Katy Balls

Every Wednesday morning in the House of Commons, about a dozen people can be seen making their way along the committee-room corridor to attend a ‘grassroots co-ordination committee meeting’. Before they get down to business, the group, a mix of MPs and campaigners, are treated to a monologue from their meeting chair, Labour’s Chuka Umunna.

The Conservatives were given a reality check today in the form of new Electoral Commission data on the financial health of political parties in 2017. Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour managed to break previous records and raise just under £56m in a single year – beating the Conservatives by nearly £10m. Adding insult to injury, the

Michel Barnier’s press conference had good news and bad news for the UK government. On the bright side, the EU’s chief negotiator promised to stay put and hold continuous – expected to be weekly – negotiations with Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab to try and bridge the differences between the two sides. However, he also promised

These days Theresa May has less time to spend distancing herself from her predecessor. With blue-on-blue warfare rife and her premiership at a continual rocky patch, the Prime Minister’s priorities tend to be getting through the day/week rather than killing David Cameron’s pet projects. However, this week’s social housing green paper serves as a reminder

Will the latest anti-Semitism row damage Jeremy Corbyn? The row over the Munich memorial rumbles on for another day following the Labour leader’s refusal to apologise for attending a wreath-laying ceremony for members of the terrorist organisation behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Although there are photos of Corbyn holding a wreath near those gravestones

Does Jeremy Corbyn harbour sinister views – or is he the unluckiest man in the world? That’s the question being asked today after the Labour leader gave an interview to Sky News after allegations he attended a wreath-laying ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 for members of the terrorist group behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

It’s day four of the Boris and the burka row over the former foreign secretary’s decision to compare women wearing full face veils to a ‘letterboxes’ in a Telegraph column. And it doesn’t look as though things will die down any time soon. The Conservatives are planning to launch a party probe into Johnson over

Theresa May visited Scotland on Tuesday to hold Brexit talks with Nicola Sturgeon. Not that you would know this from reading today’s papers as they are all about Boris Johnson. The Boris and the burka row rumbles on for a third day – after the former foreign secretary refused to apologise for his comments on

Labour’s anti-Semitism row and Theresa May’s no deal Brexit woes have had to take a back seat this morning thanks to talk of a good old fashioned Blairite coup. The Daily Express reports that 12 Labour MPs – including Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie and Liz Kendall – are embroiled in ‘secret plot to oust Jeremy Corbyn’.

Boris Johnson caused a stir this morning with an article in the Daily Telegraph. The former foreign secretary used his weekly column to argue that the Danish government were wrong to bring in a burka ban. Johnson said that although he thought that it was frankly ‘absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around

After a tawdry week for Labour which saw a flurry of fresh allegations of anti-Semitism in the party’s upper ranks, Jeremy Corbyn has finally broken his silence. Writing an op-ed for the Guardian, the Labour leader admits that there is a ‘real problem’ – and says the party has been too slow in tackling anti-Semitism

This morning a number of reports in the papers prompted talk of a small breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations. Among them, the Financial Times – a paper not known for always seeing the sunny side of the referendum result – reported that the mood in Brussels was changing with the EU now more willing to ‘fudge’

As Theresa May and her ministers spend their summer holiday trying to convince European leaders of the merits of her widely-panned Chequers Brexit blueprint, one of her departed ministers has cause for celebration. According to the latest ConservativeHome poll of Tory members, since resigning as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has become the favourite among party members to

Labour’s anti-Semitism row reached boiling point this week thanks to a leaked recording from a meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee. In it, Corbyn ally Peter Willsman suggests that Jewish ‘Trump fanatics’ are behind ‘duff’ accusations of Labour anti-Semitism and warned that ‘they can falsify social media very easily’. This comes at a particularly

The news that Labour Brexiteers Kate Hoey and Frank Field are both facing deselection threats for rebelling on a crunch Brexit vote has been met with notable silence from many Labour moderates. After the pair voted with the Tories on a crucial customs amendment which the government won by just five votes, they have both

Dominic Cummings has set the cat among the pigeons this afternoon by leaking a Parliamentary report into fake news ahead of its official publication on Sunday. The Vote Leave official alleges that the report ‘knowingly/incompetently makes false claims’ on supposed misuses of data during the referendum campaign. Expect further reaction to this over the weekend.

On Tuesday, the House will – finally – rise for the summer recess. Before we get there, and with MPs on a one-line-whip, Theresa May is decamping from SW1 and taking her Cabinet to Gateshead for an away day. As well as a Cabinet meeting in Gateshead, May will take part in a Q and