Uk politics

Few Conservative MPs are expected to rebel on tomorrow’s Opposition Day motion on tax credits, mainly because defying the whip to vote with Labour on a motion that is non-binding on the government is pretty pointless. But that doesn’t mean that the internal Tory revolt on the matter isn’t building. More and more big names are speaking out on the matter, and the Chancellor opponents now see the cut as an ideal way of undermining his bid to be leader. They want to make it about his personal judgement and awareness of the struggles that ‘hardworking people’ face. One of those who would rather George Osborne doesn’t succeed in his

The SNP conference has had to get bigger as the party has grown. Those who’ve been coming for years are a tad unsettled by quite how big and slick this event is. The exhibition hall is much bigger and is packed with lobbyists and big corporate stands, including a McDonald’s stall. The hall is bigger, the fringe events organised by lobbyists, too, and at first glance, it looks rather like a mainstream party conference: not one packed with eccentricities like the Ukip or Lib Dem conferences. That’s unsurprising given the SNP is a party of government and given it has a chunk of MPs in Westminster. But all of the

The SNP didn’t win the independence referendum, but is still talking about the lessons it can learn from what happened a year later. That’s because it wants to win the next one – and everyone at this conference believes that the next referendum only has question marks about when, not if, it will happen. SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson suggested at a fringe organised by The Times this lunchtime that two major lessons he’d learned from last year’s result were that older voters would not be persuaded to vote ‘Yes’ as easily by younger generations than he had imagined they would be, and that the ‘Yes’ campaign failed to communicate

The SNP are very, very happy that they now have 56 MPs in Westminster. But to listen to their conference in Aberdeen today, you’d think they were happiest that Labour is having a miserable time in the House of Commons. It wasn’t just Nicola Sturgeon’s speech, covered here, that showed their joy. It was also the ‘Westminster Hour’ session that the party ran later in the day, featuring a number of newly elected MPs, and the party’s Westminster group leader Angus Robertson and finance spokesman Stewart Hosie. Angus Robertson in particular gave the impression that he was enjoying the misery of the Labour party and the SNP’s hand in that

Over 20 Labour MPs rebelled against their party whip and abstained on the government’s fiscal charter this evening. The Labour party claimed there were 20 abstentions, but the Tories claimed the number was closer to 28. This is the full list of abstentions which didn’t include authorised absences (some of whom would have been would-be rebels who were encouraged to find a speech to make or ailing relative to visit in another part of the country at the last minute) from the Labour whips office: ​​​​Fiona Mactaggart Rushanara Ali ​​​Ian Austin Ben Bradshaw Adrian Bailey Shabana Mahmood Ann Coffey ​​​​Andrew Smith Simon Danczuk Jamie Reed Chris Evans ​​​​Graham Stringer ​​​​Frank Field ​​​Gisela

John McDonnell has tried to explain why he U-turned on the fiscal charter this afternoon, saying that he has only ‘changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics’, not the principles of the matter. He told Sky News: ‘I have changed my mind, but I haven’t changed my mind on the principles of what the charter is standing for which is we need to tackle the deficit and we will tackle the deficit. Labour will tackle the deficit – we are not deficit deniers, I haven’t changed my mind on that. ‘But I have changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics. Originally what I said to people was look that charter

Whenever the Parliamentary Labour Party meets, journalists gather outside the room in the hope that those leaving the meeting will reveal what went or that the argument will get so heated that they will be able to hear what is going on behind closed doors. Those of my colleagues who turned up to tonight’s PLP meeting were very much in luck. George Eaton reports that Ben Bradshaw, the former culture secretary, left declaring the meeting ‘a total f*** shambles’ and that Emily Thornberry could be heard loudly upbraiding MPs for texting journalists about what was going on inside this supposedly private meeting. So, why was his meeting so rowdy? Well,

The cross-party ‘Vote Leave’ campaign launches today, with an impressive list of backers from politics and business. It is run by Matthew Elliot and Dominic Cummings, and has MPs from across the spectrum supporting it. This is what it needs to do next: 1. Get the official designation from the Electoral Commission. Vote Leave is the favourite to get the Commission’s funding, free mailing and campaign broadcasts. It is trying to underline that it is the better of the two campaigns – the other being Arron Banks’ Leave EU campaign – by showing off how many people from across the political spectrum it represents. 2. Work out what to do

The Tories had a good few days in Manchester. But one Tory had a particularly good week, Boris Johnson. A week ago, Boris looked becalmed. As we said in the Spectator, he was struggling to make the transition from being Mayor of London to being both the Mayor and an MP. But this week, he has delivered the best speech of his political life, shown new Tory MPs his talents, and renewed his relationship with Tory activists. It was telling that when Cameron paid tribute to Boris during the leader’s speech, the hall gave him a standing ovation. Now, the tricky thing for Boris will be coming up with a