Westminster

The media complain about ‘career politicians’. Yet when politicians come along who aren’t Oxford PPEists, who have progressed via think tanks and spadships to safe seats without their feet touching the ground, journalists are shocked by their failure to conform to contemporary mores. We want politicians to be different, it seems, as long as they stay the same. Tim Farron is that rarity in modern life: a senior politician from the north of England. The north has become the British equivalent of America’s flyover states, lost in the no-man’s land between the centres of real power in London and Edinburgh. Farron did not leave it until he came to Westminster.

‘Is Home Rule the only realistic alternative to independence?’ was the question posed at a Spectator debate, sponsored by Brewin Dolphin, in Edinburgh last week. In one sense the question is redundant since, no matter how much some nationalists claim otherwise, there is no reasonable or realistic scenario in which it is possible to envisage the United Kingdom government scrapping the Scottish parliament. Some measure of Home Rule, therefore, is indeed the only realistic alternative to independence? But what is Home Rule? As the panel agreed (not least since this has long been obvious) there is no agreed or even satisfactory definition of Home Rule. Is it, as the journalist

Since the 56 SNP MPs entered Parliament, they have taken to ‘rebelling’ against the establishment in a number of ways. So far they have focussed their time on trying to nab Dennis Skinner’s seat, going against Commons’ etiquette by clapping in the chamber, and purchasing white roses for the Queen’s Speech. Now they also appear to have had enough of corridors. Stewart McDonald, the SNP MP, claims that the Commons’ youngest MP Mhairi Black has come up with a shortcut through Parliament that involves walking through the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s office: And there was Mr S thinking that Black was beginning to prove the naysayers wrong.

While new MPs are sitting through tedious induction classes to teach them the rules of the House of Commons such as never clap in the chamber or call another member ‘you’, down the road another political institution is laying down the law. The Kennington Tandoori has been a home-from-home to politicians for decades, with numerous plots and shenanigans traced back to its darkened doors. Though if the sign that has just gone up in their window is anything to go by, the owners of the curry house are not quite as strict as the men in tights: As for rule no.4, Mr S is unsure how happy the last Scottish Lib Dem MP

Ahead of the arrival of 56 SNP MPs in Westminster yesterday, Alex Salmond offered his new colleagues some advice in a recent interview. He said: ‘Make your voice heard, represent your constituents, and stay out the Strangers Bar’. So far, so good. In fact, Salmond will no doubt be glad to hear that his fellow MPs have taken his advice and stayed out of the Strangers bar. Instead, they have opted to make Parliament’s sports and social bar their new base. Word reaches Steerpike that a few members of staff had their noses put out of joint last night when the lesser frequented bar was unexpectedly busy. ‘It was packed full of the SNP gang – on a Monday,’

Warning: The SNP revolution has begun in Westminster. This afternoon Nicola Sturgeon arrived at parliament with her 56 newly elected SNP MPs in tow. However, despite talk of discord between the Scots and English, Mr S is assured that so far relations are remarkably civil. Mhairi Black, the 20-year-old student who ousted Labour’s Douglas Alexander from his seat to become the youngest MP for centuries, told the BBC’s Tim Reid that the English can’t be too scared of the SNP as everyone has been very polite so far: Oh the innocence of youth.

Unusually for a modern Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson seems to enjoy meeting voters. When I joined her on the campaign trail, she had been posing with a giant eagle in Kirkcaldy. Then she jumped on to a Harley Davidson in Stirling. Such props, she says, are a ‘springboard’ to talk about Scottish Conservatism — which, thanks to her, is no longer an oxymoron. Davidson’s sparkling performances in the various debates stood in welcome contrast to David Cameron’s. Not once has she mentioned the ‘long-term economic plan’, or the other clichés issued from Conservative HQ. Her message is simple: thanks to a Conservative-led government, she says, Britain now has less pensioner

