Conservative party

‘The return of Ukip’ declared the headline on our cover story last week. The polling boffin Matthew Goodwin to whose analysis this referred was in fact more careful. Professor Goodwin did argue, however, that the potential may be there for a Ukip revival. So it may. But the figures for new recruits that he cites are modest. The doubt he describes as surrounding Nigel Farage’s chances of a comeback is real. Ukip’s present stance under its latest leader Gerard Batten (who has developed links with the campaign for the disgraced and imprisoned former leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson) looks crazier by the week. And there’s a world

Politicians in Wales sometimes complain, at least in private, about the lack of media and public attention they receive. But Andrew RT Davies’ resignation as leader of the Conservatives in the Welsh Assembly, means that Welsh politics is back in the spotlight. With the prospect of simultaneous leadership elections running over the summer for all four Assembly parties, this looks set to continue. The announcement in April that First Minister Carwyn Jones would stand down as Welsh Labour leader by the end of the year was followed last week by Ukip in Wales declaring that they would ballot their membership over who should lead their fractious National Assembly group. There

One of the laws of Brexit is that every Commons division and Cabinet meeting billed as being a ‘crunch vote’ or ‘crunch talks’ ends up postponing the crunching again, and again and again. This afternoon, Dominic Grieve announced that he would ‘accept the government’s difficulty’ on the matter of a meaningful vote and ‘support it’. He was speaking in the Commons shortly before a division was supposed to be called on this matter, and not long after the government had offered a compromise. That compromise involved David Davis issuing a Written Ministerial Statement which clarifies that the Speaker can decide whether or not a motion issued by the government using

So the Tories have, as The Spectator predicted last month, announced an extra £384 million a week for the National Health Service – something Theresa May was perfectly happy to sell this morning as being the ‘Brexit dividend’ that Boris Johnson had been pressuring her for. This is an odd choice, given it is impossible to know what the real ‘Brexit dividend’ will be when we haven’t yet left the European Union. Indeed, May couldn’t say very much at all about how this extra NHS money will be funded: that’s presumably because no Prime Minister wants to tell voters how much more tax they’ll be paying, regardless of whether that

How embarrassing for Tory MPs: one of their own has managed to block the unblockable: a bill creating a new criminal offence of ‘upskirting’. Plenty of Conservatives have turned on the culprit, Christopher Chope, both in WhatsApp groups and in public, to show that they do not have the same views as him. To be fair to Chope (and it is hard, especially for a magazine that prefers its motto of ‘firm but unfair’), he wasn’t suggesting that upskirting was in some way OK. He is part of a group of MPs with the odd hobby of objecting to Private Members’ Bills on principle because they don’t think that MPs

Given this morning’s ministerial resignation, all looked set fair for an afternoon of high drama in the Commons over the EU Withdrawal Bill. In the end, though, the drama was rather quieter, with the government managing to persuade the Remainer rebels to stand down – temporarily – on the matter of a ‘meaningful vote’. Chief Whip Julian Smith spent the majority of the debate buzzing about the Chamber, consulting with ministers and backbenchers and also beckoning MPs out of the room in little groups. It is since clear that Smith was negotiating the compromise that Solicitor General Robert Buckland started offering during the debate. Initially, Buckland offered the rebels ‘structured

Buoyed by its huge popularity in the opinion polls and the fact that it is managing Brexit so well, the government has decided to further endear itself to the voters by shooting hundreds of thousands of badgers. Its cull of these creatures, previously limited to a few specific areas (where it has been staggeringly unsuccessful), is to be rolled out nationwide. This, then, is what we might call a Hard Brocksit strategy and it was revealed late on a bank holiday weekend in the hope that nobody would notice. But we did notice. It is not known yet how exactly these animals will be despatched. Previously the hunters have sprinkled

