Theresa may

Sarah Vine is famed for using her column in the Daily Mail to share embarrassing personal anecdotes about Michael Gove (often involving his underpants) and to offer deeply unhelpful advice to the Tory government. Today’s article is a case in point; it says that David Cameron’s women problem is ‘the biggest hurdle the Tories face’. The wife of the Education Secretary adds: ‘as my husband is fond of saying, “Happy wife, happy life”. And Mrs Electorate isn’t happy.’ And Vine laid it on thick for Theresa May; suggesting that the Home Secretary ‘looks more and more like the true heir to Margaret Thatcher…. whose tractor beam glare makes Anna Wintour’s seem

So Theresa May has won her battle with Number 10 on stop-and-search reform, sort of. She announced a number of changes this afternoon to the power for police – but they’re all voluntary. That the Home Secretary has managed to get any of these changes into a state where she can announce them is a victory – but the initial voluntary nature of the reforms was the compromise necessary to make this announcement happen. The changes are as follows: The Police and Criminal Evidence Act Code of Practice A will clarify what constitutes the ‘reasonably grounds for suspicion’ on which the police carry out the vast majority of stop-and-searches. If

Remember that rather curious change to the Immigration Bill that would render foreign-born terror suspects ‘stateless’ that ministers managed to sneak through while most MPs were in a tizz about Dominic Raab? Well, it’s facing its first major battle in the House of Lords soon, with a group of peers tabling an amendment which would in effect neuter it or spark a row in the Commons. The new clause, tabled by crossbenchers Lord Pannick and Lord Brown, Lib Dem former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald and Labour’s Baroness Smith, proposes setting up a committee of MPs and peers to consider whether the stateless policy should go ahead. This proposal

With a mere whimper, the government has released its controversial report (pdf) on the effects of immigration on ‘native UK employment’. Following Newsnight’s revelations that the report was being ‘held back’, Labour demanded its release. 24 hours later, it was put online while Theresa May was informing MPs of an inquiry into undercover policing after revelations about the treatment of Stephen Lawrence’s family. Here are the top five things you need to know from the paper: 1. There’s minimal evidence of migrants taking British jobs The Home Office report titled ‘Impacts of migration on UK native employment‘ reveals there is ‘relatively little evidence’ of British workers being displaced — i.e. migrants taking

In his Oscars acceptance speech Steve McQueen declared he was dedicating the award for his film 12 Years A Slave to ‘all the people who have endured slavery. And to the millions of people who still suffer slavery today’. His words will no doubt cause shock and surprise; to many it will seem scarcely credible that slavery can exist in our modern age. Modern slavery is an evil which is happening around the world today – including here in Britain. Across this country in restaurants, shops, brothels, nail bars and on illegal drugs farms are women, men and children, being held against their will, and forced into a life of slavery

David Cameron and his political aides are reportedly stalling over reform of stop-and-search powers because they fear it will dilute the Tories’ tough-on-crime message. But this means that Labour, circling like vultures for any waft of political roadkill, have swooped. Yvette Cooper has written to Theresa May offering Labour’s support in getting reform of the powers. Cooper says: ‘I hope that you will not give in to the Prime Minister’s opposition to change. Everyone agrees that the police need to have powers to stop and search individuals suspected of crime or to prevent a serious threat. Intelligence-led targeting of suspected criminals helps to cut knife crime and youth killings. This

One of the risks for Theresa May in her battle with Number 10 over reform of stop-and-search powers is that the Home Secretary loses some of the capital she has built up with BME voters over the plans. Last summer, black newspaper The Voice ran an edition suggesting that Labour could be losing the black vote and specifically pinpointed May’s work on stop-and-search as a sign that the Tories were starting to appeal to groups they’d previously alienated. But this week May is back in The Voice with an op-ed on deaths in custody. You can click on the image to view the article in full. It is significant, though,

The row over the Immigration Bill is by no means over. It will go to the Lords next, where peers will doubtless have a few things to say about certain aspects of it. Theresa May is still in a hurry to get it through Parliament, so there will likely be some interesting tricks from the government side to try to speed things up. But Conservative MPs are also very concerned about something they backed last night which gained far less attention. The Home Secretary rushed out an amendment on Wednesday night which would render ‘stateless’ foreign-born terror suspects. The details are actually rather alarming: someone who had already naturalised in

Yvette Cooper chose to focus her attack at Home Office questions on the government’s position on Syrian refugees. She continually pushed Theresa May on whether the the Home office would change its position and sign up to the UN’s refugee programme. May replied that the United Kingdom has a ‘fine record’ when it comes to the amount of money it is providing in aid, and has accepted several thousand asylum seekers from Syria. But added that ‘I am indeed working with the Foreign Secretary to look at what further support can be provided by this government and further announcements will be made on that in due course.’ Cooper pressed further,

As predicted, Labour did make use of the Times’s story about Theresa May’s row with the Prime Minister over stop-and-search at PMQs today, using a backbench question from Steve Reed, who explicitly linked to Cameron’s ‘fear of Nigel Farage’. David Cameron gave a rather mollifying answer, telling the Commons that ‘stop-and-search does need reform’ and that ‘what’s really important is that stop-and-search is used properly but we don’t add to the burdens of the police’. listen to ‘PMQs: Does Cameron’s fear of Farage mean he’ll block stop-and-search reform?’ on Audioboo

For the Conservative party, 2013 has been the year of Lynton Crosby. Just over a year ago, the Wizard of Oz was appointed David Cameron’s chief election strategist. Now he’s full-time. His brief is to make sure the Tories in government have a clear message – something that eluded them in the 2010 campaign. And to see that the message is articulated in deeds, not words. In April, the Prime Minister described his own strategy by using a quote from the late Keith Joseph: ‘the right thing to do is to address the things people care about; to fix yourself firmly in what Keith Joseph called the “common ground” of

Ministers don’t comment on leaked reports, as Theresa May said on the Today programme this morning, but they can jolly well make clear what they think of them, especially if those leaked reports are quite helpful to calming Conservative backbench grumbles. The Home Secretary didn’t distance herself from the leak in the Sunday Times that she wants a 75,000 cap on the number of EU migrants per year, and repeated David Cameron’s call for reform of freedom of movement, saying: ‘What the Prime Minister has said and what I said is that in looking at reform of the EU we need to look at this whole question of the arrangements