Conservative party

Grammar Schools. Now there’s a potent pair of words. Mention them, and genial conversation will instantly shift into awkward silence or seething torrents of passion. In either case, reasoned argument is in short supply. Yet now that Theresa May seems committed to overturning Labour’s ban on opening new grammar schools, discussion is vital. But instead of rehashing the same arguments in favour of academically selective schools, or raking over the same problems they can cause, it’s important instead to look carefully at the evidence about whether grammar schools really do promote ‘social mobility’. One of the major themes of anti-grammar salvos is that they don’t. And to make this point, the crudest approach is typically

What drove Theresa May to break off from a trade trip to the Middle East to chuck a half-brick at the National Trust over some Easter bunnies? Maybe Dame Helen Ghosh, the Trust’s Director General, knows. When the two worked together at the Home Office, they got along like a house on fire: there were flames, some screaming and eventually someone (Dame Helen, as it happens) left the building through a window. Given that history, it’s probably unwise to suggest that Mrs May might learn something from Dame Helen and the Trust instead of battering them, but I’ll give it a go anyway. The lesson is about members. The Trust

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party is coming to resemble a drunk trying to get home on a bike. Most of the time he just pushes it along, but occasionally he mounts the saddle and whirls into action — only to find himself swiftly spread-eagled on the road. Take next month’s local elections. Corbyn launched his party’s campaign trying to bemoan the state of Britain. There are plenty of statistics which he could have trotted out to depict a country underperforming on living standards, debt levels and social mobility. But he chose to cite a supposed decline in life expectancy — which is demonstrably and famously wrong. Life expectancy

Theresa May has once again ruled out a snap general election but that doesn’t mean the temptation to hold one will go away. Today’s ICM poll shows why: the Tories, on 45 per cent, have a 19-point lead over Labour. This pushes the Government’s poll lead up by three points following a fortnight dominated by Philip Hammond’s Budget debacle, his subsequent u-turn over hiking national insurance rates and Theresa May coming under pressure from the SNP. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge of the Labour party, the usual rules that a government would be punished for a bungled budget need not apply. In fact even after a raft of dismal headlines for Philip Hammond,

After Philip Hammond delivered his Budget last week, he went to speak to a meeting of Conservative backbench MPs. Several were deeply alarmed about his tearing up of their manifesto pledge not to raise National Insurance. One asked him how sure he was about all this. Would they find themselves going out to defend this tax rise to their constituents, only to find him abandoning the policy later? No, the Chancellor replied, he would not change his mind. This tax rise was the centrepiece of his Budget, and it could not be scrapped. He was not for turning. For a Chancellor to abandon his main Budget policy within a week is nothing

The Tory rebellion over the tax hike on the self-employed isn’t abating, it is intensifying as I say in The Sun this morning. As one Cabinet Minister tells me, Tory MPs ‘left the Budget feeling a little bit concerned. They’ve seen the papers, and thought this isn’t good. After the emails and constituency stuff, there’ll be even more nervous’. One Tory backbencher, who is a good judge of the mood of the parliamentary party, says ‘People are not happy at all. Somethings’ got to change’. But Philip Hammond is digging in. He is ‘absolutely determined not to retreat on this’ according to one Cabinet ally of his. He has, I’m

I was on the Question Time panel last night, and suspected that the issue of National Insurance might crop up – and that Karen Bradley, the Culture Secretary, would be sent out to defend the indefensible. Like all ministers, she has to repeat Philip Hammond’s bizarre claim that the Tories had not broken a manifesto pledge. That when they repeatedly promised not to raise National Insurance they meant only part of the National Insurance. The 2015 Tory manifesto contained no such caveat (I brought a copy along to the studio) and it’s impossible for any minister to claim otherwise. Hammond has already been accused of ‘lying’ – a strong word,

Given that Jeremy Corbyn barely seemed to notice Philip Hammond’s Budget blunder, it’s unlikely the Chancellor will be too worried about Labour’s response to the National Insurance rates row. He will be troubled, though, by the rumblings on the backbenches behind him. The prospect of a Tory revolt is now very much on the cards; 18 Conservative MPs – including former leader Iain Duncan Smith and Tory whip Guto Bebb – have publicly spoken out against the policy. Because Tory MPs were voted in on a manifesto pledge not to raise NI contributions – and will inevitably be getting it in the neck from angry constituents over the coming days –

There is a very big winner from today’s budget. Not adults in social care, not schools, but Ukip. Philip Hammond has handed a huge political opportunity: to position itself as the party of the self-employed: the taxi driver, the brickie, the plumber, the small shop-owner. These used to be natural Tories. From today, with Hammond imposing a two per cent extra tax on their income, and breaking a manifesto commitment in the process, they will be looking for a new political home. No wonder Suzanne Evans was tweeting about the change within seconds of it being made. The Treasury’s argument for raising National Insurance Contributions on the self-employed is that

Gerald Kaufman, who has died aged 86, was instrumental in saving the Labour Party, back when the Labour Party was something that could still be saved. It was Kaufman who pithily pegged the 1983 manifesto as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. He knew the phrase would hang around the far-left and dog any attempt to dodge responsibility for the calamity.  In his heart, he was a radical, but he parted ways with the 1980s Labour left in its mush-headed confusion of ends and means. The mush is now party policy but Kaufman expended considerable wit keeping it at bay during the Kinnock years. A multilateralist, the former Daily Mirror journalist

Even now, even following their historic thrashing in Copeland, Labourites still cannot face the truth. Sure, there are Twitter tears this morning. I’m sure the vibe in Corbyn’s office is skittish and fearful. There’ll be an explosion in ‘What now for Labour?’ articles. But they still do not get the yawning, abyssal depth of the crisis they face. They still don’t see that their party isn’t merely in trouble; it’s finished, over, kaput. Labour is a zombie party, a Frankenstein creature patched together from dead slogans and middle-class anti-Tory angst; a living-dead entity utterly incapable of making a connection with the living. Most Labourites have responded to the loss of

Modern British history is largely a history of Tory rule and misrule. The Tories governed Britain from 1886 until 1905 with only the Gladstone/Rosebery minority administration of 1892 to 1895 breaking their dominance. They were in power every year from 1916 until 1945, either on their own or in coalition, except for 11 months in 1924 and from 1929 to 1931, when minority Labour governments clung to office. The Tories governed on their own from 1951 to 1964, and from 1979 to 1997. They governed first in coalition and then on their own from 2010 until…Well, think of a number then double it. Opponents who know that the Conservatives are