By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter A doctor or a solider or a teacher or anyone else in public service must be able to speak to his colleagues in confidence. Obviously, special circumstances will sometimes apply – if a doctor confessed murdering a patient to another it would be the latter's duty to go to […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Ed Davey is the Climate Change Secretary, John Hayes is his junior Minister, and the Coalition must be preserved (in the view of the Conservative leadership) – all of which points to Mr Davey getting his way on wind farms, or enough of it to save face, at any […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter I was first elected to the Commons in the year that Andrew Mitchell returned to it – but he had far more selection trouble than I did. A network of right-wing party activists pursued him across the true blue seats of England like the Furies pursuing Orestes. His record […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Strictly speaking, it was not the lobby and the media that forced Andrew Mitchell's resignation yesterday. It was the unprecedented meeting of Wednesday's 1922 Committee, which found itself discussing whether or not he should continue as Chief Whip: the very fact that such a conversation took place at all […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter I wrote recently that with most Conservative MPs and party member in favour of EU renegotiation and a referendum, the view of Cabinet members could be crucial when the next manifesto is drawn up. Friends of Michael Gove insist that he didn't mean to start a push for either […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter "His views are less important than his disposition. He is one of those men who imposes himself on his surroundings: his Commons Office, when he shadowed the International Development brief, was piled high with topical reading and decorated with family photos – and, indeed, the occasional snap of himself. […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Please click on the image to enlarge. The Conservatives meet in Birmingham after a very difficult summer. Deficit reduction is behind schedule. The boundary review has collapsed. After a better-than-expected speech, Ed Miliband may not be the unelectable Labour leader that Tories had hoped. A ConservativeHome poll finds exactly […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. At the last reshuffle, David Cameron did something quite unusual: he didn't change the name or purpose of any of his government's departments. During the Blair and Brown years, changes like these were rather common. People may remember the poor Department for Constitutional Affairs, or the old Department of Trade and […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter I've already published some of the results of our reshuffle reactions poll – your task list for Grant Shapps and your sense that the PM is getting ready to U-turn on Heathrow. Here are the results of the other questions:
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and I were the four backbench musketeers deputed to help Iain Duncan Smith with preparation for Prime Minister's Questions – although it wasn't necessarily a case of "All For One And One For All". Osborne was superlative at planning for the kung fu-crossed-with-chess […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter "So after the smoke has cleared, we are left with…a figure of just three male backbench Conservative MPs who will be appointed as Ministers come the reshuffle". That's what I wrote on the afternoon of last year's EU referendum vote, conceding that another two places might become available in […]
Lots of questions on all of the big moves and a special question on what you want from the new Party Chairman, Grant Shapps. VOTE NOW.
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter A list of nearly the whole new Government has now been published: Cameron the butcher: The official list shows 26 Commons Ministers as having been fired. That's roughly a third of the Tory total. So the answer to the question "Cameron – man or mouse?" is: man & butcher. […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Yesterday morning, Michael Gove was the monarch of all he surveyed in the department over which he presides. Supported by dedicated and expert Conservative Ministers – Nick Gibb, who covered schools; Tim Loughton, who dealt with adoption and fostering, and John Hayes, who has made a success of the […]