Abortion

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

So much was missing from today’s abortion debate

The anti-abortion lobby is unfortunate to have been lumped this week with Nadine Dorries as its unofficial spokesperson. Nadine is actually PRO-abortion, for starters, as she never seems to tire of pointing out. She does, however, possess many of the unpleasant characteristics associated with pro-lifers: she’s preachy, brimming with self-righteous zeal, and incapable of seeing her opponents’ point of view. She didn’t deserve to be barracked in the House of Commons today, perhaps, but the obnoxious way in which she argued for her amendment sealed its fate. It didn’t help, of course, that pro-life organisations steered well clear of Dorries and her amendment, which, in case you didn’t know, sought

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron Dorries exchange the most memorable moment of a quiet PMQs

The first PMQs of the new parliamentary term was a bit of a damp squib. Ed Miliband avoided the issue of the economy, presumably because he feared being hit by a slew of quotes from the Darling book. So instead we had a series of fairly unenlightening exchanges on police commissioners and the NHS. Labour has clearly chosen to try and attack the coalition from the right on law and order and security. There were a slew of questions from Labour backbenchers on whether the coalition’s anti-terrorism legislation was too soft. But I suspect that this PMQs will be remembered for the Cameron Nadine Dorries exchange. Dorries, irritated by how