Isabel Hardman

‘If you’ve got water coming in through the roof then they should be doing something about that,’ says Stephen Timms mildly to one of his constituents. The East Ham MP is sitting in the middle of a long row of tables in the Town Hall, flanked by two caseworkers, each seeing a member of the public who has a problem they hope their MP can solve. Timms had kindly invited me to sit in on one of his surgeries months ago. I’m currently criss-crossing the country watching politicians of all political persuasions carry out their regular constituency work for a book that I’m writing on what MPs really do - and whether they’re the right sort of politicians.

A couple of months ago, the Leave campaign seemed constantly grumpy, complaining about media coverage, colleagues and the use of the government machine in this referendum. But now, with just a week to go until polling day, this seems to have reversed. The Brexiteers’ continuing poll lead has spooked Remain, and Remain really isn’t dealing with it all that well. It wasn’t just the way that the pro-Remain politicians ganged up on Boris Johnson during their TV debate last week. And it isn’t just the way that government ministers including George Osborne seem to be resorting to increasingly desperate interventions such as a scary Brexit Budget that disgusted so many of his own party colleagues.

Tom Watson’s comments today that a future government would have to try to reform freedom of movement rules in the European Union are clearly a last-ditch attempt to show the party’s voters that it is taking their anger about immigration seriously. But they are also strange, for three reasons. The first is that it is strange to be talking about a future renegotiation when the Remain campaign does still occasionally try to persuade voters that they are voting to stay in a reformed European Union. By talking about what more needs to be done, Watson is effectively dumping all over the renegotiation that David Cameron has already carried out, saying that there will need to be another one.

MPs pressing for the reform of backbench bills have declared war on the government after it refused to accept any of the changes that they recommended. Private Members’ Bills are a tedious and unedifying part of Parliament which promise much and disappoint even more. Earlier this year, the Procedure Committee published a report on how they could change, so that members don’t bring poorly-drafted bills with good intentions to the Commons, only for them to die without dignity at the hands of a filibustering backbencher.

David Cameron is now having to face questions on what he would do if, as looks far more likely than he would have liked at this stage, Britain votes to leave the European Union. As James predicted in his cover piece this week, Cameron will have to row back on predictions that he made about Brexit putting a bomb under the economy in order to calm nerves in the event of a Leave vote. But with the polls the way they are, the Prime Minister is already having to answer questions about whether he really believes his own warnings now, as he did on this morning's Marr Show. Cameron can wait to worry about turmoil in the event of Brexit.

Tonight’s TV clash on the EU referendum is being billed as Boris Johnson being ganged up on by a group of women. True, the former Mayor is the only chap in tonight’s line-up (which will give him an unusual glimpse into what most debates feel like for most women in Westminster most of the time), the others being Nicola Sturgeon, Angela Eagle and Amber Rudd on the Remain side, with Andrea Leadsom and Gisela Stuart joining him to argue for Leave. And it is true that he may feel he has to moderate his debating manner: he probably can’t get away with bluster and charm when faced with the no-nonsense, aggressive Sturgeon and the dry Angela Eagle in particular. But there is a challenge for Sturgeon and Eagle too.

Tensions are worsening in the Tory party over the EU referendum, with Leave campaigners telling Coffee House that they will now not notify pro-Remain colleagues when they visit their constituency. This is an established convention that all MPs across the House of Commons follow, of letting one another know when they are visiting their turf, but after Remain campaigners starting mysteriously appearing at pro-Leave rallies in York, Winchester and Ipswich, Vote Leave has changed its policy so that any Tory MPs supporting In will now no longer be given any prior notice of rallies by the campaign in their seats.

One of the ways that Number 10 likes to signal to Westminster that it is taking a situation seriously is to hold a meeting in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. Calling COBRA is a sign that this is a Crisis, and that the Government has got it under control, simply by meeting in a rather dull room. If the Crisis is a little more serious than all the issues that have summoned COBRA, such as Ash Dieback and horsemeat, then the most important thing that Number 10 can do is call a press conference with the Prime Minister.

Scottish Labour is in a pretty bleak place at the moment. It is recovering from its second drubbing in an election in two years, and its leadership is naturally scratching its head about how on earth to recover. So the consultation that the party has launched this week that includes questions of whether it should separate itself further from the UK party is in many ways not a surprise. But what is perhaps striking is that the party thinks that this could help its predicament in Scotland. It is another way in which it is giving in to the nationalist narrative of Scotland being separate and different to the UK, and the Labour Party needing to sound a bit more like the SNP north of the border rather than forging its own identity.

What make a good minister? Is it how well they perform at the Dispatch Box in the Commons? Or their ability to field questions on Newsnight? Or even their ability to be a good lunch guest for a member of the lobby? The truth is that often we don’t know whether someone has been a good government minister until years after they’ve left the department and the policies they introduced have actually run their course, rather than just enjoyed a bit of media limelight. Take the 1999 Teenage Pregnancy Strategy. Launched in June of that year by Tony Blair, the strategy examined a study by the Social Exclusion Unit and aimed to halve the rate of teenage pregnancies in ten years.

Boris Johnson took in a car factory as part of his day of campaigning for Vote Leave in Yorkshire. The former Mayor did the usual politician’s thing of touring the workshops of Ginetta, pointing at various pieces of equipment and asking the workers what it was that they were doing, before hopping in one of the carmaker’s vehicles - branded with Vote Leave insignia - for a spin. He drove it out of the factory before handing the wheel over to a proper driver, who proceeded to whizz him around in tight donuts in the car park outside, sending up a large amount of smoke from the burning rubber. ‘We’re taking back control!’ Boris pronounced happily as he clambered out of the passenger seat. https://twitter.