David cameron

Downing Street’s mini-shuffle announced this morning to coincide with a joint Cameron Fallon visit to a green car plant is intriguing. Having made some inquiries, it seems that the aim was to move John Hayes out of DECC, where he was still clashing spectacularly with the Secretary of State Ed Davey and alarming some in the industry, and Michael Fallon in. Everything else followed from that. Fallon’s additional responsibilities are yet another sign of the high regard Number 10 holds him in. Fallon might be culturally, and politically, quite different from most of those in Number 10 but they have come to see him as their safest pair of hands.

Here is David Cameron’s problem in a nutshell. During his immigration speech on Monday he said: ‘Put simply when it comes to illegal migrants, we’re rolling up that red carpet and showing them the door.’ Just two days later it was once again made clear that the red carpet is firmly in place and no such door in sight. Abu Qatada came to the UK illegally on a forged passport in 1993. He is wanted in Jordan to face terrorism charges. Abu Qatada is an illegal migrant. Yet he ‘cannot’ be shown the door. The government needs to realise one thing: that as long as we remain a signatory of

Theresa May has announced that the UK Border Agency is to be abolished.  In an unscheduled statement to the House of Commons, she described UKBA as ‘a troubled organisation’ with a ‘closed, secretive and defensive culture’. She said that the agency’s size, lack of transparency, IT systems, policy remit and legal framework ensured that its ‘performance was not good enough’. May declared that the agency will be split in two. One arm will deal with immigration and visa services, while the other tackles enforcement. May will also bring both arms back directly under the control of ministers, reversing the arms-length policy established by Labour in 2008. May also called for

David Cameron has just delivered his end of term address to the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers. The Prime Minister made little news apart from going out of his way to praise Maria Hutchings, making clear he had no truck with efforts to blame her for the party’s poor performance in the Eastleigh by-election. He stuck to the same messages that he had when addressing the parliamentary party the other week, one backbencher left complaining ‘we’ve heard it all before.’ But what should cause some concern Number 10 is how few MPs turned up to hear the Prime Minister. The audience was estimated at between 80 and 100, less than

It’s not just Nick Clegg who is having a good long think about immigration at the moment: David Cameron is as well. He’s got a big immigration speech on Monday, which shows how spooked the parties are by UKIP that they feel they need to at least address the topic, even if they insist that they’re not adopting Nigel Farage’s terms of debate. As he writes his speech, Cameron will probably have in mind the looming problem of how many Romanian and Bulgarian migrants are coming to this country when transitional controls lift at the end of 2013. If he doesn’t, he should, because that backbench debate from Mark Pritchard

Let’s have a breather. It seemed like a truce had been tacitly declared between the party leaders at today’s PMQs. Instead of going on the offensive, Cameron and Miliband turned their solemn and unified gaze towards the sorrows of the eastern Mediterranean. Miliband asked about Syria. Cameron used the opportunity to take a pot-shot at the EU, still agonising over the arms embargo. Their sluggish and dithersome talks, he said, reminded him of the hesitation that caused needless bloodshed in Bosnia. Cameron wants the rebels to get tooled up pronto and to finish off the appalling Assad regime. He called it ‘hateful’ three times, just be sure. Next the EU

A senior Number 10 source tells me that David Cameron was awake and available throughout the Leveson negotiations. They also point out that Nick Clegg left the meeting at 11.30pm, before the crucial business was done. On the Hacked Off point, they insist that Oliver Letwin ‘very politely’ asked them to leave the room for the sensitive part of the discussions. I’m told that Cameron then chaired a 6am conference call on the result of the negotiations where he declared himself satisfied. He feels that he’s avoided a press law. Downing Street is bristling at the idea that they got the worst end of the deal. They argue that Hacked

The Tories know that if the next election is a referendum on the current government, it’ll be very difficult for them to win. But if it is a choice between them and a Labour government, then they are in with a good chance. David Cameron’s speech to his party’s Spring Forum today ends with a list of what a Labour government would do in its first 100 days in office. It shows how keen the Tories are to frame the next election as a choice, not a referendum, that Cameron is prepared to publicly contemplate defeat to do this. Interestingly, there’s no mnetion of the Liberal Democrats or the coalition