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.
Privately, the Conservatives are probably not particularly surprised about the demise of Bob Neill’s EU referendum bill, this time at the hands of the Liberal Democrats. It was always a Downing Street ruse to help quell backbench rebellion and senior Tories have ever since viewed the progress both of this bill and its predecessor, led
Before the by-election battle with Ukip in Rochester that Westminster is rather obsessed with, there’s another chance for Nigel Farage’s party to cause a political earthquake. Tomorrow, voters in South Yorkshire will go to the polls to elect a new police and crime commissioner to replace Shaun Wright, who eventually resigned after the Rotherham child
Nick Boles has a habit of making explosive interventions and then disappearing from political debate for a little while after an almighty telling off from Number 10. Tonight he may be planning to lay low for a while, because he’s probably wanted for causing another big row. The Skills Minister has told Total Politics magazine
Liam Fox has launched a series of ‘One Minute Fox’ videos in which he sets out his position on various hot issues from the threat of fundamentalism to welfare reform. He unveiled the series – which he says will become more controversial as the election approaches – to a group of Conservative MPs this evening. Intriguingly, none
The main business of the day in the House of Commons is Labour’s debate on Lord Freud, a row that blew up nearly a fortnight ago. The party’s motion, entitled ‘Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Welfare Reform and disabled people’, finishes with ‘. . . this House has no confidence in the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
What’s next for David Cameron’s tussle with Brussels? The Prime Minister made clear yesterday that ‘we are not paying a sum anything like’ the £1.7 billion demanded by the European Commission last week, and now the focus is on how much he can get the bill reduced by. He will have to pay a bill,
Today’s Independent explains why the Tory party is starting to get rather jitter again. Sure, Labour has fallen five points to level-peg with the party in a ComRes poll for the paper, with both on 30 per cent, but as Mike Smithson points out, the party could still be losing seats to the Opposition even if
MPs have a free vote tonight on Zac Goldsmith’s amendment to the Recall Bill. But I have learned that instead of voting with their Tory colleague, the Prime Minister and chief whip are to abstain in the vote. Michael Gove and David Cameron have agreed to do so, not because they oppose Goldsmith’s proposals, which
Tory MPs might have appeared keen to support the PM after his surprise EU bill when they spoke in the Commons this afternoon. But behind the scenes the party is in a pretty precarious situation. Open unrest is being held back by two things: a realisation among backbenchers that they do need to hunker down
The House of Commons is in a febrile, nervy mood this afternoon. No-one is quite happy with anyone else. David Cameron raised a cheer when he told MPs that he will not pay the €2bn bill apparently sprung on him by the European Commission, but he had very little to say when pressed by Labour
When Justin Welby spoke to the Parliamentary press gallery today, he took great care to emphasise a number of points. One was about the influence the Church of England has in public debate, and the other was about the church’s influence in local communities and the strength of its connections in those communities. He didn’t
It’s been a while since David Cameron had to give such a difficult feedback statement to the House of Commons after a European summit. Even his last tricky address, on his failure to block Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, could at least be spun as the Prime Minister valiantly standing up for
Kelly Tolhurst has won the open primary to be Conservative candidate for Rochester and Strood, I understand. The result is not due to be announced until this evening, but I hear that Tolhurst won by fewer than 50 votes on a turnout of 4,000. The turnout is the key in this as it will give
One of the bits of their Parliamentary party meeting this week that cheered Conservative MPs the most was a speech by Tracey Crouch on why the Tories could win the Rochester and Strood by-election. Many of her colleagues who like to spend their spare time staring at spreadsheets are sincerely worried that the party could
One of the few things that brought real joy at the Lib Dem conference last week was the party passing a football policy that included a lament about the sport’s focus on winning and the danger of an influx of overseas investment into the hugely successful Premier League. But the Labour party clearly thought that
This week has gone much better for Labour than many of its MPs thought it would. They started the week in very poor form indeed, grumpy after a bad conference, bruised after the narrow Heywood and Middleton result, and braced for good jobs figures to be published shortly before a very challenging PMQs. But the
Is Number 10 really preparing for a U-turn on the European Arrest Warrant? After Coffee House reported some odd manoeuvres by chief whip Michael Gove involving him suggesting to Tory MPs that it might be better for the government not to opt back into the EAW, the topic came up at this afternoon’s lobby briefing.
Is David Cameron about to announce emergency controls on European jobseekers or a points-based system on EU migration? The Times and the Sun both splashed on these ideas today (after Coffee House first revealed Cameron had promised a ‘big bang’ policy to Tory MPs, then led some of them to believe that he could introduce
Tory chief whip Michael Gove has been calling round MPs to suggest that it might be better if Britain does not opt back into the European Arrest Warrant, Coffee House has learned. Gove is aware that there will be a significant rebellion on the opt-in, with some estimating that around 50 Tory MPs already plan
Whatever David Cameron’s promised ‘big bang’ announcement on immigration in the EU is, it has certainly excited Conservative backbenchers. A group of them confronted him this afternoon to ask whether Britain would be moving to a points-based system for EU migration along the lines of Australia (something Ukip advocates), and they say that he did