A couple of weeks ago some dance instructors went to Westminster to coach MPs to shake their tushes for the cameras, while they promised to support a ‘dance manifesto’ for Britain. Since then the image of MPs twerking has stuck to the inside of my head like snail slime on my hands. I’ve scrubbed away with the mental Swarfega but I can still sense those lovely, lively honourable members of a certain age who feel they can best drum up public support for British dance by going onto the floor themselves. You might be surprised that there exists an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dance in Westminster at all. The 20

‘Mansion Tax Revaluation Information’, said the letter that came through my letterbox, in an envelope that screamed ‘council’ or ‘taxman’ or something alarming. The letter inside was carefully formatted to look official. ‘Your property has been identified as one which could be affected by Ed Miliband’s “Mansion Tax”. This could leave you with an additional bill of more than £20,000 per year.’ And then: ‘Labour has promised to introduce the Mansion Tax immediately. The Inland Revenue will send out demands for payment after the budget in June. That is three months away, are you ready and able to pay Labour’s Mansion Tax?’ You had to turn over the page for the

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/putin-s-empire-building/media.mp3″ title=”Sebastian Payne and Matthew Goodwin discuss what goes on behind the scenes at Ukip” startat=1222] Listen [/audioplayer]In Ukip’s Mayfair headquarters there is a copy of Banksy’s monkey with the sign around its neck: ‘Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge’. It seems appropriate. For years, Nigel Farage and his party were dismissed as a bunch of cranks. Within three months, they could be propping up David Cameron’s government, having named their price — perhaps an EU referendum before the year is out. Conservatives stopped sneering at Ukip a while ago. Now they’re more worried about its ambitions. What does Ukip want? Will it attack from the

Say this for the current state of British politics: it keeps finding new lows. A while back I made the mistake of suggesting voters might already have priced-in Ed Miliband’s shortcomings. The leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition might be a doofus but we know that and, if not exactly tickled by the thought, can cope with it. Reader, I think I may have been mistaken about that. Recent events suggest Miliband’s haplessness exists on a higher plane than anyone previously thought possible. One can only assume he secretly doesn’t want to win the next election. This, at any rate, seems the only sensible verdict to reach based upon the

It’s that time of year again – sandwiched between conference season and the Autumn statement – when the nation’s political pooches (and their owners) descend on Westminster. Yes, yesterday saw the Westminster Dog of the Year show, 2014. Last year’s winner, Noodle the cockerpoo (and her owner, Alan Duncan) had been promoted to the judging panel after her success, and seemed keen to be back on the podium. She wasn’t the only one, either. David Burrowes’ Cholmeley (who came third last year, and second in 2012), also seemed very attached to the winner’s platform, and posed nicely alongside it. But sadly for Cholmeley, there was no space for a labrador on

If you’re going to sell out to the establishment, you might as well do so on an industrial scale. As the PM told the Guido Fawkes blog’s ten -ear anniversary party at the Institute of Directors last night, via video link, ‘what better way’ to celebrate ‘rejecting’ the cosy political classes than a posh dinner of caviar and champagne in the heart of Westminster. Guy Fawkes would have been turning in his grave, as cabinet ministers including Francis Maude and Liz Truss, and mysterious billionaires such as Michael Hintze and Lord Ashcroft, along with 200 of Westminster’s finest, came to pay homage to a decade of sniping from waspish troublemakers.

The Tory whips are busy today, but not necessarily with fallout from the Clacton by-election. They have sent a message round to MPs saying the following: ‘There is a possibility that there will be a business statement on Monday which will also affect whipping next week.’ Some MPs have read this as a suggestion that they may be asked to vote on military action against Isis in Syria, which Number 10 has so far been reluctant to do. The Lib Dems have said they can’t see what benefit British troops would bring to the situation Syria. But chances are that Monday’s statement will relate to another event that’s taken place

David Mundell, MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, is not often granted much respect. He is not a natural television performer, which does not help. He is a Scottish Conservative, which does not help either. But give him this: he predicted that the Scottish National Party would enjoy a surge of new members if Scotland voted No to independence. But what a surge it has been. The SNP has doubled its membership in a week. More than doubled it, in fact. The party now claims more than 60,000 paid-up members. To put this into some perspective, that’s akin to a UK-wide party having 600,000 members. The combined membership of the