Plus: A sofa, two dogs, no cup of tea – and my Brexit evening. And: the pre-eminence of Policy Exchange.
Plus: Open regional Tory offices but don’t take CCHQ out of London. The coming IR35 disaster. And: where will you be on January 31?
The dismay the electorate showed for them last is being ignored. That makes it much harder for whoever becomes the Leader of the Opposition to establish any credibility.
Don’t expect Downing Street to bother too much about what MPs or the media think as it prepares to shake up government and Whitehall.
We’ll continue to update this as the Prime Minister fills out the lower ranks of his government.
The former Treasury Minister is regarded as a “safe pair of hands”. However, he may not stay in post for long.
The row over his sacking is a sign of a Party pulled in different directions by the way politics works – and by culture wars. Now a new competitor is knocking at the door.
Now some of these MPs may have been ill, or absent, or abroad. But how many were slipped with the connivance of the system?
While Andrew Jones returns as an Under-Secretary to the department from which he was removed as an Under-Secretary.
In sum, Hammond said: vote for May’s Deal – or the economy gets it. But there’s more than one way of dicing the next election result.
For relief and refreshment from the hucksters of the present day, turn to Jesse Norman’s account of the great philosopher from Kirkcaldy.
A low-key event with an invited audience next week will explore how to apply lessons and methods from the Party’s past to its present and future.
One essential Bank of England chart illustrates what went wrong, beyond reasonable doubt.