Uk politics

When Jeremy Hunt made it to the final two of the Conservative leadership contest, many presumed this meant he had secured at the very least a senior job in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet. Alas it wasn’t to be. When Johnson won, the then-foreign secretary was swiftly offered the role of defence secretary. He declined – insisting that he wanted to stay put. As a result, Hunt was shown the door. So, how does the MP for South West Surrey plan to spend his days now he is a mere backbencher? Rumours abound in Westminster that Hunt is considering putting himself forward for a coveted select committee chairmanship – the Health and

Emily Thornberry has made it through to the second round of the Labour leadership contest, having secured the required number of nominations from MPs and MEPs at the eleventh hour. As I explained this morning, Thornberry had struggled to gain support from colleagues because of strained interpersonal relationships and her – somewhat unfair – reputation for sneering at working class voters. But her claim yesterday that she did have the numbers to get her over this threshold turned out to be true, and she will be the fifth candidate to go through to the next round. The others are Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips. Clive Lewis

This week has shown how much the election has changed. The withdrawal agreement has sailed through the Commons and in Northern Ireland, there has been an agreement to get the assembly and the executive back up and running. As I say in The Sun this morning, ministers were struck by how Brexit got only the briefest of mentions at Cabinet this week despite the legislation being before the House. Pre-election, the whole conversation would have been about whether the government had the votes and what it should do if it did not. Boris Johnson is very keen that this year isn’t dominated by Brexit. Sat Cabinet this week, he again

Is Barry Gardiner running for Labour leader or not? The question is almost as confusing as whether Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have resigned from the Royal Family. In the former case, two journalists had the story that Gardiner was standing and would be backed by Len McCluskey, who has become unhappy with Rebecca Long Bailey’s current prowess. In the latter, the couple issued a statement saying they would step back as ‘senior royals’ and work to become financially independent. But then in both cases, the story took a very awkward twist. Buckingham Palace then issued a statement saying the discussions were at an ‘early stage’, with briefings suggesting the

MPs are back in Parliament today after the Christmas recess, and for some of them, this is the first real week of work after spending their first few days in the Commons reeling after winning their seats. New MPs are still waiting to be given offices, and are starting to hire new staff so they can start up with constituency work and trying to understand what’s happening next on the parliamentary agenda. All new members go through a period of trying to work out what sort of MP they’re going to be, but it’s a particularly interesting question for the Conservative MPs who won former Labour ‘red wall’ seats in

After weeks of speculation, Rebecca Long Bailey has finally announced that she is entering the race to be the next Labour leader. In an article for Tribune magazine, Long Bailey says she is standing for election on the grounds that Labour needs a ‘proud socialist’ to lead who is ‘driven by their principles and an unwavering determination to see democratic socialism in our lifetime’: ‘For all of these reasons and more, I have decided to stand for election to become the next leader of our Party. I don’t just agree with the policies, I’ve spent the last four years writing them. Labour’s Green New Deal, our plans to radically democratise the

The candidates to replace Jeremy Corbyn have been busily launching their campaigns and giving political interviews this weekend, with the party deciding the rules for the contest at a meeting of its ruling National Executive Committee tomorrow. There are still a couple of candidates left to launch their official campaigns, including Rebecca Long-Bailey, who appears to have disappeared to a location far more secretive than any prime ministerial holiday, and Ian Lavery. But here’s what we know so far about each of the candidates: Keir Starmer: considered the frontrunner in the contest, the shadow Brexit secretary launched his campaign last night with a moving video. It was moving in the

The next Budget will signal some pretty big changes in the way government spending is distributed, with investment directed towards the parts of the country that have tended to be denied it. The shift in policy was first disclosed by the Prime Minister to James Forsyth and Katy Balls in an interview during the election campaign. The Treasury, he said, judged potential infrastructure projects in a way that always tended to point investment to London and the South East. ‘I take a different view. That this country is so underprovided for in brilliant infrastructure that you can make a good business case for many things.’ A few days later, Sajid

Jess Phillips is expected to launch her bid for Labour leader this evening, having only said up to this point that she is seriously considering a bid to take over from Jeremy Corbyn. She is both the candidate most identified with the ‘moderate’ side of the party and the most high-profile, but that doesn’t mean she is launching with a particularly well-formulated policy platform. In fact, while Phillips is well-known for her dislike of Corbyn and her altercation with Diane Abbott pretty early on as an MP, it’s not quite as easy to work out what she thinks. Phillips has largely exerted her influence in Parliament in two ways. The

Oh dear. It’s not even 2020 yet and already the Labour leadership contest has descended into farce. Despite numerous private conversations over Jeremy Corbyn’s successor ahead of Labour’s election disaster, the Corbynistas have so far been unable to unite around one candidate. John McDonnell’s preferred successor Rebecca Long-Bailey has taken so long to get her campaign going that seeds of doubt has begun to grow among what ought to be like-minded supporters. Rumours abound that her flatmate Angela Rayner – who had been expected to back Long-Bailey – could be considering her next move. Long-Bailey has today at least finally confirmed that she is interested in the leadership with an

Jolyon Maugham QC got up early on Boxing Day morning, put on his wife’s satin kimono, went into his garden and bludgeoned a fox to death with a baseball bat. He then announced what he had done on Twitter. There is no mystery about why he killed the fox. It had come to eat his chickens, which he keeps in his central London garden. It became trapped in the chicken-netting. Rather than try to disentangle it or call the RSPCA, he killed it with the baseball bat that he keeps at home, mainly to deter intruders. I doubt that he relished the task of killing the fox, and he tweeted,

In previous years, Boxing Day has proved an occasion in which high profile Tories can find themselves in the firing line for taking part in various fox hunts across the country. However, this Boxing Day, it’s another political figure making headlines for their interactions with a fox. Step forward Jolyon Maugham QC. The Remain-supporting lawyer and campaigner took to social media this morning to share his thoughts for the day. Only it wasn’t a message that related to the UK’s impending departure from the EU. Instead, Maugham announced that he had kicked off Boxing Day by killing ‘a fox with a baseball bat’ after it tried to get inside his