Politics

The obituary of the Arab Spring has already been written by many commentators who see political Islamists as the only winners of unrest in the Middle East. The Arab Spring, it is said, has given way to an Islamist winter. With the Brotherhood installed in Egypt and Islamists from the Ennahda party driving through their agenda in Tunisia, this is a tempting conclusion to reach. Yet, provisional results from the Libyan elections warrant a reassessment of what is really taking place in the region. Mahmoud Jibril, who served as Prime Minister in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s demise, will almost certainly secure a majority once the results are finalised later this

The post-match analysis of last night’s vote on the House of Lords Reform Bill shows the Prime Minister has a bigger rebel problem on his hands than he might have initially thought. It is true that there is a significant hardcore within the Conservative party of rebels who happily defied the whip on the other big rebellion of this Parliament – October’s vote on holding a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. But that group only accounts for 57 per cent of last night’s rebels. The 81 in October did not simply increase by 10 to 91 last night. The table below shows that there were 39 MPs

Ed Miliband is at his best when at his quietest. He began Prime Minister’s Questions today by repeating a question put to David Cameron shortly before the last election. ‘Why do you want to be Prime Minister?’ Cameron had replied: ‘Because I think I’d be good at it.’ Great surges of Labour mirth greeted that quotation. When the noise died away, Miliband turned to the Prime Minister politely. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ Cameron was like a man facing the downdraft of a helicopter. But he weathered the onslaught and responded forcefully with a list of government achievements. Two million taken out of tax. A cap on benefits, immigration

‘Shouldn’t we just go home?’ the SNP’s Pete Wishart asked Sir George Young this evening after the Leader of the House revealed the government was dropping its programme motion on the House of Lords. ‘You know it’s all over. They know it’s all over,’ he added. But they didn’t go home, and the Commons has just voted in favour of the second reading 462 votes to 162. Early reports suggest that there were 86 Conservative MPs who defied the whip, which would make this the biggest rebellion in this parliament. Nick Clegg paused from trying very hard not to grimace on the front bench to cheer as Mark Harper told

The coalition’s backbenchers have already proven the most rebellious of any government. There have already been — by my count, adding the 239 rebellions up to the end of April listed in Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart’s Bumper Book of Coalition Rebellions to the eight listed on the Public Whip since then — 247 votes on which at least one Tory or Lib Dem backbencher has cast their vote against the government whip. That’s not quite the most of any parliament — there were 309 against Wilson and Callaghan in the 1974-79 parliament, 259 against Blair from 2001 to 2005, and 365 against Blair and Brown in the last parliament

Andrea Leadsom seems to have backed down a little from last night’s suggestion that George Osborne ‘should apologise’ for saying that Ed Balls had ‘questions to answer’ about Libor. This morning, perhaps after a cheery morning phone call from someone at CCHQ, she took to the airwaves to clarify what she had said:  ‘Look, I was talking about a very specific point last night, which is the extent to which the Labour party may have leaned on the Bank of England, which Paul Tucker completely refuted. I want to be very clear here: this is an inquiry about the banks’ behaviour, and Ed Balls still has a huge amount to