The Olympics opening ceremony is a difficult gig. Unmentioned in any of the hype - pre, post, or during the interminable thing itself - is that 90% of it consists of people walking past wearing funny, though not especially hilarious, clothes and taking pictures of each other with their smart...

For the third day in succession, the House of Commons addressed itself to the welfare of older members of our society. Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, it became clear as the day wore on, had been unusually cast as the relief party.

Monday and Tuesday and various aggressive elements...

Like most of the compartments of life, politics has its own golden age against which its modern facsimile suffers by comparison. It is not entirely certain when politics' was - it may have been when Gladstone and Disraeli addressed hedgerows of bewhiskered parliamentarians at inordinate length and on matters pertaining...

Prime Minister's Questions, 20 June 2012

With Nick Clegg and David Cameron dispersed to different parts of the Americas to fend off the top two greatest threats to mankind - viz global warming and Angela Merkel respectively - it fell to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to face up to...

Deputy Prime Minister's questions, 22 May 2012

For most of its history, this island has survived, indeed prospered, without there being a Deputy Prime Minister. It is possible, I suppose, to reach for historical analogs, but they have their limits. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, for example, "did" for his brother,...

I give you, courtesy of Conservative Home, a website offering therapy for frustrated Tories, this unattractive vignette: "Mr Hilton was also accused of being unprofessional: turning up at the meeting in shorts and a T-shirt, clutching a plastic bag full of oranges. As the meeting went on, Mr Hilton is...

The State Opening of Parliament, 9 May 2012

Every year, at this time of rich and ruddy ceremonial, the same questions always recur. Is all this ostentatious display rather splendid or rather naff? Can we justify the cost? What will the Speech contain and how long will it take?

The...

Prime Minister Urgent Question, 30 April 2012

Mr Nicholas Soames, the Conservative member for a rich and oozing slice of Sussex, used to cheer-lead for the Prince of Wales in his publicity battles with the Queen of Hearts, so he knows a thing or two about backing an unpopular cause....

Wednesday was a bad day for Adam Smith. We shall return in the moment to the strange case of the crazy Culture Secretary but first, as they say, the economy, for which Adam Smith, by virtue of having the prescience to share a name with Jeremy Hunt's late special adviser,...

David Cameron took time off from his official duties, flying round the world being photographed with famous foreigners who poll well on the respect-o-graph, to start the week with the launch the Conservative Party's local incompetence campaign. Clever young men in Central Office have come up with a slogan for...

Home Secretary's Statement, 17th April 2012

The latest performance of the long-running Westminster End Farce The Deportation of Abu Qatada came to the Commons stage yesterday afternoon. Its current impressario, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, had news to impart.

She began with a flourish. Qatada has been arrested, she announced,...

Overnight, as Tim Montgomerie somewhat breathlessly reports on the website Conservative Home, news arrives from Thurrock that 90% of the Queen's subjects there want a referendum on Britain leaving the EU. Not having kept as close an eye on Thurrock as perhaps one should I was instantly both intrigued and...

In the early hours of last Friday morning, as the result of the Bradford West by-election was announced, it became obvious that Mr George Galloway was seriously guilty of stockpiling votes. This was, we know, a selfish and reckless thing to do, and in the process several of the other...

Prime Minister's Questions, 14 March 2012

With the Prime Minister in Washington, questions today fell to be answered by Nick Clegg. This was clearly an opportunity for the opposition to have a go at the Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party. Labour members joined in too.

In the middle of the week, Mr Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, announced that he was not "ideologically wedded" to retaining the 50p upper rate of income tax. Concerned Vince watchers were put on immediate alert.

Mr Cable is one of those few politicians whose stern and unbending antipathy...

Prime Minister's Questions, 7 March 2012

It is, perhaps, a somewhat uncharitable thing to say of the House of Commons that the mood which descended upon it at Prime Minister's Questions, as it contemplated the likelihood that six British soldiers had been killed in an apparent landmine explosion...

Half a week on, and there is still no sign of another "radical thinker" stepping forward to fill the huge void in our lives left by the departure of Steve Hilton, the prime minister's 'Director of Strategy'. The talk is whether Mr Cameron, his government and perhaps the country, can...

Let us examine the political thesis put forward by Lucy from Lymington who, commenting at Mail Online upon the latest anti-Cameron eruption from Mount Heffer, said that the prime minister should spend less time thinking about Syria and more about the people of Britain. The question this raises is whether...

Theresa May on Abu Qatada, 7 February

What is the collective noun to describe an assembly of home secretaries, past and present? A rage? A choler? A fury? The better term might be an impotence.

Anyway a reasonable smattering of holders of this office - a demi-impotence perhaps...

Department for Communities and Local Government Questions, 30 January

According to the latest installment of bien pensant Westminster opinion, parliament is resurgent. This status update comes by virtue of its triumph in forcing Stephen Hester, the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, to scrape by on only his...