Conservative party

What is Michael Gove up to? The Environment Secretary seems to be on a tree-hugging rampage at the moment, announcing a new green measure every week. Not content with unveiling the Tories’ 25 year environment plan last week, Gove has given an interview to today’s Sunday Times in which he attacks the water companies for using tax havens. The water companies are interesting enough, given Jeremy Corbyn has called for them to be renationalised. But what’s really revealing about what Gove’s overall mission is comes later in the interview, when he says: ‘Brexit creates opportunities, particularly in my area. Brexit could be the catalyst for some of the biggest, boldest

Ben Bradley had an inkling that his first week back at work wasn’t going to be an ordinary one when he received a text at 7am on Monday. The MP for Mansfield was summoned to 10 Downing Street for 11.30am with no explanation as to why. Given that this was the day Theresa May was expected to reshuffle her Cabinet, it was an odd request for an MP who had been in Parliament for less than a year, after taking the seat from Labour in the snap election. ‘I thought if it’s health, I’m not sure if I want it,’ Bradley jokes. He did, however, begin to put two and

With Theresa May’s reshuffle now complete, a consensus is forming that it’s been a rather underwhelming rearranging of the deck chairs. All the big beasts remain in place and some junior ministers appear to have been moved from their briefs just for the sake of moving them. Matters weren’t helped by a shambolic roll out which saw Chris Grayling falsely announced on Twitter as the new party chairman – and reports of disarray with ministers refusing to budge thanks to hacks tweeting the time each had spent in Downing Street. It’s clear that no-one in No 10 has mastered the art of completing a reshuffle in the digital age. As

Brexit could split the Tory party. So many people wrote articles arguing this before and after David Cameron called the EU referendum, but it was generally assumed that the split would involve disgruntled eurosceptics claiming they had been betrayed after Britain voted to stay in the bloc after all. It was also generally assumed that the split would at least involve something quite serious. But today MPs are locked in a war of words over whether or not they should get a ‘meaningful’ vote on the final Brexit deal. Those in favour defeated the government last night: Theresa May’s first serious Commons defeat since the snap election. Stephen Hammond was

In the midst of the confusion over whether the UK and Ireland have agreed for Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union, Tory MPs have been invited to a party meeting this afternoon at 4. Some backbenchers who are particularly interested in scrutinising Brexit had requested that they be given the same sort of off-the-record briefings on policy and developments as are offered on a regular basis by the Ministry of Defence, so this may well be one of those meetings. But the presence of Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, suggests that it’s not just an off-the-record update from Brexit minister Steve Baker. The chances are that

Vicky Atkins was the first MP from the 2015 intake to become a minister, and had been preparing assiduously for doing so. She asked loyal questions of the Prime Minister and beavered away on the Home Affairs Committee and the joint committee examining the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill. But it was obvious that this very capable backbencher wanted to join the government – and that she was very likely to do well as a minister. Today’s Home Office questions marked her first outing on the frontbench in the Commons – and therefore the first glimpse of what someone who has been auditioning to be a minister is going to be

The Budget this Wednesday represents this government’s best, and perhaps its last, chance to regain the political initiative. Ever since the launch of the Tory election manifesto, Theresa May has been buffeted by the political weather. The past few weeks have been particularly bad. It hasn’t rained on her but poured, leaving her in urgent need of a Budget boost. Already this month, two cabinet ministers have had to resign. A third — who happens to be Theresa May’s most important ally — remains under Cabinet Office investigation. The Brexit optimism that followed her Florence speech is ebbing away. The sense that European leaders would declare in December that ‘sufficient

Dealing with a hung parliament was never going to be easy, but no one quite foresaw the decay which now seems to have set in to Theresa May’s government. The best that can be said for the Prime Minister is that the past week’s events have weakened her rivals within the Conservative party. No one is talking up Priti Patel as a potential rival any more and a challenge from Boris Johnson is now highly unlikely, following his loose words about a British woman incarcerated in Iran — which the Iranian regime may use as a pretext to increase her sentence. Like John Major, the Prime Minister benefits from the