David cameron

Oh dear. David Cameron's speech to the Confederation of British Industry got off to a shaky start today after he was heckled by Brexit protesters. While the CBI had opted to leave members of the Vote Leave campaign off of the invite list, two protesters managed to sneak in and get their own anti-EU message across. As the Prime Minister gave a speech in which he said that he could work with business leaders to keep 'Britain in a reformed Europe' after a successful renegotiation, protesters held up a banner and shouted that the CBI is the 'voice of Brussels': https://twitter.

After a year of surprises across the board from the Tory majority to Labour's new leader, Westminster's rebels and insurgents descended on the Savoy Hotel to celebrate The Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year awards. With the awards presented by Alex Salmond — last year's winner of Politician of the Year, the former First Minister of Scotland made sure to put Scottish independence firmly on the menu, namechecking his country's struggle several times in his speech. With Jeremy Corbyn unable to be there in person to collect his gong for Campaigner of the Year, it fell on his fellow comrade Diane Abbott to do the honours. The Labour frontbencher found time in her tribute to warn audience members not to underestimate the size of Jeremy Corbyn's mandate.

Today’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions was pointless. Describing any session as pointless is in itself a little pointless, as it takes you into the sort of territory where, like the author of Ecclesiastes, you end up declaring everything meaningless. But today really was a pointless session. The most obvious example of pointless behaviour came from the Tory side, with Conservative MPs deciding that they should return to the old days of roaring and jeering just as Jeremy Corbyn was asking questions about cuts to tax credits. David Cameron helped them out by chortling with exasperation as he responded without answering to yet another question from the Labour leader about whether he could guarantee that no family would be worse off as a result of the tax credit cuts.

Number 10 is this morning pushing back against the reports that David Cameron has abandoned a vote on extending British military involvement in action against Isis to Syria. Sources insist that they do not recognise the stories that have appeared in a number of papers and that nothing has changed. Those reports suggest that Cameron was struggling to persuade sufficient numbers of Labour MPs to back his stance. This is not particularly surprising given it was always going to be difficult to be confident that MPs from another party would definitely do as they said. The Tory whips can hardly apply the same methods to those MPs in the Opposition party as they do to those on their own side. Cameron has always said he will not bring a vote until there is consensus.

After the actress Sienna Miller became subject to vitriol over the weekend for failing to wear a remembrance poppy during an appearance on the Graham Norton Show, politicians and celebrities alike are now doing their best to show off their poppies at any opportunity. Today 10 Downing Street even changed their Facebook profile photo to one of David Cameron sporting a poppy. However, Cameron's remembrance efforts have since been questioned as Number 10 have been accused of photoshopping a poppy onto an old photo: https://twitter.com/dylanhm/status/661228417803755520 The original photo from July had no poppy: https://twitter.

A big problem with the coming European Union referendum is that voters won't know what voting 'leave' means. If we do decide to quit, it will be a leap in the dark that could cause huge damage to the country. There is, therefore, a strong democratic case for spelling out the terms of our departure before it becomes final. The best way of achieving this would be for David Cameron to launch a double negotiation. As well as trying to improve the terms of our membership - the focus of his current talks with the EU - he would clarify our potential divorce deal. The voters would then get to compare two clear options and choose the one they prefer. If something like this had been done with Scotland, we wouldn't still be wrangling over the Scottish issue.

David Cameron’s decision to make it clear that he is definitely not ruling out Brexit by saying that ‘people need to understand there are significant downsides’ to being outside the European Union has been greeted with derision in eurosceptic circles. Campaigners argue that the Prime Minister clearly doesn’t think he’ll get much from his renegotiation if he doesn’t think it’s worth continuing to threaten that he could possibly campaign to take Britain out of Europe in order to spook EU leaders into giving him what he wants.

Last week Jeremy Corbyn appeared to be on his best behaviour when he attended the state banquet at Buckingham Palace in honour of China’s President Xi Jinping. While he opted to attend the event solo, the republican Labour leader did manage to don white tie, and appeared to successfully make small talk with both the Royal family and members of the Chinese delegation. Alas, word reaches Steerpike that Corbyn's efforts during the dinner were not so well received. Mr S understands that he actually broke one of the most basic rules of dining etiquette during the lavish do: no mobile phones at the dinner table. Party guests were surprised to spy the Labour leader texting on his phone during the dinner.