Conservative party

If ministers are going to offer any concessions in the row over Universal Credit, they’ve decided to keep them back for a little while longer. This afternoon MPs have been holding an emergency debate on the reform, with Employment Minister Damian Hinds defending the reform and the roll-out, rather than suggesting that the government is going to accept the suggestions of Tory and Labour MPs on delayed payments. The emergency debate was called after Conservative MPs were whipped to abstain on Labour’s Opposition Day debate on the benefit reform last week. I reported after that vote that many Tories were peeved about this; either because they were in marginal seats

On the Andrew Marr show yesterday, the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid suggested that the government should ‘sensibly borrow more money’ and take advantage of the ‘record low-levels’ of interest rates in order to tackle the UK’s housing crisis. He added that the lack of affordable housing was the ‘biggest barrier to social progress in our country today’ and that such measures would go some way to re-balancing social inequality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMLiFO3CCI0&t=1s Javid’s remarks also highlighted another crisis: that of the identity of the Tory party. It is true that the UK currently faces a severe housing shortage with the number of homes being built falling far short of the 200,000 target

The talk of the Commons tearoom today is last night’s Opposition Day vote on Universal Credit. This is unusual: Opposition Day votes are non-binding and have recently been used largely for Labour to bang on about pet projects rather than hold the government’s feet to the fire. But the Opposition has sharpened up its act, and used growing Conservative concerns about the roll-out of the new benefit to good effect in yesterday’s debate. The whips had already decided that one of the ways they could make these Opposition Day debates even less politically powerful when they are operating in a minority government is to instruct all Tory MPs to abstain,

‘Worst week ever’ is one of those phrases that journalists are, perhaps, too quick to use. Alastair Campbell once quipped that if you added up all Tony Blair’s worst weeks, you got a full year. The real worry for the Tories, however, is not that last week was Theresa May’s worst ever, but that it represented the new normal. Even inside Downing Street, there are those who worry that leadership plotting and the like will continue until Mrs May leaves the building. They worry that while they are strong enough to repel the plotters — as they did so effectively this time — she isn’t powerful enough to take back

Grant Shapps isn’t the most popular man in the Tory party at the moment, but at least he has a friend to keep him company this evening. By sheer coincidence, Andrew Mitchell has long been booked to speak at the Welwyn Hatfield MP’s Conservative Association annual dinner tonight. But Mitchell is very keen not to appear to be a fellow plotter, having given a speech at the Cambridge Union last night in which he praised the Prime Minister’s ‘courage of high order’ for completing ‘what was an important and interesting speech in impossible circumstances, and I think all of us in politics should recognise that’. Speaking to Coffee House, Mitchell

Tory conference is yawning on with neither furious fights nor much evidence that anyone knows how to fix the party’s problems. The most energetic bit of it so far has been Theresa May’s round of media interviews this morning, in which the Prime Minister appeared to have been turned on to 1.5x speed as she nervously gabbled her answers and tried to sound happy. Other spots of colour come from non-MPs, such as Ruth Davidson. The hall isn’t packed, the atmosphere flat, and members and MPs look bewildered and miserable. The Tories are starting to resemble Labour at the end of its last spell in government. The party was exhausted.

Of all the difficulties Theresa May faces, the importance of denying the truth may be the most acute. There are certain things a prime minister cannot say; certain fabrications that must be insisted upon because political expedience cannot withstand too much daylight. Mrs May, then, must pretend her position is secure and that, contrary to the expectations of her party and the country, that she will lead the Conservative party at the next general election, whenever that may be. If this makes her seem modestly ridiculous then so be it; the alternatives are even worse. Even so, some fictions would be better abandoned. Last week the prime minister was asked

Earlier this week Nick Timothy and Tim Montgomerie had a short spat on Twitter about the reasons for the Conservative party’s failure to win a majority in June’s general election. Nick Timothy tweeted that: ‘We had a small majority and a divided cabinet, party and country’ https://twitter.com/NickJTimothy/status/912615649322717184 When other things are equal, people are generally less likely to vote for parties that are seen as divided. If the Conservatives had been seen as divided in the run-up to the election, that might have hampered their chances of doing well. In fact, the Conservatives were seen as one of the most united parties. Whatever the reasons for the party’s failure to

Even Damian Green seems to find it odd that he’s the second most important person in the government. When asked, the First Secretary of State plays down his influence — in fact, he plays down most things. When David Cameron wanted the Tories’ immigration policies out of the spotlight, he put Green in charge of them. And when Theresa May wanted someone she could trust to be her deputy after the disastrous general election, she chose one of the few people in the cabinet whom she can call a friend. The pair have known each other since Oxford, and now talk face-to-face every day. When we meet in his magisterial

On this week’s Spectator Podcast we look at the final Brexit war amongst the Conservatives. We also discuss the maverick politician taking Ukraine by storm, and get on the blower with Blowers. First up, with a 4,000 word intervention by Boris Johnson doing the rounds this week, ahead of Theresa May’s pivotal Brexit speech in Florence, the Conservatives look more divided than ever on the European question. Will it be EEA minus or CETA plus? Or are we headed for an even more mongrel departure? These are the questions James Forsyth asks in this week’s cover piece, and he joins the podcast along with Henry Newman, director of Open Europe. As James writes: “The time for