Liz truss

Ten years ago today, Tony Blair’s ban on hunting with dogs came into force. Rural communities had marched, Otis Ferry had stormed the Commons, but none of it made any difference, and anti-hunt campaigners rejoiced when hunting became a banned sport. But though the law has been in place for a decade, the fight for hunting still goes on. Many hunts, especially those based in more urban areas, are still plagued by hunt saboteurs, as was demonstrated just last month when Mike Lane, a Master of the Tedworth Hunt in Wiltshire, was attacked so savagely by saboteurs wielding iron bars that he was knocked out. The Countryside Alliance are now calling for

One of the major themes of this year’s big Tory reshuffle was the attempt to detoxify certain policy areas where a minister was involved in a stand-off with certain groups the Tory party would quite like to vote for them. Michael Gove lost his job as Education Secretary for this reason, and so too did Nick Boles find himself being moved from Planning to Skills. Owen Paterson’s departure was a bit more complicated: his aide warned in the days before the reshuffle that to move the Environment Secretary would be to leave 12 million voters in the countryside without a voice, but he was in the midst of pretty high

If you’re going to sell out to the establishment, you might as well do so on an industrial scale. As the PM told the Guido Fawkes blog’s ten -ear anniversary party at the Institute of Directors last night, via video link, ‘what better way’ to celebrate ‘rejecting’ the cosy political classes than a posh dinner of caviar and champagne in the heart of Westminster. Guy Fawkes would have been turning in his grave, as cabinet ministers including Francis Maude and Liz Truss, and mysterious billionaires such as Michael Hintze and Lord Ashcroft, along with 200 of Westminster’s finest, came to pay homage to a decade of sniping from waspish troublemakers.

Two of the brightest rising stars in the Conservative party, Sajid Javid and Liz Truss, addressed the Tory conference. After an angry day yesterday where Grant Shapps and the PM furiously attacked Ukip and their backbench colleagues piled in to savage Mark Reckless, the pair needed to use their slow to re-focus party minds on fighting Labour in the general election. They are both well-equipped for such a task: Javid started his speech with a passage on his values as a British Tory, then moved onto attacking the snobbery he encountered from the Labour Party when he was appointed Culture Secretary, and Ken Livingstone’s comments that he saw Javid as

Much has been made of the political debate at the 2014 CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace. The attendance of the new Environment Secretary Liz Truss, Ukip leader Nigel Farage and former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson (less than a week after the government reshuffle) has given rise to a general debate about where the rural constituency, or countryside vote, currently sits on the political map. The CLA is studiously apolitical. It is a membership organisation with more than 33,000 members who together own and manage more than half the rural land in England and Wales and represent over 300 types of rural businesses. Our priority is to represent our members’

Much has been made of the reception that greeted Nigel Farage at the CLA Game Fair on Friday. The punters were far more interested in Nigel Farage than George Eustice, the incumbent Farming Minister, though perhaps things might have been different had Liz Truss turned up instead. When Farage referred to the much-loved Owen Paterson as ‘having been sacked and made a scapegoat for a failed EU policy [on flooding] which led to the flooding in Somerset’, cheers erupted from the tent. Despite the rumpus that Farage’s presence created at the Game Fair, it’s still debatable whether Britain’s presence in the EU is a good thing for the countryside and rural communities. Ross

During Owen Paterson’s vocal conversation with David Cameron in defence of his record as Environment Minister after learning he was being sacked, Paterson reportedly said: ‘this will be a kick in the teeth to 12 million countryside voters… you are making a big mistake’. There is already mounting evidence to suggest Paterson could be right. Judging by the two standing ovations that Paterson went on to receive last Friday at the Game Fair at Blenheim Palace (at the mere mention of his name), Charles Moore commented that ‘you could almost see the disaffected Tory voters fleeing to Ukip across the tent’. Never one to miss an open goal, Farage (mobbed

Today’s reshuffle has been largely about cosmetic improvements to the Conservative party — not just through the promotion of female MPs, but also by neutralising certain policy areas such as education and planning reform that had antagonised some groups. But an important element in any changing of the guard is party management, and not just managing cross sacked ministers. So how has the Conservative party reacted to today’s events? Naturally, all Tory MPs are as startled as everyone else by Michael Gove’s departure. But it does make sense to them. Ministerial colleagues had grown increasingly frustrated that Gove, who polls very badly with the general public, was having fights and

If you are a lobbyist looking to access a government minister but want to circumvent the tedious checks enforced by civil servants, then Newark-on-Trent is the town for you. This corner of Nottinghamshire is packed with reshuffle hopefuls and Tory big-wigs ‘doing their bit’ for the by-election bid. Education minister Liz Truss had taken her mum and kids along. George Osborne was milling about while wearing his favourite high-viz jacket. And Theresa May brought her characteristic sparkle to the stump: the Home Secretary told assembled arm-chewing hacks that the Tories’ “excellent candidate” would secure the future for the hardworking people of Newark, you will be glad to hear. Said candidate,

Who are the ministers who could replace Maria Miller? Some of the muttering over the past few days has been about the Prime Minister’s desire to keep women in the Cabinet, and Miller herself boasted of being the only mother in the Cabinet. [audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/2059892-maria-miller-on-her-resignation”]Maria Miller: Resigning is ‘the right thing to do’[/audioboo] There are many mothers, fathers, men and women in the Tory party who have bright careers ahead of them. If the PM feels he needs a woman, he could promote Nicky Morgan, currently shining at the Treasury. Or plain-speaking Esther McVey (if her comments on ITV’s The Agenda on Monday were a little too plainly-spoken, then they

Nick Clegg spent this morning singing the Lib Dem equivalent of Take That’s Back for Good, telling his target voters from the teaching profession that whatever one of his colleagues had said or did, they didn’t mean it. The Deputy Prime Minister was trying to apologise for comments by Vince Cable, who had rather clumsily underlined a valid point he was trying to make about the need for better careers advice in schools by suggesting that teachers ‘know absolutely nothing about the world of work’. ‘I know that Vince did not intend to offend teachers,’ pleaded the Deputy Prime Minister on his LBC radio show. He then described the profession

So much of the education debate is about how UK schools perform relative to those in other countries – this week Liz Truss reported back from her visit to Shanghai – so when MPs on the Education Select Committee grilled Andreas Schleicher, the Deputy Director of the OECD which ranks education systems worldwide, they were keen to find out what his data suggests is causing the gap in performance between children in UK schools and those in cities such as Shanghai and countries such as Singapore. Schleicher made a number of interesting points about our education system which are worth mulling: 1. Even the vast improvements in London schools haven’t