Tag: Kemi Badenoch
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PMQs really have become a farce. In other news, we have decided to present The Commons Weekly in reverse date order starting with the most recent news from that cockpit of brilliance. At PMQs the Speaker briefly awoke from his slumbers to rebuke the PM for trying to reconfigure the weekly event as Questions for…
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Special education: In trying to set out the Government’s proposed changes to SEND policy Bridget Phillipson (Houghton & Sunderland South, Labour) Secretary of State for Education, outlined how a “new” £4bn will be spent on Individual Support Plans over the rest of this Parliament. SEND certainly needs radical reform, but these changes seem unlikely to…
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Succession is not a strategy! Starmer does not seem to have even tried to stabilise the No. 10 operation, he merely changed the cast list. The resignation cycle that began with Morgan McSweeney continues to read less like renewal and more like a government discovering, in public, in real time, that it does not have…
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After last week’s ‘umble addressing and PM-skewering it was perhaps inevitable that the Chamber would be a little less frenetic as it ran down to the Half Term Recess on Thursday 12th February. Although the bulk of the political comedy continued outside the Chamber, there were some opportunities for further PM-baiting and Labour squirming. Jesse…
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What a consequential week it was! Winding down to the weekend (who works Fridays after all?) and with the PM kow-towing having bi-lats with President Xi in Peking Bejing, Pat McFadden made a statement to the House on Thursday 29th January setting out the government’s totally unsurprising decision not to pay the WASPI women compensation…
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The Commons Weekly… is going to be a new concise political briefing that breaks down the most important developments in the House of Commons each week. We hope that it will provide readers with an accessible overview of parliamentary debates, party tensions, leadership dynamics and key policy discussions. Each edition highlights the stories shaping Westminster,…
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UK Politics 2025, but for Young People (apparently.) Child benefit cap removal, VAT on private schools, voting at 16 and rejoining Erasmus+ suggest that Westminster might have noticed that the votes of a currently unenfranchised generation will vote in 2029 could be up for grabs for very little effort, or money. Christmas is not usually…
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REEVES CLINGS ON SHAKILY, Lammy shatters ancient constitutional protections casually, Badenoch shows signs of life superficially – the political climate feels very fragile. Rachel Reeves remains in post, although with less authority than Downing Street would like to project. The aftershocks from the Office for Budget Responsibility leak continue, alongside accusations that she oversold the…
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BUDGET PANTOMIME: “SHE’S BENEATH YOU!” TWOP put together a quick take on the totally useless Budget on Wednesday evening. Although it was TWOP’s first Budget, the measures announced were so anti-climactic that it seemed hard to justify giving the announcement much notice, but the spectacular subsequent political fall-out is a gift that just keeps giving…
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TWOP’S FIRST BUDGET. An awful lot of commentary and very little substance. Rache decided to raise taxes on working families to pay for increases in welfare while hoping future growth can reduce the sting in the future tax tail. [NB: the “hope for growth” has not borne fruit for the last 30 years, why it…
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THE POLITICAL KNIVES ARE BEING SHARPENED OFFSTAGE. There are significant leaderrship jitters on both sides of the aisle and although action is not widely expected until after the local elections in May, clever conspiracists strike before their intentions become clear. Labour’s polling trajectory continues downward: YouGov now places Labour as low as 17% in its…
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SHRINKING SPACE FOR DIALOGUE, REDUCING PERSONAL LIBERTIES, NO MONEY ANYWHERE. “Repeat protest” curbs really do start to threaten freedom of expression Newish Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood extemporised new plans to curb “repeat protests” after nearly 500 arrests at more pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The idea: if you protest too often, the Home Office can decide you are…
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BADENOCH.Neverwhere by (Neil Gaiman) Kemi Badenoch, dreaming of a land where anyone might care what the Conservatives might come up with anytime soon. Even as an enthusiastic A-level History student I found Kemi kicking off with 1780s Manchester a little bit too historical. Badenoch managed to tie this back, in the context of Thursday’s murderous…