Tag: Westminster

The 25-year-old performer, filmmaker and activist will discuss how her Westminster upbringing left her determined to steer clear of mainstream politics by the time she was a teenager. Campbell has already made her name as co-founder of the feminist activist group The Pink Protest, which is aimed at helping to build “a global movement of young people who want to change the world”. “As someone who has always had things I want to talk about in the world, such as feminism and politics, you can just go up and do it. People want to laugh about it, and find solace and community in how frustrated we all are.” Campbell hopes to raise laughs with material looking at why her generation have become “disengaged” from party politics, how Brexit is a “symptom” of the system’s failure, and the targeting of female politicians for abuse by online opponents. “It’s such a hard occupation for really not much reward and it’s really difficult – a lot more than you’d think –to get things done. “I don’t think the only way to make change happen is to become a politician. The abuse they’re put through is nothing like the abuse male politicians get.” The Pink Protest has launched successful campaigns on period poverty and female genital mutilation, and made videos for campaigns helping refugees and young women with mental health problems. Campbell added: “What I’ve learned through all the work I’ve done with the Pink Protest, my own activist collective, is that our generation really knows how to use the internet and garner momentum around a particular cause or idea online, and then move it into mainstream politics. “There is so much happening in terms of the relationship between young people and politics. It feels like the right time to do this show.”

Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP, asks if May is ruling out negotiating the UK joining a customs union with the EU. He asks if May will respect the will of parliament and reject no deal. May says Blackford should accept that the people of Scotland voted to remain in the UK. But so do the votes of the 17.4m people who voted to leave the EU. Referring to the fact that “a number of people” marched on Saturday, May says Corbyn’s deputy, Tom Watson, went on the march. He says it is no surprise that people marched against the government. Will May accept any decision by MPs? He says Labour would support a public vote to block no deal or a chaotic Tory deal. She says the government remains committed to trying to see if a Commons consensus can be reached if her deal is not passed. May says she is “sceptical” about whether allowing MPs indicative votes will produce a decision.

Without the pioneers throughout the decades that she celebrates – Eleanor Rathbone campaigning for family allowances, Barbara Castle fighting for equal pay for women, and Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell pushing for better childcare provision – there would have been much slower progress. As Reeves says, the book is a “biography of Parliament told by the women elected to it … an alternative history of Britain in the last one hundred years, told through the stories of political women”. In the 1960s, Shirley Williams and her female colleagues had their bottoms pinched by male MPs and so, in protest, wore stiletto heels which were dug into the feet of any offender – who would later be identified hobbling into the tearoom. Shirley Summerskill, a minister in a Harold Wilson government, had her hair stroked by a male MP who had stopped her in a Westminster corridor. She couldn’t report his behaviour to the Whips’ Office because the culprit was, in fact, the chief whip, Bob Mellish. Reeves discusses female MPs who have, in the past century, risked their political careers to take a principled stand: Rathbone, an independent, joined the Conservative Duchess of Atholl and Labour’s Ellen Wilkinson to oppose appeasement of fascism, and yet their contribution has been overlooked by history. The duchess resigned as an MP in November 1938 to force a byelection – and yet did not receive public support from Churchill, who didn’t want to take a political risk (she lost). The theme of sisterhood across the parties runs through the book and the century. Today, female MPs are subjected to a barrage of abuse. Women of Westminster shows how far female MPs have come, but how challenging their work remains.

The party has had a dramatic effect on both the major parties with talk of further defections to come. LONDON — The Independent Group (TIG) of 11 former Labour and Conservative MPs has already had a dramatic impact on British politics. In just a few short weeks, it has snatched 11 MPs from the two major parties, surged in the opinion polls, and arguably helped force a major shift in the Labour party's Brexit policy. one TIG MP said this week, reflecting on the two weeks since the group's dramatic launch. TIG targets new MPs REUTERS/Henry Nicholls The group does not yet have an official leader, and doesn't plan to elect one until it is a party, but this week appointed former Labour MP Chuka Umunna as its chief spokesperson and main figurehead. One former Labour shadow minister told BI on Friday that they planned to join TIG as soon as the Umunna-fronted group unveiled its first batch of policies. Julian Dunkerton — the co-founder of clothing range Superdry who donated one million pounds to the People's Vote campaign in August— is also weighing up becoming a financial backer, sources in to the anti-Brexit campaign said. A TIG MP said on Friday there would be "no pacts, no alliances" with the Lib Dems amid suggestions from people including Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable that the two could work together in certain seats at the next election. They added that Lib Dem MPs and supporters have already signaled that they could quit to join TIG. Comments by members of the group that they would refuse to back a vote of no confidence in the current government have only fueled those charges.

