James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The last twenty four hours have been a reminder of David Cameron’s poise as a national leader. He has the ability to project a sense of resolve and calm. Before this vile attack in Woolwich, all the talk in Westminster was of Cameron’s difficult relationship with his own party. Despite a fortnight of good economic
For David Cameron, Margaret Thatcher’s funeral must seem an awfully long time ago. Back then, all the talk was of a new Tory unity. He had found a way to connect with his troops. The party seemed to be rallying behind his electoral message. Labour, meanwhile, was caught on the wrong side of public opinion
Westminster and Whitehall are tonight trying to assess the implications of the brutal murder of a soldier in Woolwich. It is clear from the vile rant made by one of the men that this was an act of terror inspired by the ideology of radical Islamism. But what is not yet clear if this was
George Osborne has got through the IMF’s report on the UK economy. It is far from a ringing endorsement of his approach but, as Isabel notes, its criticisms are couched in such opaque language that I doubt they’ll have much political impact. I also suspect that the Treasury is not unhappy about being told that
After all the parliamentary back and forth yesterday, gay marriage passed third reading by the comfortable margin of 366 to 161. Tory sources are briefing that fewer of their MPs voted against at third reading than second reading, though we’ll have to wait for the division lists to confirm that. We probably now have only
David Cameron’s approach to the gay marriage debate inside his own party has been to take a low profile. The passion and eloquence he displayed on the subject in his first conference speech as leader, has been replaced by a strategy of keeping his contributions on the matter to a minimum. This is, I think,
If four years ago, a Liberal Democrat politician had attempted to portray the Lib Dems as the natural party of government we all would have laughed. But that is just what Danny Alexander tried to do on The Sunday Politics. Being interviewed by Andrew Neil, he implicitly contrasted Lib Dem steadiness with Tory in-fighting. He
Insulting your own side is a dangerous thing to do in politics and in the current circumstances for any prominent Tory to do it is positively incendiary. But one ‘senior figure, who has strong social connections to the Prime Minister and close links to the party machine’ is quoted on the front of The Telegraph
If you ask what’s the problem with David Cameron’s European strategy, a cacophony of voices strike up. But it seems to me that most of their complaints are tactical when the fundamental problem is strategic: what does Cameron actually want back from Brussels? Some of those involved in preparation for the renegotiation tell me that
Shortly before the Conservative party conference last year, the head of the Fresh Start Group of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs went in to see the Prime Minister in Downing Street. The group had heard that David Cameron might make his big Europe speech at the gathering and its head, Andrea Leadsom, wanted to set out what
There was a rare moment of unity between the Tory awkward squad and the Whips at PMQs today. The awkward squad relished brandishing copies of a Liberal Democrat leaflet promising an In/Out referendum. CCHQ, for its part, has been keen to give this leaflet more attention. Clegg tried to dismiss it, but did he declare that a
The last few days have seen the Tory party losing its collective head. Number 10 hopes that the publication of a draft referendum bill will begin to restore order. If this bill had been published by the leadership a week ago, it would have looked like a bold move. Today, it appeared panicky. But it
Barack Obama just threw a protective arm around David Cameron at their joint press conference, stressing that ‘you have to see if you can fix what’s broken in an important relationship before you break it off ‘. The instant retweeting of this line by the Tory leadership’s communications channels shows just how grateful they are
In a firecracker of an interview on the Andrew Marr Show, Michael Gove confirmed that if an EU referendum was held today he would vote out. But he followed this by saying to James Landale that he backed the Prime Minister’s plans to renegotiate and hoped that a satisfactory form of membership could be agreed.
One consequence of the local elections is that no Tory now denies that they need to win over UKIP voters to win the next election. How to do that, though, remains a subject of intense debate — last night’s 1922 Committee meeting with Grant Shapps discussed this point and ran massively over as a result.
There are two talking points in Westminster this week. One is about who is up and who is down following the local council elections. This finds the Cameroons privately pleased that the Tory party has largely kept its head despite the Ukip surge, the Labour side worried about whether they are doing well enough for
The Queen’s Speech debate is always a mix of MPs patting each other on the back and political combat. This year, in a sign that the next election is looming ever larger in the minds of the party leaders, there was far more of the latter than the former. Ed Miliband in his speech majored
The latest extracts of the Andrew Adonis’ book on the 2010 coalition negotiations couldn’t have been better designed to stir up Tory backbench bad feeling to Nick Clegg. Adonis claims that in the final phone calls between Clegg and Brown, the Lib Dem leader kept stressing—you’ve guessed it—Europe. Adonis reports that Clegg told Brown: ‘Following our
The dust is settling from the County Council elections and, crucially, the Tory party seems to have stayed steady. Yes, David Davis has had a pop at the number of Old Etonians surrounding the PM and 20 MPs have called for a mandate referendum. But there is no sense of mass panic or revolt. Partly
To the relief of Conservative Campaign Headquarters, relatively few Tory MPs have taken the opportunity of the County Council election results to sound off. The most prominent exception to this rule is David Davis. Now, a DD intervention doesn’t have quite the same purchase as it used to—he’s made rather too many of them in