Amid all the argument in Westminster, everyone can agree on one thing: the country is bitterly divided. The 52:48 divisions of the Brexit referendum are still there, and possibly even more entrenched than during the campaign itself. The result hasn’t been followed by a period of national healing — quite the opposite. Even the cabinet appears to be split along Leave and Remain lines. You would have to go back a quarter of a century to find a time when the two main parties were so far apart. The public, however, shows no sign of deciding which path it wants to choose. The general election resulted in a hung Parliament,

It’s a bit mean to accuse the Tories of cynical expectations management, as Jeremy Corbyn has just done. Their panic was quite genuine. I’ve spoken to a great many Tories over the last few weeks, and none would have been so bold as to predict today’s results. Rallings & Thrasher had expected the Tories to lose 75 seats in aggregate, and so far they’re about flat. Given the awful time that Theresa May has had recently, it’s not a bad result. It was, as Tory chairman Brandon Lewis has said, a ‘reasonable’ night. But the fact that such a close result is described as ‘reasonable’ shows how far things have

The Home Secretary cut a solemn figure in the Commons today as she attempted to clear up the Windrush immigration mess. After a weekend of torrid headlines and claims the Home Office knew of the problem long before they acted, Amber Rudd tried to make amends. Rudd apologised again before attempting to spread the blame – claiming the current situation (by which Caribbean migrants who came to the UK between 1948 and 1973 have wrongly been threatened with deportation) was the result of successive governments introducing measures to combat illegal immigration. She acknowledged the ‘unintended and devastating’ impact these errors had had on the families and promised speedy compensation. Rudd

Recently, a rather agitated Tory MP came to me and asked why on earth his party wasn’t talking more about pensions. It was an important message to voters, he argued, managing to stay agitated about an issue that normally sends people off to sleep. This MP thought that highlighting the importance of a sound economic policy to public sector workers’ pensions would be a good way of persuading them that the Conservatives are on their side. He has a good point: the Tories could do with working out how to talk to public sector employees, given their current tendency to vote Labour, and given the importance that many of those

Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing violent crime on Tuesday, Boris Johnson took issue with what the Prime Minister regards as one of her key legacies: the dramatic reduction in stop and search. He argued that more stop and search was needed to deal with a spike in crime. What went unsaid — but what every-one around the cabinet table was acutely aware of — was that this was the opposite of Mrs May’s approach as Home Secretary. The exchange was pointed. ‘They irritate each other,’ one cabinet minister observed to me afterwards. They also have

Sometimes it is the little details that tell you everything you need to know. So when, as Politics Home revealed yesterday, the chief whip meets Tory backbenchers to assuage their concerns over the transitional arrangements for the fishing industry as the UK edges its way out of the EU and tells them not to worry because, look, “It’s not like the fishermen are going to vote Labour” you know there is something deeply wrong at the heart of the government.  This, remember, is what passes for the government’s intelligence unit. And with leaders like this, who needs enemies? It is not evident whether the ignorance is more startling than the

It’s been a rough few months for the Conservatives so last night’s launch of Freer made a welcome change. Cabinet ministers and MPs gathered to celebrate the new initiative intended to promote a freer society and a freer economy. Or, Liz Truss’s leadership ambitions, depending which way you look at it. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury – and rising social media star – gave a lively speech at the Conrad hotel to kickstart the project. Truss entertained the crowd with anecdotes from her time as a young Conservative, plans to win over younger voters and criticism of a ‘po-faced’ opposition: Truss’s early years: ‘They don’t want to be told what

Today the Conservatives gather for the party’s Spring Forum. The annual two-day event is intended to rally the party as they prepare for the year ahead. However, with troublesome local elections around the corner, it won’t be all cheer. Happily, the Conservatives’ No 1 celebrity supporter has found the time to join them… at least in spirit. Jungle queen Georgia – ‘Toff’ – Toffolo has spoken to the crowd via video link: With Conservative chiefs previously blocking proposals to bring Toff into the fold, it seems that the pro-Toff wing of the party has won.