Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the Commons last night was clearly part of his strategy to set up a ‘people vs parliament' narrative ahead of an election. We can debate the rights and wrongs of telling MPs that the best way to honour Jo Cox would be to get Brexit done, but there are also political implications of this. The Prime Minister’s team has, over the past few weeks, been making contact with Labour MPs to try to persuade them of the merits of supporting a Brexit deal should one come before the Commons. Many of them have been sympathetic: they regret not supporting Theresa May’s deal and are fearful of a no-deal exit. Tories involved in this operation have been careful to mollify and woo the Labourites they’re talking to.

Jeremy Corbyn has just delivered one of his better party conference speeches. It wasn't just because it was much shorter than the average political address, but also because it made clear that Labour knows what it wants to do when it gets into power. There were a lot of policies in there. Some had popped up in other speeches this week, like the plan for free personal care. Others were new and very significant indeed, like the plan to take on pharmaceutical companies. This is Labour's 'Medicines for Many' programme which will make government funding for medical research conditional on the drugs being offered at an affordable price to the NHS, and set up a state generic drugs manufacturer of patent medicines so they can be supplied at a much lower cost to the health service.

On paper, Labour's conference has managed to unite around the Brexit position set out by the leadership. Delegates this afternoon overwhelmingly approved the NEC statement endorsing Jeremy Corbyn's plan to decide how the party will campaign in a referendum at a special conference after a general election. They then voted down the rebel composite motion which called for the party to campaign unequivocally for Remain from now on. But what happened in the conference hall was chaotic and means the issue is unlikely to feel resolved for a lot of party members. The NEC vote was overwhelming, but the vote on composite 13 was much closer. So close, in fact, that there was a disagreement between those on the stage about which way it had gone.

Labour was supposed to be having only one big row this week at conference - on Brexit. Instead, it's ended up having two: one about how the party will campaign on Britain's future relationship with Europe and the second on Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Today has not seen a good recovery from the Labour leader after yesterday's attempt to oust Tom Watson. Corbyn appeared to save the day by refusing to allow the motion to go ahead at the NEC meeting, but is much wounded by the fact that the putsch was attempted at all. That there are suspicions one of his own aides, Karie Murphy, was part of this plot, hasn't helped. But far more damaging is the resignation of Andrew Fisher, which I covered this morning.

This evening, Labour's ruling National Executive Committee has started to discuss a motion which would oust Tom Watson as deputy leader. There is expected to be a vote on this plan, which abolishes the role altogether, tomorrow, and there is a strong chance that it will pass. It was tabled by Momentum founder Jon Lansman, and was narrowly ruled out of order because Watson wasn't present at tonight's meeting. Tomorrow it will be in order. Why is Labour having this battle on the eve of its autumn conference? It is potentially weeks away from an election, and instead of facing outwards to voters, it is engaged in an internecine battle over internal positions. And not just small roles, but the separately-elected role of the party's deputy leader.

Jo Swinson is quite obviously the only party leader enjoying what’s going on right now. This is, of course, partly because what’s going on for her is that she is regularly welcoming MPs from other parties into the Liberal Democrats. As she said in her speech to the party’s conference this afternoon, ‘I can’t be the only one losing count of our many newly-elected representatives’.  There are plenty of questions about some of those new MPs. Are they really Lib Dems, or are they just seeking refuge in the party because they have nowhere else to go and need funding in order to survive the next general election? Has the party welcomed any old waif and stray, regardless of their views on matters such as gay marriage?

MPs who aren’t in the process of defecting to the Liberal Democrats are using their conference recess to phone around their colleagues canvassing for the next Commons Speaker. Lindsay Hoyle is, according to YouGov, the favourite to win, but Harriet Harman and Chris Bryant are also running strong campaigns, along with Meg Hillier. Then there are the Tory candidates: Eleanor Laing, Sir Henry Bellingham, Shailesh Vara and Sir Edward Leigh. All of them are promising to stand up for parliament, albeit in rather different ways.

Boris Johnson’s opponents love to accuse him of using the ‘Trump playbook’. Some on the left have become so obsessed with this comparison that they’ve even demanded that the Prime Minister be impeached. But over the past few weeks, Johnson’s behaviour has borne a far closer resemblance to a man he claims to look down on: Jeremy Corbyn. Both men stand on an anti-politics, anti-establishment platform. When Corbyn became leader he promised a ‘kinder, gentler politics’, and eschewed many of the traditions of the Commons. His advisers still believe that he is going to be the man-of-the-people candidate in the looming election, arguing that attacks from the media only bolster his anti-establishment credentials.

Why has Tom Watson given a speech about what his party leadership should do on Brexit? The party's deputy leader has urged Labour to 'unambiguously and unequivocally back Remain' and to campaign for a referendum ahead of an election. This is contrary to the current frontbench position that a referendum should contain a 'credible Leave option'. So why, given Watson sits with Jeremy Corbyn in private shadow cabinet meetings each week, has he gone public with this? The speech is a symptom of how bad relations are between Watson and the leader's office. As I wrote in the Spectator recently, the two men at the top of the party have only had two private meetings together since 2016, and memos from the deputy leader to the leader have gone without reply.

Amber Rudd’s resignation has clearly been a blow to the government, but it wasn’t a huge surprise that she went after a week in which many of her closest political allies were booted out of the Tory party. What is more of a surprise is that she accepted a cabinet job with Boris Johnson in the first place. MPs who were being offered jobs when the Prime Minister took over had conversations with Johnson’s top aide Dominic Cummings in which he warned that there would be what he termed ‘collateral damage’ to the Conservative party as a result of his efforts to get Brexit sorted. They can’t believe Rudd didn’t take a step back and think about what that damage would entail. That said, there are nerves about how much more damage the party can take.

As an illustration of how chaotic things are in Parliament right now, the Commons has just accidentally revived Theresa May’s Brexit deal. An administrative problem meant the amendment tabled by Stephen Kinnock and others to bring the deal back to the Commons, in order to prevent a no-deal exit, went through. The Tories didn’t put in tellers to count the votes, which means the division was cancelled. There is, though, a chance that the government whips may have done this deliberately in order to make the bill itself toxic to MPs and therefore try to kill it off. In which case they are having to rely on chaos to get their way. Those behind the bill though say the amendment is merely an irritant that doesn’t change the bill's substance.