Private security guards will soon be deployed at constituency events. MPs most at risk will be able to apply for 24/7 protection. Funds “will also pay for increased security such as CCTV, alarms and sensors required at MPs’ homes or constituency offices.”
Voters can lean towards a lower limit and favour decriminalisation for the same reason they can favour higher spending and lower taxes. It is the duty of politicians to do better.
There is some truth to the claim that there has been a big shift in power away from Parliament and a narrowing of politics – but in the British constitution, a government with a majority could fix that.
More are reportedly saying that they will back a no-confidence vote if Sir Lindsay Hoyle doesn’t indicate that he’s stepping down. It would be quite something if his manoeuvre to get Starmer out of a tough spot ended up inflicting fresh dissension on the Conservatives.
Sacked Post Office chair’s damning memo puts Kemi Badenoch in dangerous territory.
Who decides which “ordinary people” get a hearing? Which studies are examined? Without parties or partisanship, what prevents a handful of dominant individuals railroading the others into a false consensus?
Party strategists will be concerned that Reform UK managed to post double-digit vote shares in both Kingswood and Wellingborough. But the mortal danger is Labour, and Conservatives cannot afford to forget it.
So-called real recall had much to commend it over the version we got, which concentrates power with the parliamentary authorities. But it too could have been used to curb the independence of MPs.
Sombre warnings from politicians and generals are entirely at odds with decades of what can be fairly described as a deeply unserious approach to defence.
Also: SNP plunged into fresh controversy over misleading claim about healthcare spending, whilst Kate Forbes gears up for an internal battle over the Scottish Government’s income tax plans.
Whilst the clergy can’t wash their hands of their role in appearing to facilitate “industrial scale” conversion to game the system, it is the Government that sets the rules of the game.
Also: the Welsh Government’s ‘Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales’ has reported and you’ll never guess, but they think Cardiff Bay needs even more powers.
A televised spectacle was never going to yield honest testimony about why the Scottish Government deleted its own paper trail, but it could yet do serious damage to the already-ailing SNP.
With yet another compromise on Northern Ireland – and on its place in the United Kingdom – the Democratic Unionist Party may yet suffer the same doom it inflicted on the Ulster Unionists before them.
However, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s demand for a mere Commons vote on every treaty is a poor substitute for the real, much less fashionable solution.