Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.
In the past few minutes, the government has lost its attempt to relax Sunday trading laws in the Commons 317 votes to 286. The rebellion has been brewing for months, with ministers playing a game of chicken with angry Tory backbenchers right up to the vote. A last-minute attempt by George Osborne to stave off
Some ministers are in full-on campaign mode in the EU referendum, even as the normal business of Westminster continues. David Cameron continues to make visits around the country to make his case for Britain remaining in the European Union, while pro-Brexit ministers seem to be constantly giving speeches, interviews and penning angry op-eds about the
For the past few weeks, Labour MPs have been ratcheting up their plotting against Jeremy Corbyn. As I explained here, they have detailed planning sessions for a potential coup in the summer, and have broken their parliamentary party down into groups so that they can develop strategies for persuading each group to accept that the
One of the striking things about the European Union referendum debate so far – apart from how cross everyone is with each other – is how blokey the whole thing has been. There are high-profile women on either side of the debate – Theresa May (who has been rather quiet since her announcement that she
There is no small irony in the fact that Labour MPs were this evening reminded by their colleagues not to brief details of tonight’s parliamentary Labour party meeting before a spokesman for Corbyn went out into the Committee Corridor to, er, brief journalists about what happened at the meeting. The official account is that there
Education Questions in the Commons is a chance for MPs to ask questions about Education – or at least to suck up to ministers by asking them questions about what a good job they are doing. But today Nicky Morgan seemed to be talking about something that wasn’t so much tenuously related to her department as
Conservative eurosceptics are trying to hammer Number 10 on the suspension and resignation of British Chambers of Commerce Director General John Longworth over his comments about the EU referendum. David Davis has announced that he is putting in FOI requests to Number 10, Number 11 and the Business Department for details of conversations between ministers,
After a few weeks of banging on about Europe, Downing Street hopes that there will be more of a domestic focus in Westminster for a little while at least. The Budget is approaching, and George Osborne is already coming to terms with what he can and can’t do. It turns out that now is not
Boris Johnson’s admission to Andrew Marr that Brexit ‘might’ cost people their jobs has quite inevitably been seized upon by the ‘In’ campaign as a sign that a vote to leave would put people’s livelihoods at risk. The Mayor of London came on the show to make the positive case for Britain leaving the European
Boris Johnson’s attack on David Cameron’s EU deal as achieving ‘no real change’ is part of the very high-profile campaign that the senior Tories campaigning for Brexit are waging. They have covered the media over the past week with interviews, quotes and rebuttals to every claim that the Prime Minister and his allies have offered.
Iain Duncan Smith’s attack on the ‘In’ campaign today doesn’t just show us how febrile the referendum campaign is going to be for the next few months. It also shows us that ministers like the Work and Pensions Secretary are so peeved with the way the Prime Minister and others are conducting the campaign that
This is from tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political events. Subscribe here. Today in brief François Hollande warned that there would be ‘consequences’ for the British-French border deal that keeps migrants at Calais. Boris Johnson responded to the warnings that Brexit could lead to a ‘Jungle’ on UK
Even if Jeremy Corbyn isn’t making waves in Labour’s EU campaign, the rest of the party is trying to knuckle down and get on with what is essentially an enthusiastic get out the vote operation. The party knows that the bulk of its voters are in favour of Britain staying in the European Union, and
Caroline Lucas is speaking for a number of Labour MPs with her warning about the weakness of the Labour party in the EU referendum debate. They are worried that their party is not going to be able to deliver the voters needed to keep Britain in the European Union. ‘Labour voters will not be turned
Tory MPs believe they have sufficient numbers of would-be rebels to be able to amend the government’s Investigatory Powers Bill, which was published yesterday. Coffee House understands that there are already around 10 Tory MPs who would be happy to join forces with Labour to change key sections of the legislation on the authorisation of
Ministers are today publishing a document that is already being rubbished as a ‘dodgy dossier’ about the options for Brexit. The report, which comes out later, concludes, funnily enough, that all of the alternatives to EU membership would leave Britain ‘weaker, less safe and worse off’ and that ‘no alternative model guarantees that British businesses
Sir Jeremy Heywood is currently insisting to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs select committee that there is absolutely nothing untoward about his guidance to civil servants about withholding documents that have a bearing on the EU referendum from ministers. ‘I’m really struggling to see what the problem is here,’ he has just argued to
Britain’s membership of the European Union is a matter of principle and emotion for most Tory MPs. But it is also a matter of party management. David Cameron would have had an easier time as Prime Minister in the last parliament had he realised that while Conservatives will always want to bang on about Europe,
Jeremy Corbyn’s much-awaited appearance at the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party didn’t go particularly well this evening, which means that for the group of increasingly determined MPs trying to oust him, it was a hugely successful session. MPs were reminded that the meeting is off the record at the start, before being given
Even if there has been no mistake at all in the guidance to civil servants about what documents they can share with pro-Brexit ministers during the referendum campaign, the government has clearly made a number of mistakes at least in the presentation of that guidance, as this afternoon’s urgent question in the Commons showed. The