Theresa may

What does Theresa May believe? The new Prime Minister has had the summer to settle into her job and has a chance next week to tell us more about her plans for government. Had she come to power after a general election, or even a proper leadership race, we’d know more about her. Instead, she has the Tory party conference to introduce voters to their new government. We know already that her focus is on those who are ‘just managing’, a phrase that trips off the tongue far more lightly than ‘the squeezed middle’ (Ed Miliband) or ‘alarm-clock Britain’ (Nick Clegg). But there are still vast lacunae in her philosophy,

To a new Prime Minister’s speech-writer the party conference approaches like a bullet train. If my friend, Sir Ronald Millar, were still alive he would be working flat out on Theresa May’s speech by now. With the date of delivery advancing and the drafts on her desk ever more undeliverable, the need for ‘Ronnification’ must be overwhelming. It always was. Ronnie is best known today as the playwright who wrote ‘U-turn if you want to: the lady’s not for turning’ for Margaret Thatcher in 1980, and gave this paper’s former editor, Charles Moore the title for the second volume of his great biography. But Ronnie, a classicist as well as

Tim Shipman’s book about the EU referendum campaign, All Out War, is serialised today in the Sunday Times. The newspaper today leads on the remarkable disclosure that David Cameron blames Theresa May for the paucity of the deal he negotiated in those 30 sleepless hours with Brussels. Here’s the extract:- Before the speech, conscious that immigration was likely to be an explosive issue in the referendum campaign, Cameron had floated with Merkel the idea of an annual cap on the number of national insurance numbers handed to EU migrants or an emergency brake on numbers. But the German leader said she would not agree to changes to free movement for

The Labour Party is in a sour mood at present, that much we already know. Usually, most of the sourness expressed by MPs is directed at their own party comrades. But this afternoon, at the Labour Women’s Conference, speaker after speaker decided to turn fire on Theresa May. Angela Rayner congratulated her on being the second female Prime Minister of this country, but said ‘I cannot celebrate her arrival’. Kezia Dugdale attacked both May and Nicola Sturgeon for not being real feminists, saying: ‘Look at Theresa May – she has the audacity to wear a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ T-shirt. She could wear it at the dispatch

Theresa May has made one thing clear: Brexit mean Brexit. But when will the Prime Minister actually pull the trigger and invoke Article 50? Boris Johnson gave his take last night: ‘The Government is working towards an Article 50 letter which as you know will be produced, probably, in the early part of next year. That’s still subject for discussion but what is clear I think to our friends and partners in the EU is two broad principles: we are not leaving Europe; Although we are leaving the EU treaties, we do want to have the closest possible trading relationship and it’s very much in their interests to achieve that…

On Thursday, the Cabinet’s Economic and Industrial Strategy committee met. There were, as I write in The Sun this morning, controversial issues on the agenda: new rules on foreign takeovers of British companies, executive pay and workers on boards. May made clear her views on these questions in the last speech of her leadership campaign. But in this meeting, the members of the committee didn’t simply echo May’s views back at her. One of those present tells me that Philip Hammond made a ‘fearless’ intervention setting out his own, distinct take on these questions. Hammond was then supported by several Cabinet colleagues. It was emphasised that in the context of

Remember how it was? Many fans of Westminster still recall with fondness the happy afternoons when the Tories used to greet Ed Miliband at PMQs with a storm of ironic contempt. Nowadays the Labour-shambles is barely worth a half-hearted jeer let alone a burst of orchestrated scoffing. When Corbyn stands up at the despatch box, with his Oxfam suit and his whopping tofu-tum, he gets something close to library-silence from the Conservatives. There’s a Chinese whisper of resentment, a few chuntering snuffles, the odd yawned harrumph. That’s all. It’s the sound of 300 well-fed hogs resettling themselves during an afternoon nap. What politics needs is the intoxicating roar of crack-troops