David davis

To the relief of Conservative Campaign Headquarters, relatively few Tory MPs have taken the opportunity of the County Council election results to sound off. The most prominent exception to this rule is David Davis. Now, a DD intervention doesn’t have quite the same purchase as it used to—he’s made rather too many of them in recent years. But his comments are revealing of the huge amounts of class tension inside the Tory parliamentary party. He complains that the rebellions of Jesse Norman and Nadine Dorries have been treated differently because one went to Eton and one to state school. I suspect, though, that the actual explanation is that Dorries crafted

Theresa May has upset quite a few people from across the political spectrum with her comments in the Sun today about the Communications Data Bill. The Home Secretary told the newspaper: ‘The people who say they’re against this bill need to look victims of serious crime, terrorism and child sex offences in the eye and tell them why they’re not prepared to give police the powers they need to protect the public. Anybody who is against this bill is putting politics before people’s lives.’ This irritated David Davis sufficiently for the Tory backbencher to raise May’s comments as a point of order in the House of Commons this afternoon. Davis,

The Sunday Papers and the broadcast shows are packed with accounts of Britain’s fractious relationship with the European Union, and what that means for David Cameron. The Observer gives space to a poll, the headline of which says that 56 per cent of Britons would ‘probably or definitely’ vote to leave the EU against 30 per cent who would probably or definitely vote to remain in the union. The Independent on Sunday carries a ComRes poll on the more immediate question of next week’s EU budget discussions. The findings will give Mr Cameron a headache: 66 per cent of voters want the budget ‘cut rather than frozen’. The voters will

David Cameron has a tough task ahead of him for this week’s Conservative conference – a task that got a little harder when Ed Miliband surprised almost everyone by producing a cracking speech this week. The Prime Minister has a number of problems to tackle when he arrives in Birmingham. These include a rowdy party growing increasingly agitated about a number of issues including Europe, a chief whip sent in to control said rowdy party whose authority has been undermined before he has even started twisting arms, a chancellor struggling with his own authority on economic policy, and a Mayor determined to steal the show with his own conference speech

David Davis’ speech today is the most significant criticism of the coalition’s economic policy from Tory ranks. Davis might not be the force he was back in the early 2000s but he’s still a big figure who demands attention. To be sure, there’s much in the speech that the Chancellor would agree with—the criticism of green taxes, for instance—and it is worth noting that Davis avoided calling for Osborne to go. But the speech with its call for ‘economic shock therapy’ and lament that the cuts have been done at too slow a pace was full of criticisms both implicit and explicit of Number 11. ( I wonder, though, whether

Why did Nick Clegg change his mind on the snooping bill? Because he can’t afford to back something that his party rejects — like the NHS Bill. Over the next few weeks, we will see Clegg impaled on the horns of yet another policy dillema as the government decides what to put in the surveillance bill. The president of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, has laid out his position in the Times (£) this morning: ‘I am prepared to recognise that there is obviously a need in modern society with new technology to have a look at what needs to be given to the security services but only if it

The number of Tory MPs set to defy the government in the vote on an EU referndum tomorrow now stands at around 90, and numerous backbenchers – including John Redwood and David Davis – have called on the Prime Minister to drop the three-line whip. Even though he is certain to win the vote, many are already accusing Cameron of “blundering” and mismanaging this affair. But others are now suggesting that Cameron is in fact displaying a great deal of political nous by taking on the hardline Eurosceptics in his party. In the Indepednent, John Rentoul declares that “Cameron is the one who will emerge victorious and strengthened” from tomorrow’s debate:  “He will win

You can see what Ed Miliband was trying to do. As his party isn’t trusted on the economy (his number one problem) he had to say how much he admires business. But, then again, his party is bankrolled by unions who dislike capitalists. So, Ed Miliband draws a dividing line: the ‘predator’ companies (bad) and companies like Rolls Royce, for example, and presumably small businesses (good). Here is the new narrative of his leadership: Miliband vs Predator, coming to a cinema near you. But just like Cameron’s ‘runaway dads’, the concept of a predator company is easier to talk about in the abstract than in real life. Just what is a bad company? Asset

Today’s declaration (£) by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy that Nato’s operation in Libya will continue until Gaddafi leaves power marks a shift in their rhetoric and makes explicit that regime change is the war aim. This has led to calls to recall parliament, most notably from David Davis on the World at One, to debate this change. Parliament merely voted to enforce the UN resolution which was not a mandate for regime change. The government would be well advised to heed these requests. It would be the best way of maintaining the necessary political support for the mission. Now that regime change is the explicit war aim,

Thursday’s debate on the backbench motion on prisoner voting tabled by Jack Straw and David Davis is set to be a real parliamentary event – a rare occasion where the will of the elected legislature might just make a big difference.  The real news will not be how many endorse the ban, but which MPs – aside from those abstaining Government Ministers and Denis MacShane – choose to bow to Strasbourg.   MPs preparing to speak out against Strasbourg are now armed with a powerful academic case.  A new Policy Exchange report authored by the political scientist Michael Pinto-Duschinsky – Bringing Rights Back Home – outlines how the UK can

ConHome has published its latest members’ survey. Its (admittedly unscientific) findings into respondents’ recollections of floating voters at the last election have reopened the debate about why the Conservatives didn’t win. In a combative piece, Janet Daley insists that the results ‘stand the modernising argument on its head’. These findings look more inconclusive to me. 85 percent of respondents were told that the party and its leadership were ignorant of ordinary concerns, supporting David Davis’ insinuations that the party is out of touch with the common man. There is firm statistical evidence in which to ground these fancies: the Tories did poorly among C1 and DE voters (defined as the