Uk politics

Forget secret dining societies, last night the inhabitants of SW1 descended on the Westminster Park Plaza for the British Kebab Awards. The annual event saw the likes of Angela Rayner and outgoing Labour General-Secretary Iain McNicol join forces with Tory MPs Paul Scully and Rehman Chishti to take a break from Russian espionage in order to chow down on some meat and raise a glass to the British kebab industry. The event’s host İbrahim Doğuş, a Labour candidate in the snap election, told the well-hydrated crowd: ‘In an otherwise darkened street, the kebab shop is the light that never goes out’. While there were some mentions of Brexit concerns, the event was not a partisan

Theresa May did a good job in uniting the House of Commons today, but someone who did an even better job in bringing together MPs to praise the Prime Minister was Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader’s partisan response to May’s statement on the poisoning of Sergei Skripal so antagonised Conservative MPs and so disappointed many on his own side that much of the session was about the failings of the Opposition, rather than the questions for the Government. He criticised Tom Tugendhat’s earlier comments about Russian aggression, telling MPs that ‘we need to continue seeking a robust dialogue with Russia on all the issues – both domestic and international –

Theresa May came under fire last year when she appeared to dodge a question on whether – if there was a referendum tomorrow – she would now back Brexit. Since then, the Prime Minister managed to set tongues-wagging once again when asked in a Q&A after her big Brexit speech whether Brexit was worth it. May swerved the question – opting to confirm that she will deliver the will of the people. So, Mr S nearly choked on his tea this morning when the Eeyore-esque Chancellor appeared to enthusiastically say that Brexit was worth it, on the Andrew Marr show: AM: Is it worth it? PH: Yes. Financial services is

The moment that has defined my approach to politics came when my mother told me the proudest moment of her life: buying her council house.  Growing up in Consett, a former steel town in the north east, that house seemed to be like any of the other identikit terraced properties in the area. But to my mother, it was an asset she now owned and was able to pass on to me and my siblings. Later in life, I realised that Right to Buy had opened up new avenues for my mother, beyond having a roof over her head: it gave her choice, security, and a sense of achievement and

There are plenty of things you could say about Labour’s All-Women Shortlists (AWS). Tony Blair called them ‘not ideal at all’ in 1995. In 1996, Peter Jepson and Roger Dyas-Elliott – two men who’d been rejected as Labour candidates – called them sex discrimination. An industrial tribunal agreed with them, and Labour was forced to suspend the policy until 2002, when it was able to bring in the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act, permitting positive discrimination in candidate selection. In 2002, Owen Jones called them ‘most successful at expanding the career options of a tiny elite of professional, university-educated women’, Blair’s hesitancy forgotten and AWS rewritten as a tool of