Westminster

One of the better plays at the National Theatre in recent weeks has been about a 21st-century banker, Judy, who quits her job to become a 1950s-style housewife. In Laura Wade’s Home, I’m Darling, Judy ditches her corporate wardrobe for a kitchen pinny and feather duster. She could have stepped from the Good Housekeeping domestic guide my mother was given after her wedding in 1954. Judy scorns modern technology and she dislikes coarse language. She is, at initial view, a faux-nostalgic figure, to be mocked. Yet the word used for her stance is ‘rebellion’ and by the end of the play she may, to a small extent, have made us

What says ‘Theresa May’ more than a comic speech at a boozy dinner for a room full of journalists? That was the question the Prime Minister found herself asking a room of well hydrated hacks at last night’s Westminster Correspondents Dinner. May took a break from the Irish border to regale journalists with a speech poking fun at her former colleagues, current colleagues, the lobby and … Theresa May. To some surprise, May cracked several – successful jokes. She even found time to praise the Spectator’s James Forsyth. Alas, not everyone was in such a jolly mood – Labour’s Barry Gardiner was overhead muttering warnings to the press about what

There are three reasons why Britain’s political and media world finds itself in the present ludicrous uproar over sexual misbehaviour at Westminster, and only one of them has anything to do with sexual misbehaviour. But let us start with that. And, first, a caveat. Can there be an organisation anywhere in discovered space which, subjected to the intense media scrutiny that the House of Commons now attracts, would not generate a comparable stock of report and rumour? Imagine a workplace — indeed imagine a workplace like our own august Spectator offices – peopled by a lively mixture of creatives, eccentrics, wannabes, rascals, saints, absolute bricks, total pricks and drones. Now

The Tory MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke, has had the whip suspended this evening. In a statement the new chief whip Julian Smith says that this follows ‘serious allegations that have been referred to the police’. In response, Elphicke has tweeted that the party tipped off the media that he was having the whip suspended in advance of telling him. He continued, ‘I am not aware of what the allegations are and deny any wrongdoing’. There are allegations against other MPs in the papers tomorrow. Clive Lewis has been accused of groping a woman at Labour conference this year. He strenuously denies the allegation, telling ITV’s Paul Brand that his

The Westminster sleaze row shows no signs of dying down with today’s papers filled with more tales of MPs behaving badly. The Telegraph warns that the Parliament sex scandal ‘could be worse than expenses’ – reporting that two female staff stopped working for a minister over claims of inappropriate behaviour. Meanwhile the Sun leads on Michael Fallon’s admission that he once touched a female journalist’s leg. That journalist – Julia Hartley-Brewer – has since come forward to say that she does not count the incident as harassment. At the time, she told the Defence Secretary she would punch him if he touched her leg again, and he duly refrained from doing

Westminster is agog with whispers about who the Tory MPs are on a list of men and women alleged to be guilty of inappropriate sexual behaviour, sexual harassment and worse. Some names have been circulating for years, with many women across the Parliamentary Estate saying they have their own story about this MP or that minister. So why is it only now that there’s a threat to make the list public? The Harvey Weinstein allegations have prompted women – and men – in every industry to realise that they don’t have to just grin and bear bad behaviour as though it’s just an unfortunate side-effect to having your dream job.

Since I suggested last July that Theresa May, newly anointed as leader of the Conservative and Unionist party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, should call an election to both establish her own legitimacy and allow the country an argument over the kind of Brexit it preferred, it would be unseemly to now deplore her belated decision to go to the country.  Happily, there remain many other things that may be deplored. Far from the least of these is the manner in which the Prime Minister has made her case for an election. It’s not her fault, you see, that she has (correctly, in