Uk politics

Parliament's only just back from Easter recess and already there's a threat of rebellion in the Commons. The Growth and Infrastructure Bill returns to the Commons tomorrow afternoon for 'ping-pong', and a number of MPs are agitated about an amendment that passed as a result of a rebellion in the Upper Chamber. In March, the Lords passed an amendment from Tory peer Lord True which would allow councils to opt out of a policy giving homeowners the right to extend their homes without planning permission. The government is naturally seeking to overturn that amendment, but Tory MPs aren't convinced.

When dolphins hunt fish, they gang up on them as a school, chasing them into the shallows. So it happens at the daily lobby briefing: when a morsel of a story appears and someone lets down their guard, the whole pack of journalists jumps in. Today the Prime Minister's official spokesman was chased into the shallows on the plan, which appears rather dead in the water, to publish ministers' tax affairs. The plan had been for the most senior members of the Cabinet to do this, and David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable had agreed on it last spring. But nothing has happened.

Ed Miliband may have politely told Tony Blair what to do with his advice about the direction of the Labour party, but the former Labour Prime Minister's allies aren't quite so keen to let his New Statesman piece disappear into the party recycling bin just yet. On today's political programmes, they popped up to drive home their belief that Blair should jolly well be listened to, not ignored. Tessa Jowell was so keen to make this point on Murnaghan that she managed to turn the discussion on Margaret Thatcher around to how much Blair had to offer politics twice.

It is one of the paradoxes of modern British politics that in the post-war era the power and hold of political parties have declined and our system has become more presidential. But the two most electorally successful leaders of this era have both been deposed by their respective parties. This has created problems for both parties, as today’s Sunday Politics with Andrew Neil demonstrated. After John Reid had been on to discuss Tony Blair’s comments on Ed Miliband, Grant Shapps was up to be questioned on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy for the Tories. Shapps was reluctant to declare that the Tories are a Thatcherite party. Trying to suggest that it is but only to the extent that it is also a John Major party.

Ever since the Poll Tax riots and Margaret Thatcher’s exit from Downing Street, the Iron Lady’s most fervent opponents have been talking about how they'd descend on Trafalgar Square the first Saturday after her death. Although a washout only in the literal sense, last night's ‘celebration’ to mark the end of Thatcherism was nothing like the carnage of the 1990 protest. The crowd consisted of the usual few troublemakers, bemused observers, hurt miners and the anti-everything brigade. At the gathering’s peak (~7:30pm) roughly 2,000 seemed to be present: Like the impromptu Brixton party, on which I dropped in earlier this week, many of the attendants were simply there to mess about and have a party. Dancing, drums and drink were in copious supply.