James Forsyth

What is being said by senior figures in the Labour party about anti-Semitism at the moment is as depressing as it is jaw dropping. On the Today programme this morning, the Labour MP Rupa Huq—who went to Cambridge University—tried to play down the whole Naz Shah issue. She argued that sharing these kind of vile

Naz Shah has now been suspended by the Labour party over the anti-Semitic comments she made before she became an MP. The statement from the Labour party says that Shah has been suspended by ‘mutual agreement’ between her and Corbyn. This comes just after Buzzfeed alleged that Shah’s apology for her remarks had been toned down

One of the worst kept secrets at Westminster is that Theresa May has a distinctly low opinion of Boris Johnson. As Home Secretary she has had more dealings with the Mayor of London than most Cabinet ministers, and there is clearly no love lost between the pair. When she decided to turn down his request

Downing Street is more confident than it has ever been that the EU referendum will be won. It is not just Barack Obama’s full-throated warning against Brexit that is responsible for this, but—as I say in my Sun column this morning—the sense that they have got the argument back onto their home turf of the

[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/260046943-the-spectator-podcast-obamas-eu-intervention-the-pms.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the PM’s hollow victory” startat=511] Listen [/audioplayer]‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won,’ wrote the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo. David Cameron may well feel the same about referendums on 24 June. The EU debate is already taking a

Today’s PMQs was a reminder that the old fashioned approach of detailed, forensic questioning on a single topic works best. Jeremy Corbyn delivered his best performance as leader of the opposition today, questioning David Cameron on why all schools will have to become academies. He skilfully exploited Tory splits over the issue. The relative silence

One of the more significant constitutional innovations of recent times is the assumption that the government must get parliament’s permission before committing British forces to military action. This precedent, set with the 2003 Iraq vote, has been upheld by this government; it famously resulted in Britain not bombing Syria in 2013 following the use of

The US President flies into town next week to wish the Queen a happy 90th birthday and to encourage Britain to stay in the EU. Obama’s will be the most high profile, foreign intervention in this referendum yet. His message will be that it is in the interests of Britain, the US and the West

The year 2019 seems a long way away. Whether or not David Cameron can stay in office until then is this week’s hot topic of conversation among Tories. They wonder how many more weeks like the last two the Prime Minister can endure. Before Parliament broke up for Easter, the view among Cameron loyalists was

This time last week, you would have expected PMQs to be rowdy and extremely difficult for David Cameron. After all, he was on the back foot on tax and steel. But today’s session was actually remarkably dry as Jeremy Corbyn asked worthy and technical questions on tax and Britain’s overseas territories. Strikingly, Cameron felt confident

Yet again, David Cameron has reason to be grateful for the quality of the opposition facing him. First of all, Jeremy Corbyn took until Cameron’s statement to release his own tax return, meaning that journalists were studying that as much as his response in the House of Commons. Second, Corbyn’s own response was long on

This hasn’t been a good week for the government. As I say in my Sun column today, it has been oddly off the pace in its response to Tata’s decision to sell off its UK steel plants. We have had the absurd sight of the Business Secretary flying to Australia and then turning round and

Most MPs greet the parliamentary recess with a sense of relief. But Conservatives are welcoming this Easter break like the bell at the end of a boxing match. They are exhausted, tempers must be cooled and they now have a fortnight to think about how best to stop their split over the EU referendum becoming

Sajid Javid is the driest and most Thatcherite member of the government. So, it is no surprise that he is — rightly, to my mind — rejecting calls for the nationalisation of the steel industry following Tata’s announcement that it plans to sell its UK steel-making business. But the steel issue has now got caught

Early on in his leadership, David Cameron was clear that he wanted the Tories to stop ‘banging on about Europe.’ But Europe—or more specifically, the EU referendum—is now dominating Cameron’s time so much that he is neglecting domestic policy. I report in my Sun column today that one of those intimately involved in the disability

On Sunday at noon, few would have predicted that Tory MPs would have come out of PMQs cheered and unified. But thanks to The Times’ Sam Coates revealing this morning that the Labour leader’s office have ranked their MPs from core group to hostile, David Cameron won this session hands down and cheered up Tory MPs