Uk politics

It was a stormy meeting of the 1922 Committee tonight. The cause of controversy was last week’s defeat of the government on the EU Budget and whether or not the rebels — led by Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless — had cooperated with Labour. Kris Hopkins, of the loyalist 301 group, read out Carswell’s letter to colleagues saying that he had had no direct contact with the rebels. He then said that seeing as the Mail on Sunday reported this weekend that Carswell had, everyone present should write to the paper and complain about its inaccurate report. The irony was, I’m told, rather effective. But this was not the end

Tory sources have confirmed that Nadine Dorries has had the whip withdrawn until she returns to Westminster to explain to the chief whip why she has gone on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!’ Her constituency association was shocked by the revelation, which appeared in this morning’s papers, and a number of Conservative MPs have been suggesting she should resign as an MP. Dorries’ justification is that the programme reaches a far wider audience than Parliament usually does, but this is the latest in a long string of what teachers might call ‘challenging behaviour’ from the Tory MP. David Cameron and colleagues will not be well-disposed to her

Nick Clegg and David Cameron still can’t agree over the future of the boundary review, and their continuing stalemate led to legislation on individual voter registration being shelved indefinitely in the House of Lords. An amendment to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill tabled by Labour’s Lord Hart and backed by Lib Dem Lord Rennard would have delayed the changes until 2018 – in line with Nick Clegg’s pledge of revenge this summer that the review be delayed until after the 2015 election. The problem is that Cameron didn’t know about the amendment until his staff read about it on Paul Waugh’s blog, and he apparently lost his rag with

Iain Duncan Smith was strangely vague this morning when Andrew Marr asked him whether he thought Britain could survive outside the European Union. He said: ‘I’m an optimist about the UK. I’ve always been involved with our trade with our European partners which we will always be doing whatever this relationship is, and the Prime minister will talk about that in the future… We’re a member of the European Union, that gives us benefits but we have to figure out where that’s going. But in the world we are a global trader already, we’re more of a global trader than any other country in Europe. So I hate this argument

David Cameron spent yesterday campaigning for Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner candidates in Bedfordshire and Leicestershire. The visits, though, received scant national attention: the only coverage I’ve spotted so far is on page 33 of The Times. Talk to ministers and they maintain that the Police and Crime Commissioner elections are more visible out in the country than they are in London, where there’s no contest. They argue that the capital-centric nature of the media explains why the press keep writing the elections off as a damp squib. There is, I suspect, some truth to this charge. But an average turnout of only 20 percent would still not be impressive.