John Connolly is News Editor of The Spectator
The incoming prime minister will have a lot on his plate when he finally strolls into Number 10 in July – with a looming Brexit deadline on the horizon and only a threadbare majority in the Commons to deliver a deal or no-deal Brexit. But he will have even less time to relax than first
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are through to the final stage of the Tory leadership contest, after the results of the fifth round of voting were announced this evening. Michael Gove has been knocked out of the competition, after falling just two votes short (75 vs 77). Cries of foul play have followed, with suspicion
And then there were three. After the latest round of voting in the Tory leadership contest this afternoon, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid has been knocked out of the competition, leaving only Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt in the race to become the next prime minister. Boris Johnson, unsurprisingly, came top of the
Earlier today, Rory Stewart said that he was in talks with Michael Gove’s campaign team, to see if the Environment Secretary would drop out and combine forces with him to take on Boris Johnson. In the end though, it was Stewart who was forced to walk the plank – with even fewer votes than he
So much for Boris Johnson running away with this early. After the second round of voting amongst Tory MPs, he’s still easily ahead. But the other votes are spread so evenly that no fewer than five of the candidates have made it through to the third round of the contest. Only Dominic Raab has been knocked
MPs have voted to reject, by 309 votes to 298, an opposition day motion which would have attempted to stop Britain leaving without a deal on 31 October. The motion, put forward by Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, Oliver Letwin and other representatives of the opposition parties, attempted to carve out a day in the parliamentary
You would not normally expect a Tory leadership campaign launch to take place at a comedy-festival venue in the trendy Southbank of London. Nor would you expect it to be situated in a small circus-tent, with spotlights beaming on an elevated stage in the centre. Nonetheless, Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart strolled out onto the
One of the major problems facing the less well-known Tory leadership contenders is this: how do you stand out to Conservative members and MPs when there are so many other candidates? With ten contenders still fighting to be prime minister, even Cabinet members seeking to boost their publicity have been forced to rely on gimmicks,
It’s official: the Tory leadership contest to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister has now begun. At 5pm today, the nominations closed for candidates to enter the leadership race before hustings and the first round of voting takes place this week. In order to narrow down an already crowded field, each candidate had to receive
After a long night of counting, and an even longer campaign, the Labour party have been declared the winners of the Peterborough by-election. Lisa Forbes, the Labour party candidate, will replace Fiona Onasanya who was ousted from the seat earlier this year after she was convicted of perverting the course of justice. Forbes won 10,483
Arguably, the past six months could not have gone any better for the Liberal Democrats. At the beginning of the year, the party seemed cast adrift as voters continued to support the two main parties, and the newly formed Independent Group looked ready to usurp them as the party of Remain in the UK. But
There’s only one day to go until the Peterborough by-election, which decides who will replace the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya, and yet it’s still all to play for in this marginal seat. Under normal circumstances, with the last Labour MP found guilty of perverting the course of justice and thrown out by her constituents,
‘We’re going to give this everything we’ve got until 10 o’clock on Thursday.’ There’s only two days to go until the Peterborough by-election, and it’s fair to say that Brexit party candidate Mike Greene is determined to win. In his campaign headquarters in Peterborough, the businessman, Secret Millionaire and former Tory supporter revealed he hadn’t
Last night, there was shock across Westminster as a new poll by YouGov asking people how they would vote in the next general election showed that the Lib Dems were the most popular party in the UK. Of those asked, 24 per cent said they would vote for the Remain party, followed by 22 per
If all political careers end in failure, as Enoch Powell once said, how can you possibly explain the remarkable resurrection of Vince Cable last night? The Lib Dem leader, who has announced that he will be stepping down on 23 July, achieved a historic result for his party, securing 20.3 per cent of the UK
Theresa May has announced that she will be stepping down as Prime Minister on 7 June. In a statement outside 10 Downing Street, May said that although it was a ‘deep regret’ that she had not been able to deliver Brexit, she had failed three times and: ‘So I am today announcing that I will
Fiona Onasanya, the former Labour politician convicted of perverting the course of justice, has been ousted as the MP for Peterborough, after the required number of constituents signed a recall petition to remove her from office. A by-election will now be fought in the constituency on 6 June. For Onasanya to be removed 6,967 people
The other day, as I walked with my partner through Notting Hill, we came across a shop which deserves to be visited just as an experience, or perhaps an education, for people not yet aware how extremely silly the 21st century can be. We had heard strange and interesting things about Goop, an online store
On Friday, in an inconspicuous metal finishing factory on an industrial estate in Coventry, Nigel Farage officially launched his new Brexit Party, and set out its strategy ahead of the European Parliament elections on 23 May. The message of the day was clear: the people, especially Leave voters, have been let down by the Westminster
After MPs failed to reach a consensus on the kind of Brexit they wanted for a second time on Monday, the parliamentarians led by Oliver Letwin who are seeking to take control of the Brexit process have changed their strategy. Instead of having another series of indicative votes on Wednesday as originally planned, the backbenchers
