Amber rudd

For a second day running, the government yesterday defeated all amendments proposed to its Brexit bill. Most notably, MPs voted down Chris Leslie’s Labour amendment that would have stopped ministers striking a Brexit agreement until it had been passed by MPs and peers, by a comfortable majority of 33. This was an issue the government worried would inspire a Tory rebellion. David Jones, the Brexit minister, attempted to placate Parliamentarians by announcing that MPs would have a say on the final draft Brexit agreement before it was voted upon by the European Parliament. While Keir Starmer was quick to hail this as a ‘huge and very important concession’, it turned out

With the Home Secretary’s conference speech officially recorded as a ‘hate incident’ after an Oxford University physics professor complained to the police, the academic today appeared on the Daily Politics to explain just why he had spoken out. In an interview with Andrew Neil, Joshua Silver said Amber Rudd’s speech — in which she spoke of her wish to ensure foreign workers ‘were not taking jobs British workers could do’ — was ‘picking on foreigners’: AN: Why’s it picking on foreigners to suggest that British people should need to get on in life? JS: Well, she did say… there were briefings that she was going to keep lists of foreigners. AN: No actually

Over the weekend, Boris Johnson managed to plunge himself into another Cabinet row by announcing on Peston on Sunday that he thinks students should be excluded from the net migration numbers — because they are ‘of massive benefit to this country’. As is becoming a pattern, No 10 were quick to slap him down — with the Prime Minister’s spokesman insisting at lobby that ‘students will continue to be part of the figures’. Not that this stopped MPs having some fun with the comments today at Home Office questions. Andrew Tyrie kicked proceedings off by asking — in a convoluted manner — whether Rudd agreed that students should be removed from the tens of

So, there will be no public inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave in 1984, and no left-wing lawyers making a fortune. Maybe Andy Burnham, who seems to have appointed himself as Shadow Minister for Ancient Grievances, would have got further had he demanded an inquiry that was less overtly political, and looked at the violence of striking miners as well as misconduct by the police, but do we really have to trawl back through all of that? No-one died at Orgreave, unlike in South Wales where taxi driver David Wilkie was killed when a concrete block was dropped on his car while taking a ‘scab’ to work. The striking miners

PMQs isn’t the total walk over it once was. Jeremy Corbyn has improved, albeit from a low base, and Theresa May hasn’t yet developed the mastery of the chamber that David Cameron had. Today, Corbyn led on the whole confusion over whether or not businesses would have to list their foreign workers. But May was fairly comfortable on her old Home Office turf. Corbyn then moved to Brexit, using May’s pre-referendum warnings about leaving the single market against her. May, however, had a decent line about a second referendum, saying that Labour MPs should know that you can ask the question again and still get the answer you don’t want.

Amber Rudd’s proposal to make companies publish lists of how many foreign workers they employ inflicted significant damage to one of Theresa May’s oldest aims: to shake off the Tories’ ‘nasty party’ image. And it also drew expressions of disgust from across the board, with Steve Hilton – David Cameron’s former aide – saying it amounted to ‘shaming’ of foreign workers. Grant Shapps said he would not vote for it. To the many Conservatives who spent years trying to reset the Tories’ image, last week’s conference was an awful setback. This was made worse because Rudd’s proposal wasn’t even in her speech, but in the footnotes. It suggests that May’s

It’s been a difficult week for Amber Rudd. After the Home Secretary used her speech at Conservative conference to call for companies to declare the number of non-British workers they employ, Rudd found herself in the firing line — with one presenter even comparing the speech to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Now, her brother has joined the chorus of boos. Roland Rudd used an article in the Evening Standard on Thursday to criticise her speech over the ‘denigration’ of foreign workers. The PR supremo argued that ‘those of us who want a sensible Brexit, who want Britain to remain a beacon of tolerance and who find the denigration of non-British workers appalling have a

The Conservative party conference in Birmingham this week seemed a remarkably relaxed affair. The European question has been settled. Seldom has victory in the next-election looked more secure. The Labour conference in Liverpool had been a debacle, as the hard left set about picking off the remaining moderates. Diane James has resigned as Ukip leader after 18 days. It’s quite possible that her replacement could transform Ukip into a new working-class party — and then do to Labour in the north of England what the SNP has done to it in Scotland. One cabinet member put it well: the Tory party, he said, was like a piece of elastic that

I succeed one of the most successful Home Secretaries of modern times. You may define success as holding the post for longer than any prior Conservative incumbent since World War Two. You may judge it by introducing the Modern Slavery Act … Which has delivered tough new penalties to put slave masters behind bars. Or, you may judge it by the eventual, hard-won deportation of Abu Qatada – and the message that sent. Well, Theresa May is now Prime Minister, and I am honoured to be Home Secretary in her Conservative-only Government. It’s no secret that earlier this year I campaigned on behalf of the Remain side in the EU

Philip Hammond’s speech has had a mixed reaction from his MP colleagues, it is fair to say. A number have run up to me and rolled their eyes at how terrible his jokes were, or at his skill in managing to make one of the most important jobs in government sound boring, even telling delegates at one point not to switch off before talking about the very interesting productivity puzzle. One minister mutters that the speech was ‘classic Hammond’, which was more of a reference to his lack of charisma than his rather downbeat assessment of everything, from how interesting his job is to the consequences of Brexit. It was

It’s no surprise that demands from French politicians to scrap the Le Touquet deal and shift the migrant ‘jungle’ from Calais to Dover has gone down badly in Britain. Today’s front pages are full of talk of ‘Le Stitch up’. And the Home Office has waded in to say these plans are a complete ‘non starter’. This all sets the scene for a testy meeting for Amber Rudd as she crosses the Channel to meet her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, for talks today. Their meeting will be a private one but it isn’t difficult to work out that Calais will be top of their agenda. What’s difficult about finding a