John Connolly is News Editor of The Spectator
At around 3am on election night in 1997, the Conservative leading-light Michael Portillo suffered at shock defeat when he was ousted from his seat in Enfield Southgate by Stephen Twigg. Ever since, the surprising departure of a high-profile politician on election night – and their disbelieving face as the result is declared – has been dubbed a ‘Portillo
The former Tory MP Dominic Grieve may have voted against the parliamentary recess for Conservative party conference, but that certainly hasn’t kept him away from the action this week. The now independent MP showed up in Manchester yesterday, and this afternoon attended a ‘Conservatives for a People’s Vote’ event at the aptly named (for a man with
The Liberal Democrats have cemented their credentials as a fully-fledged Remain party this afternoon, after members at their conference in Bournemouth voted to make revoking Article 50 and cancelling Brexit their official party policy. The overwhelming majority of Lib Dem members at the conference voted to pass a motion, which called for the party to
The former Labour MP Luciana Berger has announced today that she is no longer an independent in parliament and has joined the Liberal Democrats. Berger becomes the party’s sixteenth MP in parliament, and is the second former Labour defector to join the Lib Dems, after Chuka Umunna made the jump this summer. In an interview
Boris Johnson has two big advantages: the ability to drive his opponents quite mad, and strikingly low expectations. Pick up a newspaper recently and you might have read that Britain is ‘mortified’ to have such a bozo foisted upon the nation by a handful of retired Tories. If that were the case, the opinion polls
As a lifelong diplomat, it was probably the closest Sir Simon McDonald, the head of the UK diplomatic service, has ever come to publicly showing a sliver of emotion, when speaking to MPs today about the resignation of the Sir Kim Darroch. The head of the diplomatic service had been summoned by the Foreign Affairs
Number 10 has confirmed that Mark Field has been suspended from his position as a Foreign Office minister, after he used force to remove a climate protestor from a banking event at Mansion House last night. Video footage of the incident showed Field grabbing a female Greenpeace protestor before escorting her from the building. The
The incoming prime minister will have a lot on his plate when he finally strolls into Number 10 in July – with a looming Brexit deadline on the horizon and only a threadbare majority in the Commons to deliver a deal or no-deal Brexit. But he will have even less time to relax than first
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are through to the final stage of the Tory leadership contest, after the results of the fifth round of voting were announced this evening. Michael Gove has been knocked out of the competition, after falling just two votes short (75 vs 77). Cries of foul play have followed, with suspicion
And then there were three. After the latest round of voting in the Tory leadership contest this afternoon, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid has been knocked out of the competition, leaving only Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt in the race to become the next prime minister. Boris Johnson, unsurprisingly, came top of the
Earlier today, Rory Stewart said that he was in talks with Michael Gove’s campaign team, to see if the Environment Secretary would drop out and combine forces with him to take on Boris Johnson. In the end though, it was Stewart who was forced to walk the plank – with even fewer votes than he
So much for Boris Johnson running away with this early. After the second round of voting amongst Tory MPs, he’s still easily ahead. But the other votes are spread so evenly that no fewer than five of the candidates have made it through to the third round of the contest. Only Dominic Raab has been knocked
MPs have voted to reject, by 309 votes to 298, an opposition day motion which would have attempted to stop Britain leaving without a deal on 31 October. The motion, put forward by Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, Oliver Letwin and other representatives of the opposition parties, attempted to carve out a day in the parliamentary
You would not normally expect a Tory leadership campaign launch to take place at a comedy-festival venue in the trendy Southbank of London. Nor would you expect it to be situated in a small circus-tent, with spotlights beaming on an elevated stage in the centre. Nonetheless, Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart strolled out onto the
One of the major problems facing the less well-known Tory leadership contenders is this: how do you stand out to Conservative members and MPs when there are so many other candidates? With ten contenders still fighting to be prime minister, even Cabinet members seeking to boost their publicity have been forced to rely on gimmicks,
It’s official: the Tory leadership contest to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister has now begun. At 5pm today, the nominations closed for candidates to enter the leadership race before hustings and the first round of voting takes place this week. In order to narrow down an already crowded field, each candidate had to receive
After a long night of counting, and an even longer campaign, the Labour party have been declared the winners of the Peterborough by-election. Lisa Forbes, the Labour party candidate, will replace Fiona Onasanya who was ousted from the seat earlier this year after she was convicted of perverting the course of justice. Forbes won 10,483
Arguably, the past six months could not have gone any better for the Liberal Democrats. At the beginning of the year, the party seemed cast adrift as voters continued to support the two main parties, and the newly formed Independent Group looked ready to usurp them as the party of Remain in the UK. But
There’s only one day to go until the Peterborough by-election, which decides who will replace the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya, and yet it’s still all to play for in this marginal seat. Under normal circumstances, with the last Labour MP found guilty of perverting the course of justice and thrown out by her constituents,
‘We’re going to give this everything we’ve got until 10 o’clock on Thursday.’ There’s only two days to go until the Peterborough by-election, and it’s fair to say that Brexit party candidate Mike Greene is determined to win. In his campaign headquarters in Peterborough, the businessman, Secret Millionaire and former Tory supporter revealed he hadn’t
