Conservative party

A few months ago, Britain’s most senior ambassadors gathered in the Foreign Office to compare notes on Brexit. There was one problem in particular that they did not know how to confront. As one ambassador put it, the English–language publications in their cities (it would be rude to name them) had become rabidly anti-Brexit: keen to portray a country having a nervous and economic breakdown. Their boss, the Foreign Secretary, later summed it up: many believe that Brexit was the whole country flicking a V-sign from the white cliffs of Dover. The job of his ambassadors is to correct this awful image. But how? Their plight has not been made

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.

The single most important domestic policy decision that the Conservatives must take is what to do about public spending. After the snap election went so wrong last year, many Tories rushed to blame ‘austerity’. Gavin Barwell, now Theresa May’s chief of staff, said this was one of the principal reasons he had lost his Croydon Central seat. Even the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, admitted that the public was weary of the long slog to balance the books. This belief — that the public has had enough of austerity — explains why the Tories aren’t behaving as governments traditionally do. Normally, they make tough fiscal choices in the early years of a

There are many things the Conservative party needs to do before it is election fit – whether local or national. There’s securing a good Brexit deal, building more homes and repairing the damage done in the snap election – to name a few. As I write in today’s i paper, one of the big things brains at CCHQ are currently working on is firing up the party’s campaign machine. While the Tories don’t have a problem attracting party donors, they do have a problem getting people out door-knocking. One of the many missteps Theresa May made last year was catching her own party’s campaign machine off guard with her decision to

It’s fair to say that the Conservatives’ attempts to use the allegations about Jeremy Corbyn’s links with a Czechoslovakian spy have had mixed results. The high point came when Theresa May managed to produce a joke about blank cheques and Czechs at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, and everything else has been competing to be the low point, from Steve Baker’s deeply awful interview on the Daily Politics, to Ben Bradley receiving a letter from Corbyn’s lawyers. Perhaps there could have been a slightly less ham-fisted way of engaging with the story. Or perhaps it would be better for the Tory party’s dignity, if nothing else, if it left these

Theresa May’s MPs are now constantly pressuring her to come up with a ‘vision’ of what she wants to do, whether it be on Brexit or on the domestic front. Those who are more sympathetic to the Prime Minister’s caution, though, argue that her vision is constrained by the parliamentary arithmetic. Why try something that just isn’t going to get through the House of Commons? One answer would be that May wouldn’t lose all that much by trying and failing than she thinks. As I wrote last week, she is currently more in danger of weakening her authority by not trying at all. But another is that the Prime Minister

It’s not a good sign when a party finishes the week with MPs making the same complaints as they did at the start. Yet that is where the Conservatives are now, with the malcontents still fretting that there is no sense of vision or authority from the leadership. One thing that has changed is that the Tory party now seems rather more noticeably split over how MPs should be behaving. There is the camp who say, either privately or publicly, that Theresa May should go because things are only going to get worse under her leadership. But then there are others who are furious with anyone agitating for a change

Despite having to answer questions about whether or not she is a ‘quitter’, Theresa May must be reasonably glad that she’s got a few days’ escape from her domestic agenda while she is visiting China. But being away does mean that she has left her party to stew without her, and it’s not clear that those around her are doing much to calm things down. Over the past few days, I’ve spoken to a range of Conservative backbenchers and ministers who either privately or publicly hold concerns about the way May is leading (or isn’t, as the case may be). All agree that things are rather critical for the Prime

Can Theresa May really solve the latest crisis affecting her leadership? Previously, her survival owed a great deal to Conservative backbenchers, who vowed to protect her against a badly-behaved Cabinet, but everyone is restless now. So what can she do? The Prime Minister isn’t going to have a personality transplant, but this doesn’t mean that she is destined to continue doing absolutely nothing. She may never be able to conjure up small talk with her own MPs, but she has in the past shown that she can make bold decisions (the snap election was, admittedly, a bad example of this) and have a reforming zeal. The absence of any activity

Since Georgia ‘Toff’ Toffolo won I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, the Conservatives have been left with a dilemma over whether to utilise their celebrity supporter. A proud Conservative, Toff kindly volunteered to utilise her million followers for the party only for brains at CCHQ to block any such move over concerns she’s ‘too posh to win over Labour supporters’. Although the Conservative consensus has since changed in favour of bringing her into the tent, it seems it may be a case of too little, too late. In an interview with Sunday Times Style magazine, Toff comes across a little bit disgruntled about her recent interactions with the

‘We take the view that while things are bloody awful, we don’t want to risk making things worse.’ That is how one senior Tory backbencher sums up the mood of the parliamentary party. No one disputes that the Conservatives are in the doldrums. There is no wind in the government’s sails. No. 10 doesn’t know where it wants to take the country. This general sense of drift is interrupted by the occasional squall. The latest storm was caused by Nick Boles’s criticism of Theresa May. On Friday evening, the former housing minister took to Twitter to lament the lack of a radical government agenda and to tell the Prime Minister

With the new Tory vice-chairman for youth, Ben Bradley, currently making headlines for ill-judged blog posts from 2012, it’s safe to say that Theresa May’s plan to revamp CCHQ by appointing 13 MPs as vice-chairs, hasn’t gone entirely to plan. However, one vice chairman is determined to make a success of her brief – no matter the cost. Step forward Kemi Badenoch. The MP for Saffron Walden has been put in charge of selecting Conservative candidates for the 2022 general election. However, in this week’s edition of The House magazine, Badenoch reveals that her first task consisted of knocking a white public schoolboy off the list. Only it wasn’t any white

If you thought the main fallout from Theresa May’s reshuffle was last week, think again: over the past few days the Conservatives have been appointing their parliamentary private secretaries, which means the reshuffle has only just about ground to a halt. These PPS jobs are unpaid but count as government payroll, meaning the MP in question must be loyal to the government as well as carrying a minister’s bag around. The problem is that not every ambitious MP can be made a PPS. Worse, not every PPS can be made a minister, which means that there are a fair few Tory backbenchers and PPSs swirling around who are feeling a