Theresa may

Oh dear, the Treasury is mired in another controversy about equality after the Guardian published a letter which Theresa May sent to George Osborne before the Budget. In it, she warned that the government could face legal action if it is unable to show that its decisions were made with a consideration to “existing race, disability and gender equality duties.” As she puts it: “If there are no processes in place to show that equality issues have been taken into account in relate to particular decisions, there is a real risk of successful legal challenge by, for instance, recipients of public services, Trade Unions or other groups affected by these

David Cameron’s so-called “referendum lock” is supposed to ensure no more powers are handed to the EU. His thinking, bless him, is that if he just keeps a low profile and doesn’t sign any extra treaties then things won’t get worse. This fundamentally mistakes the way the EU works. As we say in the leader for this week’s magazine, ever-greater integration is hardwired into the system. An example we cite is the coming European Investigatory Order, which Theresa May has naively described to other ministers as a tidying up exercise (Jack Straw said the same about the EU constitution).  As we put it: “Another power grab is looming. Plans are

I doubt David Cameron will have many better days in government than this. Considering the government cancelled a hospital project yesterday, today has passed as one long photo-op, free of incident. It began with Theresa May banning a radical Islamist cleric, Zakir Naik, displaying a resolve that eluded her immediate predecessors. The papers were full of Cameron’s ‘coup’ in Brussels yesterday; the only major news story that might have unnerved Cameron was the FT’s research into Tory immigration policy, which the FT calculates will hit growth and raise taxes. It was too esoteric to hit the TV screens, so too the cuts in arts funding. It must have been a

Spare a thought for poor Theresa May. Judging by the reaction so far, she now faces the unenviable task of shouldering almost everyone’s preconceptions about Tory women in government – with Caroline Spelman, Baroness Warsi and the lower-profile Cheryl Gillan for back-up. She will no doubt continue to disappoint feminists and irritate reactionaries, and she will do so while responsible for the notoriously unwieldy Home Office, which has rapidly taken over from the Department of Health as the ministry where political careers go to die. Representation in politics does matter. It is not unreasonable to claim, as Katharine Viner did in Thursday’s Guardian, that “democracies simply don’t work unless they

Theresa May is chairing a discussion with a set of Conservative PPCs on ‘job clubs’, as part of this afternoon’s focus on welfare reform.  She kicks off asking one of the Tory PPCs on the panel, Maggie Throup, to talk about job clubs in her area: “So, Maggie, tell us about…”. Problem is, May addresses her remarks at the wrong PPC, Suzy Davis. Mistake realised, she wheels round and puts the same question to the actual Maggie Throup.  Not a good start. It’s picked up since. The welfare adviser David Freud, who jumped ship from Labour to the Tories, is now on stage. And he gets a cheer when he

In some respects, Theresa May has delivered an effective speech on unemployment and the benefits system today.  It touches on all the tragic indicators – the 6 million people on out-of-work benefits, the high levels of youth worklessness, the shocking consequences of welfare ghettoes etc. – and re-states, in no uncertain terms, the Tories’ commitment to welfare reform.  She even partially responds to those critics who thought she’d been drafted into the shadow welfare role to be “softer” on single mums than Labour, by instead attacking the state for encouraging lone parents “not to bother trying to work until their youngest child was sixteen”.  But perhaps the most crucial passage