Former Home Secretary, Michael Howard, delivered an astonishing and controversial rebuke to the coalition's penal policies in a speech in London on Monday night.

At the Carlton Club's Carlton Lecture, which in the past has been delivered by sitting Prime Ministers, including Margaret Thatcher, the former Conservative party leader, now...

The Scottish Conservative & Unionist party held a leadership hustings in Manchester on Monday. In a hotly contested debate (in an even hotter Midlands Hotel), Murdo Fraser, Ruth Davidson, Margaret Mitchell and Jackson Carlaw entreated an attentive audience to support them in their bids to lead a political party at...

In conversation with a small group of the 2010 intake in the early hours of Wednesday morning I was told this little thigh-slapper.

Q: What is the collective noun for a grouping of three or more MPs?

A: A conspiracy.

So spooky it could have been choreographed, up sidled one...

If the Lib Dems had their heads in the Birmingham clouds, and the Labour party bore its authentic soul on the Mersey, the Tories have kept their feet firmly on Mancunian ground.

It has been variously described as the "flattest Tory conference" in memory (by

The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, has an important article in the Guardian today, in which he blames the riots that swept English cities this summer on this country's "social deficit" between mainstream society and a "feral underclass".

Some people are dismayed by the language used. Be that as...

The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee has made a career out of loathing the Conservative party, so it should come as little surprise when she claims that Tories simply can't understand the poor. This is the woman who described the coalition government's housing benefit reforms as a "final solution"...

The average price for a pint in a British pub is now £3, according to the Press Association.

The British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) says this is partially due to "huge" tax rises, which make drinkers in Britain amongst the highest taxed in Europe. UK alcohol duties...

"While spending the Christmas of 1085 in Gloucester, William had deep speech with his counsellors and sent men all over England to each shire to find out what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock, and what it was worth."

So, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, began...

I got a shelf life of ten years, tops. My next contract's gotta bring me the dollars that'll last me and mine a long time. Shit, I'm out of this sport in five years. What's my family gonna live on? Huh?

- Rod Tidwell, Jerry Maguire (1996)

We can ignore...

The Independent reports that an organisation representing Muslim students in Britain is protesting against the coalition government's reforms to university finance.

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSI) warns that young Muslims could be forced to sacrifice higher education as a result of the higher rates of interest...

Tuition fees were abolished last year, but few people seem to have noticed. The cost of higher education is being transferred from the taxpayer to the direct beneficiaries (i.e. graduates) but students no longer have to pay any fees for their university experience. There are expenses incurred as a student,...

Londoners have passed a night of relative peace and quiet, as opportunistic rioting and looting spread to other English cities.

As shock fades, the recriminations begin. Conservative MPs accuse the previous Labour government of fostering welfare dependency, failing to improve education and forcing fiscal austerity upon the nation. Labour MPs...

Barking, Birmingham, Bristol and Bromley. Camberwell, Chelsea, Clapham Junction and Croydon. Fulham Broadway. The King's Road. Sloane Square. Notting Hill. Peckham High Street and the Isle of Dogs.

The rioting and looting was indiscriminate, random and terrifying. Shops, cars, police stations, even fire engines and private homes - old women...

Next Wednesday, the NHS welcomes another intake of junior doctors on to hospital wards. If clinical standards slide, they'll be blamed, but will it really be their fault?

For thousands of young people in Britain, next Wednesday is the biggest day of their life so far. They have waited at...

The Prime Minister welcomed Jose Luis Zapatero, the Prime Minister of Spain, to Downing Street yesterday. The recent events in Norway were discussed. David Cameron said that both countries had been "victims of horrific acts of terrorism in the past" and that they will be offering every support possible.

Also...

The comprehensive guide to what MPs (and political enthusiasts) should be taking on holiday with them this summer.

Another long summer recess, another long summer reading list for Tory MPs. Keith Simpson, the MP for Broadlands and PPS to William Hague, is waving colleagues off on their holidays with a...

He brings to the fierce struggles of politics the tepid enthusiasm of a lazy summer afternoon at a cricket match.

I don't know who Nye Bevan was referring to back then, but it can safely be said that the sentiment cannot be applied to Ed Balls today. To put it...

Prince Charles is a man who has spent much of his life being berated for trivial things (like having his toothpaste squeezed on to the toothbrush, or whispering not-so-sweet-nothings down tapped phone lines) whilst being heroically correct about some of very important things when chatterers decried him a fool: such...

At the end of it all, the final News of the World has caused quite the perfect storm.

It was heavier than I expected, and thicker, just like my usual choices tucked under the other arm (I won't reveal which: some mystery is healthy in any relationship).

After 168 years...

In the first Winnie the Pooh storybook, Piglet becomes stranded in a flood of biblical proportions. Holed up in his home, the water rising higher and higher, he fears the worst. Piglets cannot swim. Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear could climb trees; Kanga can jump very high; Rabbit could burrow;...