Tories and Labour

Prime Minister's Questions has taken place in a half-empty House of Commons, after Labour and the Conservatives told MPs not scheduled to raise a query with Boris Johnson to stay away.Amid fears over coronavirus spreading at Westminster, the government asked politicians "respectfully" to "adhere to this advice".Labour urged its MPs…

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UK15:45 GMT 15.03.2020(updated 18:04 GMT 15.03.2020) Get short URLIn the run-up to the UK election in December 2019, Russian hackers were unfoundedly accused of leaking documents on negotiations between Britain and the US, which were used by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the election campaign.In an article published in The…

Some of the commentary on the Budget suggests that had Labour won the general election, a new chancellor would have presented a similar financial and economic package: focusing infrastructure spending on roads, neglecting to fix Universal Credit, failing to lift working people out of poverty and deprioritising investment in green technologies. Counterfactuals…

Image copyright AFP Image caption James Brokenshire is among ministers working from home Parliament may still be open for business but the coronavirus crisis is rapidly changing life for MPs.Although only one has so far tested positive - the health minister Nadine Dorries - an increasing number are choosing to…

The utter exasperation among the business community in recent weeks over the Conservatives’ planned clampdown on immigration from the European Union has been eye-catching. And when even Scottish Secretary Alister Jack concedes there is a problem, you might hope that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Home Secretary Priti Patel et al…

The reaction of many on the left to the big spending rises in yesterday’s Budget is that they show that Labour has “won the argument” for higher public spending. This is partly true. On current plans (pdf), total public spending will rise to 40.8% of GDP by 2024-25*. That’s a…

British prime minister Boris Johnson nearly faced an intra-party revolt over his decision to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to help the U.K. build its 5G network, as 36 Tory Members of Parliament voted with the Labour Party on Tuesday in an attempt to ban the move.The amendment to ban…

Let’s be clear: the EU was not set up to promote a friendly big socialist community, a Soviet-lite. The EU was created by the US, originally the European Coal and Steel Community set up in 1950 with the intent of promoting European integration, approved by Truman as a Cold War…

Many new Conservative MPs are different from the traditional Tory stereotype, while many of the (fewer) new Labour MPs are carbon-copy Corbynites. After every election, I try to listen to or read as many MPs’ first speeches as I can, to see if I can spot the high risers and…