Isabel Hardman

What is the Conservative case for facing down Marcus Rashford on free school meals during the holidays? Ask a handful of Tory MPs, including the Prime Minister, and they'll throw out a contradictory mess of answers. Many of those who are most uneasy with the way the government has refused to U-turn on the matter suspect it is merely the Treasury trying to draw the line after an endless splurge of spending over the past few months. But they are uncomfortable that this is where the line has been drawn. Rows about children always get cut-through in politics. Rows about children and food even more so. You don’t have to have a particularly long memory or good knowledge of niche facts about the 1970s to recognise the line ‘Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher’.

Marcus Rashford was just 12 when David Cameron took the Conservatives into government, a fact that makes the bones of most Westminster inhabitants creak. In the ensuing decade, he has learned to be not only a footballer of international renown, but also a measured and effective political campaigner. The Tories, on the other hand, appear to have learned nothing from ten years of dealing with the topic he campaigns on. Rashford’s work on food poverty is unusual, not just because unlike many in his professional field who adopt causes, he has taken a great deal of time to understand it in a way that goes far beyond his personal experience.

Who will win in the stand-off between Downing Street and Greater Manchester leaders over Covid restrictions? At first glance, it seems as though central government will inevitably emerge victorious, given ministers have the power to unilaterally impose tier-three restrictions on the area. Last night Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick threatened to do just that, saying:  There are now more Covid-19 patients in Greater Manchester hospitals than in the whole of the South West and South East combined. But, unfortunately, despite recognising the gravity of the situation, local leaders have been so far unwilling to take the action that is required to get this situation under control.

Keir Starmer has made life difficult for Boris Johnson this week with his demand for a circuit-breaker lockdown. But the Labour leader’s colleague Andy Burnham is currently presenting a far greater threat to the Prime Minister. On Thursday, the Mayor of Greater Manchester gave a furious speech in which he accused the government of being 'willing to sacrifice jobs here to save them elsewhere' while treating his area like 'canaries in the coalmine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy'. The government, he argued, was treating the North with 'contempt' by telling regional leaders there wasn't enough money to protect jobs during the new restrictions while spending large sums on consultants for the test and trace programme.

It is hardly surprising that the new parliamentary complaints system has had what might politely be termed teething problems when it comes to helping staffers and others who turned to it. This week the Times reports that complainants had been given incorrect advice, had not received the mental health support they needed, and were even discouraged from pursuing some complaints. Ever since MPs started discussing the need for this independent complaints and grievance scheme, there has been serious confusion about its remit, including over whether it can deal with older complaints and who is able to complain.

Monday night's Commons debate showed the extent of Tory backbench frustration with ministers over their refusal to consult parliament on increasing coronavirus restrictions. But it also showed that the situation isn’t beyond repair. MPs were blunt in their criticism of the government but were also polite and clearly keen to avoid a stand-off. Parliamentarians just want the government to move to a new phase of managing the pandemic; one involving greater scrutiny.  Almost everyone who spoke in the debate took care to praise ministers for dealing with an unspeakably difficult situation.

It's not going to be an easy autumn for the Tories, which is why the top brass have started holding meetings with nervous backbenchers to try to allay their fears about tax rises and other politically difficult decisions which are looming. Rishi Sunak also clearly saw the value in ensuring the public was aware he was taking their concerns about these matters seriously when he accidentally on purpose revealed his lines for one of these briefings as he walked along Downing Street. Sunak's message yesterday afternoon when he and Boris Johnson spoke to the 2019 intake of Conservative MPs was very much 'you need to trust us', according to those present. One MP said that 'it was sombre but what we needed to hear. We left under no doubt that there will be difficult times ahead.

Whose fault is the school exam results fiasco? Based on who has left their jobs in the past few weeks, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was officials in the Department for Education and at Ofqual, not the Secretary of State for Education. Gavin Williamson has apologised for the 'stress' caused to pupils, but remains in post and both he and the Prime Minister have been keen to shift the blame for the row onto the exam regulator. Today, Ofqual hit back. The organisation's chairman Roger Taylor appeared before the Education Select Committee this morning to present his version of events, and claimed that the decision to use what Boris Johnson has called a 'mutant algorithm' to moderate results came from Williamson, not the regulator.

Gavin Williamson rather generously did the sketch writers' jobs for them this afternoon when he failed to hand his homework in on time for his first day of term. The Education Secretary gave a statement in the Commons on schools reopening – and ended up being scolded by opposition MPs for sending a very late 'advance' copy of his words, as is custom. The SNP's Carol Monaghan rather acidly remarked that she just about had time to read it before asking her question, while Labour's shadow education secretary Kate Green complained of a 'summer of chaos, incompetence and confusion that has caused enormous stress' to pupils, parents and teachers. Williamson's apology for his late statement had the air of a pupil genuinely sorry he'd been caught out.

If you want a measure of how in control of things the government currently feels, look no further than today's briefing on encouraging workers back into offices. A nationwide campaign to reassure people that employers have made their workplaces 'Covid-secure' will launch next week, as ministers worry about the impact on city centres of workers continuing to stay at home. But a row has raged today over whether the government is less interested in reassuring employees and more interested in threatening them. Labour has accused ministers of the latter after a briefing appeared in this morning's Telegraph suggesting that workers will be encouraged to think of the cost of not going back into the office.

There's something rather ominous about a government minister waving around the results of a yet-to-be-published study to underline that they've definitely got a tricky policy nailed down. Over the weekend, we saw the Prime Minister and Education Secretary both insisting that it would be fine for English schools to reopen in September because a piece of research by Public Health England showed that there was little evidence the virus is transmitted at school. But the Times today reports that officials working on the study are uncomfortable with the way their findings have been represented by ministers and that older children may spread the virus in the same way as adults do.

The Tories are well aware that the public won’t endlessly give them the benefit of the doubt on their handling of the coronavirus crisis. They are also aware that one of the most tangible signs to people that the government is still not in control of things is if schools fail to open – or have to rapidly close again – this autumn.  Boris Johnson’s op-ed in the Mail on Sunday makes clear that he and his colleagues appreciate this, and that reopening schools will be the ‘national priority’. There is also plenty of briefing that Gavin Williamson’s ‘head will be on the chopping block’ if English schools don’t start back next month.

It's not unusual that the left and right hands of government don't know what the other is doing: despite being based in the same postcode, different departments are notoriously bad at communicating. They even stop speaking to one another occasionally, with secretaries of state blocking new policies at what is known as the 'write-round' stage of policy development. This is where ministers consult colleagues across government on a policy, which others can then block. Sometimes departments have such a strong objection to a policy in another ministry that they refuse to sign off anything else through write-rounds until this plan is dropped.

If there's one thing you'd think the Tories might have learned over the past ten years in government, it's that trying to reform the planning system will cause an almighty row. Under David Cameron, the party ended up in a bizarre fight with the Daily Telegraph and the National Trust over its plans to build more homes. Theresa May talked about reform but characteristically never quite managed it. But despite everything else that's going on for the government at the moment, ministers have rather bravely ploughed ahead with a huge planning shake-up which makes the Cameron reforms look rather boring.