Uk politics

What will Jeremy Corbyn lead on today at Prime Minister’s Questions? The Labour leader could ask David Cameron about the junior doctors’ strike, about Europe, or about party funding, given Labour is currently fighting the Trade Union Bill, and given it was the Tory Black and White Ball this week. But almost as interesting as what Corbyn will raise is how he’ll do it. The Labour leader has clearly grown in confidence since he started doing these sessions, and even though he’s no William Hague when it comes to jokes or rhetoric, he is asking good, detailed questions, and is slowly getting better at following up. This means that Cameron

Ukip’s announcement this afternoon that it will be backing Grassroots Out in its bid for designation as the official ‘Leave’ campaign in the EU referendum has caused consternation in its ranks. The party put out a press release saying that the National Executive Committee, MEPs and its Local Councillors Association are backing GO, which was set up by Peter Bone and is supported by Leave.EU. But I understand that there was no formal NEC meeting about this, and that the last meeting that discussed the designation was a few months ago. When I asked the party how the NEC was consulted, I was told that there was a telephone discussion

Emily Thornberry, the new Shadow Defence Secretary, held a meeting with her fellow Labour MPs this evening. It either went ‘swimmingly’ or was ‘worse than I thought’, depending on which MPs you listen to. Based on the accounts of the meeting from MPs who’ve spoken to Coffee House this evening, it was less the Ian Thorpe sort of swimming, and more Eric the Eel. Naturally, those opposed to a change in Labour policy are not happy, and were unlikely to come out of tonight’s meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party feeling very happy unless Thornberry had announced that Jeremy Corbyn has learned to stop worrying and love the nuclear deterrent. But many were

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] Margaret Thatcher would have voted to stay in the European Union, her former foreign policy adviser Lord Powell writes in the Sunday Times today. Here, in an extract from his Spectator’s Notes, Charles Moore, Lady Thatcher’s official biographer, says she would have voted to Leave: On Tuesday night, at a Spectator readers’ evening, Andrew Neil interviewed me about my biography of Margaret Thatcher. He asked me if, after leaving office, Lady Thatcher had come to the view that Britain should leave the European Union. I said yes (I think it happened after the Maastricht Treaty in 1992), although advisers had persuaded her that

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] The Leave campaigns continue to bicker with each other in increasingly absurd fashion, but it would be wrong to think that everything is going the In campaign’s way. Number 10, as I write in The Sun today, have been taken aback by the sheer scale of the hostility to the deal. There have been some very tense meetings in Downing Street this week. Cameron himself is, I understand, acutely aware of how volatile the situation is and how quickly the referendum could turn. But those around him are more confident. They believe that they are succeeding in denying the

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] This might seem impossible, but the row between Vote Leave and Labour leave has become even more complicated. This afternoon, Labour donor John Mills, who remains on the Vote Leave campaign, has put out this statement: ‘I am the founder and co-owner of Labour Leave. A statement has been put out by someone called Richard Hillgrove purporting to be from Brendan Chilton, General Secretary of Labour Leave. That statement is fraudulent. Richard Hillgrove has no position in Labour Leave. Labour Leave is an independent campaign but corporately it supports Vote Leave.’ But Kate Hoey, who is co-chair of Labour

The Welfare Reform and Work Bill has its third reading in the House of Lords on Monday before returning to the Commons for consideration of amendments. Jeremy Corbyn raised one of the controversial aspects of this bill, which is to cut the amount of money paid to people who are judged too ill to work currently but with the potential to return to the workplace in the future, at Prime Minister’s Questions this week. Peers have defeated this measure, but the government intends to reverse it. But there are Tory MPs who are worried about the cut to employment and support allowance, too. Heidi Allen, she of the dramatic Commons