Search

March marks the seventh anniversary of police officer Keith Palmer's murder at parliament by an Islamist terrorist. This prompted a former senior police officer to allege that two MPs had [...]

Boris Johnson leaving the Tory deep freeze to have his ego stroked during an election could leave the current PM overshadowed by two predecessors: David Cameron and Johnson. 'When you [...]

GB News's most ardent supporter is ... Peter Mandelson. The Labour peer and former cabinet minister, revelling in having his own party back after the Jeremy Corbyn interregnum, is cooing [...]

Who, if anybody, will follow Anderson to Reform? He previously dismissed the party as irrelevant and its leader Richard Tice as a 'pound-shop Nigel Farage', claimed he'd declined 'a lot [...]

By-election bottler 30p Lee's defection--to fellow GB News host Nigel Farage's hard-right Reform UK--was toasted as the first good news in months for Conservatives by many Tory MPs. The lack [...]

Congratulations to the Four Elms in Cardiff, reigning Parliamentary Pub of the Year, and its landlord Gareth Morgan. The fine hostelry won the inaugural contest in 2019, the last time [...]

Word reaches me of tumbleweed blowing at the end of a speech by the Tory peer Keith Stewart KC, advocate general for Scotland. The Burns supper 'toast to the lassies' [...]

Not all is running smoothly in the Tory election machine. Chief mechanic Isaac Levido berated ministers dodging publicity for fear of awkward questions when cabinet members are dispatched in 'starbursts' [...]

George Galloway swaggered into the Commons chamber without his hat. Headgear is banned in the Westminster colosseum so the Rochdale rumbler's bald pate glistened as he was sworn in. MPs [...]

Tory Trumpite Liz Truss supposedly not hearing Steve Bannon hail as a hero the British far-right thug Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) wasn't as bad as it could have [...]

Jeremy Hunt's mind is on his seat as well as the Budget. Treasury officials whisper no chancellor of the Exchequer in modern times has spent as many hours on constituency [...]

Lee Anderson's anti-Muslim bile--scuppering No 10 plans to portray Rishi Sunak as getting on with the job of governing the country--has infuriated One Nation Tories. Anderson's quest for personal controversy [...]

Parliamentarians on a cross-party visit to Kyiv for the second anniversary of Russia's invasion were unnerved by air-raid sirens sounding in Ukraine's capital, then again on the train into Poland. [...]

David Lammy cancelling an hour-long PLP drop-in 15 minutes after what an invitee complained was 'our new impenetrable position on Gaza' went down as well as a cup of cold [...]

Robert Jenrick is reinventing himself as a rebel with a reactionary cause, since quitting cabinet in a huff. After being overlooked twice for home secretary by his chum Sunak (in [...]

The rumbling stramash over did-he-or-didn't-he bully Lindsay Hoyle isn't hampering Keir Starmer's yomp to Downing Street. Entering No 10 after Jeremy Corbyn bequeathed Labour's fewest MPs since 1935 would be [...]

Stalking Sunak on the hard right, Reform UK's property tycoon Richard Tice is fond of boasting that his is a real party of the workers. A Tory snout recalls observing [...]

Michael Gove's continued life of luxury in One Carlton Gardens, the 25m [pounds sterling] central-London grace-and-favour mansion usually reserved for the foreign secretary, is fuelling resentment. When David Cameron moved [...]

Boris Johnson is still awaiting Sunak's call summoning him back to save the Tories. Meanwhile, the Cincinnatus of Somerset seems to be finding ploughing on with his memoirs hard going. [...]

Keir Starmer may be grappling with a rebellion over Gaza, but he's enjoying a walk in the park compared with Sunak's party problems. One of the pork-pie plotters of Boris [...]

The Labour shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, finds herself confronting a taxing dilemma. In No 10, the Tory shadow chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is weighing up whether the actual chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, [...]

Thirsty work, being chair of the Conservative Party. On 15 February--double by-election polling day--Richard 'fighting for every vote' Holden popped into Kingswood for a photo before driving two and a [...]

Keir Starmer's Rochdale fiasco over Azhar Ali and tortuous 28bn [pounds sterling] green U-turn have left Labour frontbenchers screaming that indecision must cease to be final. Success has many parents, [...]

