Politics

Steve Baker was forced to formally apologise to the House this morning for entertaining a conspiracy theory put forward by Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Brexit minister said he was sorry for not challenging a damaging claim that Treasury officials are attempting to influence Brexit policy. Mr Baker said on Thursday the accusation was "essentially correct", leading to headlines such as the one below in right-leaning press outlets. But he told MPs the next morning: "As I explained yesterday, I considered what...

@BenGelblum As Tory donors turn against Theresa May and she runs out of Conservative colleagues leaping to her defence, one of her ministers has been rebuked by the Chief Tory whip for asking an obvious but embarrassing question: "whether a government could legitimately lead a country along a path that the evidence and rational consideration indicate would be damaging." If the facts suggest Brexit will leave the country poorer, should Theresa May still be pretending otherwise and pursue a course...

@BenGelblum With Britain's police budgets set to lose £700m a year, amid rising crime, and yet more cuts planned for border forces, parliament today heard of the tragic consequences of less money to fight a growing drug-fuelled gang crime epidemic. Knife crime is not being driven by minors and teenagers. It is being driven by organised criminals exploiting children, arming our young people and fighting turf wars over a £12bn drugs market, Tottenham David Lammy told the House of Commons,...

Feisty Emily Thornberry stood in at PMQs today, for Jeremy Corbyn, with David Lidington standing in for the PM as she in China. Thornberry said that the DUP and Tories were a “coalition of cavemen” because of their opposition to lower the voting age to 16, which all other main parties support. A concern for the Conservative Party is that 16-18 year-olds might be less likely to vote for their party. As the lively debate continued Thornberry said there was...

Journalists were left “laughing uproariously” after Angela Merkel poked fun at May’s poor attempt to negotiate a post-Brexit deal. She said that she felt trapped in a loop with May since the Brexit vote back in 2016. Merkel made her comments in a “secret” press briefing, during the World Economic forum in Davos. The ‘secret” details were leaked by Robert Peston, who said Theresa May repeatedly asked Ms Merkel to “make me an offer.” Ms Merkel said that when she...

Benefits cuts and freezes has resulted in the poorest households in the UK being forced to skip meals because they can't afford to put food on the table. Damning new research by the End Hunger UK coalition of charities has revealed rising food prices and austerity are driving "hidden hunger" in Britain, with a third of the UK’s poorest households skipping meals because they cannot afford to buy food. More than half of adults across all income groups, ages and household sizes...

Every single disabled person receiving Personal Independence Payments (PIP) is to have their claim reviewed, the Department for Work and Pensions has admitted in an embarrassing climbdown set to cost the tax payer an estimated £3.7billion. A total of 1.6 million claimants of the main disability benefit will have their benefits reviewed after a court verdict found that people with mental health conditions were being discriminated against unfairly. The Government have confirmed that 220,000 people with mental health conditions will...

Following a brief rallying call from her frontbenchers, Theresa May is now odds-on to resign in 2018. The beleaguered PM enjoyed momentary support from colleagues last week, but she has come under fire today from her own side as one of her MPs said the “window is closing” on her leadership and her former chief of staff laid into the government’s lack of purpose. A string of Conservatives voiced fresh criticism, casting further doubts on the stability of the prime minister’s...

The Labour leader pledged to confiscate luxury properties that have been left vacant for substantial length of time. He told BBC’s Andrew Marr show: “We would give local authorities the power to take over deliberately left vacant properties. “When you have in the middle a lot of housing stress, you get some luxury, glossy, glistening block built, sold off plan to long distance overseas investors who may buy and sell it before it’s even built…well hang on. Let’s look at...