James Forsyth

Kezia Dugdale, the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour party, has announced that she’s running for the leadership of the Scottish party following Jim Murphy’s resignation. With Murphy not being an MSP, it has fallen to Dugdale to take on Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions. She is generally thought to have done a good

As British politics becomes more presidential, the structure of Number 10 matters more and more. David Cameron values continuity, collegiality and calmness in his senior team and what is striking is how many of his team are staying on post-election. The word coming out of Downing Street today is that Ed Llewellyn will remain as

Wolfgang Schäuble’s decision to link the British renegotiation to changes to the governance of the Eurozone is highly significant. In an interview the German Finance Minister told the Wall Street Journal that he has discussed George Osborne ‘coming to Berlin so that we can think together about how we can combine the British position with

Any new party leader needs legitimacy, an acceptance that they won the contest fair and square. Ed Miliband didn’t have this because he lost in two of three sections of Labour’s electoral-college and that meant he couldn’t act decisively in his first 100 days, that crucial period in which the public tend to decide whether

Michael Gove has been keeping a relatively low profile since being made Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor last weekend. I understand that he is keen to master the brief, and particularly the complexities around the creation of a British Bill of Rights, before he starts hitting the TV studios. But an address he gave to

George Osborne has moved to strengthen his personal, political operation by hiring the political editor of the Daily Mail James Chapman as his director of communications. This beefing up of his media team will be seen in Westminster as a statement of political intent by the Chancellor; it gives him a more formidable operation than

The chaos in Ukip and the Labour leadership race has allowed Number 10 to quietly finish off the task of constructing a new government without too much attention. The distribution of ministerial posts has gone down as well as can be expected. Enough people have been brought back and rebels brought in to give most

In 2012, Steve Hilton quit his role as David Cameron’s senior adviser in frustration at the compromises of coalition and the slow pace of reform. Since then, he has maintained an almost total vow of silence on British politics. He had no desire to say anything that could be turned into a tricky headline for

One of George Osborne’s political skills is his ability to put together a talented team. Few politicians spend longer thinking about who to have working for them. But post-election, Osborne is going to need to reshuffle his own, personal operation. For Rupert Harrison, his able economic adviser is off and now, I learn, that his

The party chairman in a general election winning campaign can normally expect a plum job as a reward, especially when that victory was against the odds. Tonight, though, Grant Shapps finds himself not in the Cabinet but a Minister of State at the Department of International Development. Shapps’ treatment is, at first, puzzling. After all,

Since Labour’s election defeat, there has been a lot of chat about how Dan Jarvis could be the man to revive the party. The argument went that Jarvis, a former officer in the Paras who commanded troops in Afghanistan, was just what the party needed to make voters take a second look at it. But

Michael Gove is the new Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, Downing Street has just announced. Chris Grayling will move to become Leader of the House. Number 10 is also confirming that, as David Cameron promised during the election campaign, Nicky Morgan will continue as Education Secretary. Becoming Justice Secretary marks a return to Gove running

David Cameron has reappointed several of the most senior members of the government. George Osborne stays as Chancellor, Theresa May remains Home Secretary, Philip Hammond Foreign Secretary and Michael Fallon Defence Secretary. Indeed, the only change is Osborne taking over William Hague’s old First Secretary of State title. This is formal recognition that Osborne will,