Uk politics

Picture the scene: it's Friday night at Chequers and the Prime Minister and her husband are letting their hair down. While relaxing by watching a quiz show and drinking a cup of tea, Philip May's flower knowledge falls short – and the Maybot is not impressed: Philip May: They are very nice chrysanthemums. Theresa May: They're not chrysanthemums. Philip: Dahlias! Why do I keep getting this wrong? Theresa: You keep calling dahlias, chrysanthemums Perhaps it's best if Philip sticks to his 'boy jobs'....

Theresa May has quite a few challenges to meet this conference season. One is obviously to avoid the sort of farce that her speech descended into last year. Another is to try to unite the warring wings of her party and convince her MPs that Chequers really is the only game in town. But equally as important is the need to show she has things she wants to do when it comes to domestic policy. This is hard: May hasn’t really managed to give that impression at any stage of her premiership, so to start in what feels like the swan song isn’t ideal. Added to that is the general mood in the Conservative Party, which isn’t a million miles away from Labour in 2009/10 at the end of a much longer stint in government.

Philip Hammond’s political tin ear has struck again. As I write in The Sun this morning, he has twice been slapped down in Cabinet this week. On Tuesday, he talked about ‘squealing’ about universal credit and was chastised by the Chief Whip for his language. Those sympathetic to Hammond point out that he was referring to Labour when talking about ‘squealing’. But it was still a poor choice of words when discussing changes to the benefits system. Then at the ‘no deal’ Cabinet on Thursday, Hammond raised the prospect of delaying Brexit day. After the legislative timetable for getting ready for ‘no deal’—which is tight—had been outlined, Hammond pointed out that the government has the power to put the Brexit date back.

Remain crusader Gina Miller has repeatedly denied reports that she has plans to become a politician – or, more specifically, leader of the Liberal Democrats. With Miller due to speak at the beleaguered party's conference next week, it must be pure coincidence that today the campaigner has published a personal manifesto. She has said she wants to 'take back control of Brexit' by launching her manifesto to 'End the Chaos!' On the home page, Miller opines: 'I believe it is morally and democratically right to give people as much unbiased information as possible.' Unbiased being her advocacy for what she is calling 'Remain Plus': 'You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.

Following last night's reports of open plotting against Theresa May, her critics in the Conservative party seem rather keen to row back on any suggestion that they really are planning a coup. Iain Duncan Smith, for instance, told BBC Radio 5 Live that he 'would stamp on' any attempted challenge, and that the talk of a plot was 'totally overblown'. Others have pointed out that there were notable senior absences from the European Research Group's meeting last night, including Bernard Jenkin, David Davis, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Of course, even if those big names had been present and plotting merrily away, their plans would have been seriously undermined by the easy leaks that came from the meeting.

This week was supposed to be the week that the European Research Group of backbench Brexiteers finally revealed their hand and published a Brexit plan to rival Theresa May's. With the Prime Minister currently without the numbers to get her Chequers proposal through Parliament (even if there were no further concessions), there were concerns from May supporters that a viable alternative Brexit plan could be the final nail in the coffin. Only that rival plan hasn't come to fruition after so-called creative differences among the Brexiteers over the mooted 140-page draft proposals. Matters weren't helped when 'mad' plans to build a 'Star Wars'-style missile shield to protect Britain from nuclear attack and an 'expeditionary force' to defend the Falklands emerged in the weekend papers.

It’s been over a year since the last general election, but it looks like there are still some Labour MPs who are confused about their presence on the opposition benches. One such appears to be the shadow minister for women and equalities and Corbyn devotee, Dawn Butler. In an interview on TalkRadio this afternoon, it was put to the MP,  that Labour's manifesto can’t have been that brilliant if they went on to lose the general election. Butler responded: ‘Well actually, we didn’t lose. We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose the election’ https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1039146683966398465 Mr S must have missed the brief reign of Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn...

It's been a busy weekend for Boris Johnson. After the former foreign secretary came under fire over his private life, Johnson appeared to make life more difficult for himself by penning an article for the Mail on Sunday in which he suggested that Theresa May's Brexit strategy was akin to wearing a suicide vest. Various Tory MPs were quick to see red and vow to bring BoJo down. But Mr S can't help but ask: did Johnson's strategy go to plan after all? Back in 2013, he used a Telegraph article to reveal a great trick he had learned from an Australian friend (AKA Lynton Crosby): the dead cat strategy.