Meanwhile, the Plaid Cymru aide Carmen Smith is due to replace Dafydd Wigley--who is hanging up his ermine as the Welsh nationalists' sole existing peer--in the Lords. At 27, Smith [...]

Labour MPs mutter their ex-comrade Ian Austin--gifted a peerage by grateful Boris Johnson after Austin had urged people to vote Tory in 2019--is now seeking to rebuild burned bridges with [...]

Never short of self-importance, the bar etiquette of pint-sized Mark Francois is furrowing brows. Buying himself a bevvy in Strangers', the puffed-up Brexit and Rwanda crusader was observed throwing a [...]

Besuited humble crofter Ian Blackford isn't the only Scot Nat MP fancying an ermine cloak when they quit or are evicted from the House of Commons. The former Westminster leader [...]

Sadiq Khan has a neat riff on the party leaders. Seeking entry into London's Guildhall, each had to prove their ID to security. Starmer said he'd make no unfunded promises, [...]

It is with growing dismay that despairing Tories observe David Cameron appearing the sorcerer and Rishi Sunak his apprentice: photos of the pair show the former PM turned Foreign Secretary [...]

Unpopular populist and Popular Conservatism groupie Liz Truss was asked for an interview by a TV channel that wasn't GB News. She laughed hysterically. Nurse! Kevin Maguire is the associate [...]

With the policy seemingly poised to be dumped into the green dustbin of history, it is Ed Miliband carrying the can for what Labour strategists view as a 28bn [pounds [...]

George Osborne's austerity is returning to haunt the Tories, fumed an MP in the Red Wall New Conservatives faction. The former chancellor's cuts regularly come up on doorsteps as public [...]

An informant in the world of spin reports that two big PR companies are advising clients that there is little to be gained from attending the Conservative conference in Birmingham [...]

Public accounts of political chicanery are shaped by who briefs and who doesn't, as Sue Gray is discovering. Keir Starmer's chief of staff largely shuns contact with lobby hacks, leaving [...]

Whitehall Spads are revving up a drive to fill vacant quango posts with Tory-friendly sleepers before Labour wins the election. Starmer has accused the Cons of a scorched-earth approach, but [...]

The Lib Dem parliamentary party gave Ed Davey a rough ride over the Post Office scandal at a Westminster meeting, I hear. Half the 14 under his command, including chief [...]

With the Mafia-like 'five families' poised to become a Tory dirty half dozen next week--as yet another right-wing grouplet launches --the centrist One Nation gang is likening attacks on Rishi [...]

Vainglorious Robert Jenrick's Caesar haircut is perhaps a sign of ambition going to his head. He fancies his chances as a grassroots favourite after election defeat, and talk of a [...]

General Hayes abandoning his troops is also the first crack in his long ideological relationship with Suella Braverman. The former home secretary--sacked the first time by Liz Truss for breaching [...]

A veteran of the Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan administrations, the Labour peer Bernard Donoughue is a walking political history book. He's also exceedingly proper. Word reached me of Donoughue [...]

Over in Labour land, Comrade Starmer's iron rule is privately derided as democratic centralism without the democratic element by a cell of lefties keeping their heads down to avoid expulsion. [...]

Rueful 30P Lee, by the way, is said to regret resigning from a party deputy-chair decorative role. The Ashfield mouth enjoyed the attention, particularly 'Lagers with Lee' events that fed [...]

Tough guy former miner '30P Lee' Anderson is the laughing stock of the great Rwanda rebellion retreat, moaning that giggling Labour MPs made him turn heel and flee the 'No' [...]

The one-woman welfare state Carolyn Harris distributed 2,000 Christmas hampers in South Wales. The Swansea East MP covered part of the cost with 3,500 [pounds sterling] raised auctioning gifts from [...]

The Zambia-born Welsh economy minister Vaughan Gething is battling his education counterpart Jeremy Miles to succeed Mark Drakeford as first minister of Wales. This reminded one source of when Gething [...]

The soon-to-be-seatless Conservative Party chair Richard Holden is exciting Tory chatter about his own selection hopes after pitching up in Wellingborough to oversee the hoisting of the tattered blue flag [...]

My snout was not alone in overhearing the avocado-hating Tory reactionary Jonathan Gullis moaning to Labour's Neil Coyle that stopping the boats was essential to saving his Stoke North Red [...]