Uk politics

So in the end, Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet reshuffle wasn’t the wide-ranging purge some had anticipated it would be. The Labour leader has sacked two people – Michael Dugher and Pat McFadden – moved Maria Eagle, promoted Emily Thornberry, and told Hilary Benn to toe his line. The Labour leader sacked McFadden as Shadow Foreign Office Minister for the same reasons that he dispatched Dugher: the MP had criticised the leader in public. Or did he? McFadden asked David Cameron the following question after the Paris attacks: ‘Can I ask the Prime Minister to reject the view that sees terrorist acts as always being a response or a reaction to

In his statement to the Commons this afternoon, David Cameron confirmed that ministers will be free to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union – and he gave a hint about when the referendum might be, too. The Prime Minister told the Chamber that he couldn’t guarantee agreement at February’s European Council summit, but: ‘If [agreement] is possible, the I’m keen to get on and hold a referendum. We shouldn’t do it precipitately, I’ve looked at previous precedents, I note that when Labour held a referendum in 1975, there was only a month between the completion of the legislation and the referendum. I don’t think that’s enough. ‘When the

Jeremy Corbyn is currently conducting his reshuffle, with a group of journalists huddled at a discreet distance from the Labour leader’s office. So far, not much has happened, other than Corbyn asking the journalists not to stand outside his office, and Barry Gardiner emerging with a smile on his face. But still the briefings around the reshuffle and the anticipation of it have dominated the news agenda. This must be intensely frustrating for Sadiq Khan, who had planned to spend today getting lots of attention for his campaign on train fares. Labour members and staffers were up long before dawn handing out leaflets publicising the four-year fare freeze promised by

Who held the power in the supposedly inappropriate relationship between Labour MP Simon Danczuk and gorgeous, pouting etc seventeen-year-old Sophena Houlihan? The fragrant young lady bombarded the loopy old goat with a string of lascivious text messages, in which she fantasised about having sex with him. An odd fantasy, I admit, but each to their own. Anyway, it’s hardly surprising that Danczuk panted after her, drooling like a Doberman Pinscher presented with a sack of offal. And now the ghastly woman has decided that Danczuk’s behaviour was ‘unprofessional’. This isn’t just any old hypocrisy – this is Marks and Spencer’s level hypocrisy. Now Danczuk has been suspended, the police got

David Cameron’s pledge to his MPs that none of them who want to stand again in 2020 will be left behind as a result of the boundary changes is a sign that the Prime Minister thinks party management will be seriously important this year. A fight between MPs over fewer constituencies would have been bad for party morale, and inevitably theories about MPs favoured by the party leadership being kept safe would have spread through the party. But given the changes aren’t being submitted until 2018, the decision to announce the ‘no-one left behind’ pledge now suggests that Cameron thinks 2016 is a good year to calm any Conservative nerves

Labour is very cross about a knighthood going to the man who ran the election campaign that beat the party in May. Andy Burnham issued a statement about Lynton Crosby’s inclusion in the New Year’s Honours list which was supposed to highlight what his party thinks is an abuse of the system. But really, it just highlights his party’s own failings. The Shadow Home Secretary said: ‘This outrageous award is the clearest evidence yet that the Tories think they can get away with whatever they like. It is a timely reminder that Labour must make it a New Year’s resolution to stop facing inwards and expose them for what they

Nick Cohen’s cover piece in the Spectator on the demise of the Labour party – and of his own support for it – is the 4th most-read magazine piece of 2015. ‘Tory, Tory, Tory. You’re a Tory.’ The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their lives is as menacing as it is ridiculous. If you are a woman, you face misogyny. Kate Godfrey, the centrist Labour candidate in Stafford, told the Times she had received death threats and pornographic hate mail after challenging her local left. If you are a man, you are condemned in language not heard since the

Why should Lynton Crosby get a knighthood? The Sunday Times today reports that the Conservatives’ election chief is in line for an honour, which has provoked fury from democracy campaigners and, naturally, those aligned with the parties he helped to humiliate in May. The fury of the Labourites is quite easy to understand, and not just because it is miserable seeing the guy who was instrumental to a surprise election victory that many around Ed Miliband thought was theirs being honoured. It’s also because many of them will complain that he is a negative force in politics, someone who isn’t averse to flinging a dead cat on the table at

David Cameron’s Christmas message is being reported as one of his most Christian public statements yet, with the Prime Minister arguing – as he did at Prime Minister’s Questions recently – that ‘it is because of these important religious roots and Christian values that Britain has been such a successful home to people of all faiths and none’. Cameron has – with the occasional rather odd hiccup – become much more confident about talking about Christianity, both in terms of his own beliefs and the importance he thinks faith should have in wider society, since he described his personal faith as being ‘a bit like the reception for Magic FM

Should ministers have so many special advisers? Should a party that promised to cut the number of these SpAds if it came to government admit that it got this wrong, having increased their number? The arguments in favour of more of these political staffers in government are well-rehearsed: if they’re good, they add expertise and political nouse to a department and they make it easier for ministers to communicate what they’re up to. Some are hopeless at both these things, but the best ones – and there are many excellent ones in both main parties at the moment – often keep the show on the road and ensure reforms actually