Uk politics

Lucky Penny Mordaunt. She’s the latest minister to find themselves the holder of the women and equalities brief in the great pass-the-parcel of this role. It was created for Harriet Harman under the Labour government, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do with it. Since then, though the Tories have never quite understood what this Minister should do, other than chivvy other departments, they daren’t abolish it, lest they seem to be anti women and equalities.  The women and equalities pass the parcel has been incredibly awkward at times, with the job skipping Nicky Morgan, for instance, because of her opposition (at the time) to gay marriage. It

Alastair Campbell denies that he ever said that no Cabinet Minister can survive a negative story lasting ten, eleven or 14 days. But even if he didn’t say it, it is not a bad rule and one that Amber Rudd has fallen foul of. Rudd’s resignation is a result of the fact that more and more keeps coming on this story, and she is now faced with admitting that she either deliberately misled parliament or really didn’t know what was going on. She has gone before Monday’s statement in the Commons which would have been an exceptionally difficult moment for her. At some point, there is only so much a senior

I am living in Paris in the unofficial role of Diplomatic Wag. Though since I am neither wife nor girlfriend, but fiancée, or, in best Franglais, la vielle balle et chaîne, I have been searching for a new acronym. Foho (Foreign Office Hanger On)? Andy is a ‘Directeur de SIN’, a demonic job description out of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. SIN is the government’s Science and Innovation Network, promoting collaboration between international scientists. There is goodwill in laboratories on both sides of the Channel to go on working together post-You-Know-What. Brexit is pronounced to rhyme with Brigitte, as in Bardot. Parisians ask if you’re American or English and when you say English

When the Windrush scandal broke, it was largely seen as Theresa May’s fault, given the Prime Minister had introduced the hostile environment policy when she was Home Secretary. But this week, the focus has shifted to Amber Rudd, and whether she knew what was going on once she took over the role. This afternoon the Guardian has a leak which suggests Rudd’s grip on her department is even weaker than we’d previously thought. Following a chaotic 24 hours in which the Home Secretary told MPs on the Home Affairs Committee that there were no Home Office targets for immigration removals and then corrected herself in the Commons the following day,

Dominic Raab has found himself the subject of much mockery today after one of his aides allegedly told an undercover reporter about his rather repetitious lunch habits: ‘He has the chicken Caesar and bacon baguette, superfruit pot and the vitamin volcano smoothie, every day. He is so weird. It’s the Dom Raab Special.’ Happily, Mr S’s mole reports that he has not been put off – he was spotted back in Pret this lunchtime. Still, just so he is not alone – Mr S has reached out to MPs, ministers, SpAds and staffers to discover the eating habits of Westminster’s big beasts: Sadiq Khan: The Mayor of London varies his