Theresa may

If Labour’s party conference in Brighton suggested the party was in a celebratory mood, that sense of triumphalism has been vindicated by the shambolic gathering of Conservatives in Manchester. The comparison between the two parties has been starker than ever: the buoyant Corbynistas laying out Marxism to unwavering applause, whilst bickering Conservatives can’t even sell their policies to a paying audience. If the Labour party looked in rude health last Wednesday, they look an even more attractive proposition after the Maybot suffered an all too human malfunction during her headline address yesterday. A circular that went out to Labour party members after the Prime Minister’s speech was clearly drafted before

In her speech today at Conservative party conference, Theresa May announced a draft bill that would give Ofgem full power to impose a widespread energy price cap. Here’s what Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com and cheapenergyclub.com has to say about her proposals.  It’s a national disgrace that a struggling 90 year-old granny pays substantially more to boil a kettle than an affluent web-savvy man like me. However a price cap done wrong can do more harm than good. Some in the Tories have called for a ‘relative’ price cap – which means a firm’s most expensive price can only be a set percentage more than the cheapest. That’s self-defeating – it means they’ll

Tory conference is yawning on with neither furious fights nor much evidence that anyone knows how to fix the party’s problems. The most energetic bit of it so far has been Theresa May’s round of media interviews this morning, in which the Prime Minister appeared to have been turned on to 1.5x speed as she nervously gabbled her answers and tried to sound happy. Other spots of colour come from non-MPs, such as Ruth Davidson. The hall isn’t packed, the atmosphere flat, and members and MPs look bewildered and miserable. The Tories are starting to resemble Labour at the end of its last spell in government. The party was exhausted.

Theresa May – We’ve listened on student fees The Prime Minister marked the start of the Conservative party conference (and her 61st birthday) with a customary appearance on the Andrew Marr Show. First on the agenda was the announcement of a change in the government’s policy on university tuition fees. May stated that she wanted to raise the threshold at which students start to pay back their loans, and that she intended to scrap a planned increase in level of fees to a maximum of £9,250 a year. Marr accused the Prime Minister of presiding over a screeching U-turn: AM: The policy that you stoutly defended for years, which ended

A few weeks ago, Theresa May seemed surprisingly stable as Tory leader, given the mess of the snap election. Her cabinet had finally stopped squabbling about Brexit and Conservative backbenchers were largely backing her to continue. But on the eve of party conference, things don’t look so great. Firstly, the Cabinet unity has disappeared again. The Prime Minister’s Florence speech opened up a war of bids for her attention from Brexiteers and Brexitsceptics alike, all of whom believed that the Prime Minister is so malleable on policy that she just needs to hear the same thing over and over again before she believes it. When her speech didn’t answer big

Even if Germany had Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, Angela Merkel would be struggling this morning to form a government. With 33 per cent of the vote, her Christian Democrat and Christian Social alliance has suffered its weakest showing in 68 years – tempered only by the equal failure of the socialists. It might have been a moment for Emmanuel Macron to seize the crown of de facto leader of Europe were it not that he, too, suffered a lower-profile though no less significant electoral reversal over the weekend – in Senate elections the La Republique En Marche party won only 23 of the 171 seats up for grabs. With his