFI would bring. If these contractors want to take the PFI model global, then they can’t really afford the kind of coverage that a

If you think there really is a big idea behind the Big Society, then you agree with the unlikely pairing of Jon Cruddas (Lab, Dagenham) and Jesse Norman (Con, Hereford). The latter’s new book, The Big Society: The Anatomy of the New Politics, attempts the seemingly impossible task of providing a grand philosophical narrative to underscore David Cameron’s often amorphous rhetoric. Cruddas and Norman debated at the Institute of Economic Affairs last night, alongside the IEA’s Professor Philip Booth and Dr Steve Davies. The ninety minute discussion did more to expose the philosophical fault lines in modern British politics than any public event I’ve attended since the General Election. Jesse