As the Labour and Conservative parties splinter, the professional political journalist part of me certainly wonders if I should have been back in Westminster for the excitement. We chose our time to be away carefully: half-term is when MPs were also due to take a week's break. So far eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives, all pro-Europeans, have quit their parties to join The Independent Group, now known as TIG for short. TIG has not yet become a new political party but this is still a massive development. Both are also becoming increasingly undemocratic in the full sense of the word. So far it is fair to say that its members were all on the likely list and still only make up 11 out of 650 MPs. It will depend on what happens with Brexit over the next five weeks. If so, will there be a majority for the second referendum which all the TIG group members want? Will Labour facilitate Brexit under Mrs May's deal, probably driving many more pro-European MPs to quit in disgust? If Mrs May presides over that happening, I can't see how either the Conservative Party or Labour will hold together.

The Times and The Sunday Times has launched a new campaign that portrays politicians as animals in 'Westminster Zoo' as the publisher tries to reinforce its commitment to keeping readers informed in confusing times. Tamed' campaign anthropomorphizes politicians as animals in a similar vein to Orwell's Animal Farm. Designed by News UK's in-house agency, Pulse Creative, the ad sees squawking parrots, hysterical hyenas, slippery snakes and every-changing chameleons adorn the green benches of the House of Commons. Reiterating how it is newspaper's jobs to 'tame politics,' only the lion and the unicorn - from the crest in The Times masthead - can bring order to the proceedings. Then a 20-second ad launched across social media platforms, using the promoted hashtag #PoliticsTamed. John Witherow, editor of The Times, said: “As Britain’s most trusted national newspaper, The Times consistently provides quality journalism and incisive commentary from across the political spectrum. Our campaign captures the national mood of confusion and frustration, while we at The Times seek to bring clarity and balance to our reporting of this pivotal moment in British politics.” Catherine Newman, chief marketing officer at the publisher added: “Right now there is so much information from so many sources it's hard to make sense of it all. campaign aims to address this. "The Times has been making sense of politics since 1785, so when people don't know where to turn, we want to remind them that The Times and The Sunday Times offer the guidance and analysis they need. by Pulse Creative Added 1 day ago Agency: Pulse Creative Overall Rating 5/5 Vote

What should you do if the prospect of five more years of Conservative government makes you feel sick but you don’t want Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister? That’s the question that is a frequent topic of conversation at Westminster, particularly among Labour MPs of a New Labourish persuasion. Although some are open to the idea of splitting away, most are opposed, though there is a small but influential cadre of New Labour alumni who are willing to bend their ears about the benefits of a split. The central thesis is that the two big political parties are in a terrible mess: the Conservatives have “dragged the nation into its own private feud” over Brexit, while Labour, beset by antisemitism, anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism, is “no longer a noble institution”. As for the Liberal Democrats, their brand is “fatally tarnished” and they should give up and shut up shop. Collins claims that the ideas in the book are “hard to classify” on the left-right spectrum, but this isn’t true Collins then proceeds to set out a number of areas in which the two parties are failing and suggests ways in which a new movement could “start again” and offer something new. The proposals include, in no particular order, a radical increase in the amount of money spent on early years; a rebalancing of the welfare state to favour the working young; a significant increase in inheritance tax; a shift in British taxation away from income and towards wealth; that the House of Lords be replaced with a proportionally elected chamber; and that voting be made compulsory and the franchise extended to 16- and 17-year-olds. They are, almost exclusively, policy proposals from the left and centre-left. The only policy proposal that wouldn’t fit comfortably within a speech from John McDonnell is that university technical colleges be expanded. Start Again?

Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May both sought to put a brave face on local council results that suggested neither can break the electoral deadlock that delivered a hung parliament last June. Local council elections 2018 – results in full Read more Corbyn told Labour supporters the results showed his party was “ready for a general election whenever it comes”, and insisted, “there’s much more to come and it’s going to get even better”. The BBC’s projected national share of the vote, which uses the results in local elections to estimate the parties’ standing across the country, put Labour and the Conservatives neck-and-neck, on 35% apiece. Modest success for Lib Dems in remain areas The party celebrated as it took control of Richmond by gaining 22 seats and had some other good results. Catastrophic night for 'Black Death' Ukip Ukip's vote collapsed and by Friday morning it held just two seats, 44 down on four years ago. Our time isn't finished because Brexit is being betrayed." We will continue to work hard for local people and we will build on this success for the future.” 'Labour should be trouncing the Tories': readers on the local elections Read more May later travelled to Dudley, another Labour target held by the Tories, who were boosted by the collapse of Ukip. “Unless Labour gets to grips with that, the next election is far from secure, with Labour piling up the votes in cities, and the Tories having a near-monopoly on the countryside.” She added: “Whoever gets this town’s argument will win the next general election and the one after that.” In London, Labour performed more strongly in boroughs where it already had a healthy lead over the Conservatives when the seats were last contested, in 2014. But the biggest blow for the party came in Barnet, its main target in the capital, where it needed to gain just one seat to take control. “It is clear that antisemitism was a very real issue in this campaign, not everywhere, but in areas where particularly there is a large Jewish community,” he said.

LONDON — Drinking has been an integral part of Westminster life for centuries: The first bar and grill was set up inside parliament in 1773. These days, there are several bars open at all times of day and night. But it might be last orders for lawmakers’ workplace boozing. : The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking,” adding that the drinking culture increasingly feels “incongruous and out of place.” After the “industrial drinking” of the 1970s and 80s gave way to the reforms made by former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government, Wright said, a range of factors — including the rise of social media and the growing number of women in parliament — are changing the notion of what’s acceptable in the workplace. The S&S is not the only bar on the parliamentary estate — there are around a dozen. Like many pubs just outside parliament, it alerts lawmakers when to sprint back to the House of Commons in order to vote on the issues of the day. “Of course, you can drink after work, or maybe a glass of cava at lunch, but I do think the free alcohol available in the federal parliament was a relic of earlier times.” At least the Belgians aren’t downsizing their cellars — which is what’s happening in the home of the world’s most famous wines. Taking it outside Officials, however, also agree that the Bundestag has significantly downsized its in-house drinking habits during the last two decades, particularly after the parliament’s move from Bonn to Berlin in the summer of 1999. Bars also offer a social life to politicians who might be far from home, work anti-social hours and otherwise have few options to socialize, said Peyton. Frances Robinson is a freelance journalist based in London.

They’re the spectral presences of politics, honing their bosses’ ideas and messages, guarding the turf of their masters from encroachment by rivals. Almost half of women in politics have faced abuse or violence Read more How male-dominated the ranks of ministerial advisers are is hardly a surprise, but the raw figures are more appalling than I realised. The latter figure is an embarrassment for a prime minister who has said she wants more workplace equality for women and has a tight-knit inner circle, in which the most senior woman (JoJo Penn) is only the deputy chief of staff. Counting the numbers of female MPs and ministers tells only part of the story of women’s roles in politics. Special advisers matter, because they reflect and shape their bosses’ priorities. The intimacy of their relationship (they are personal appointments with strong loyalty to the political aims of their minister), means that they can drive a particular policy agenda or downplay ideas they don’t approve of – so any mention of something being a “second term issue” means it is a dodo. They’re also lightning rods for feuds – Tony Blair’s team routinely snubbed Ed Balls, when he was economic adviser to Gordon Brown, a proxy show of underlying hostilities. Spads are gatekeepers for ministers’ reputations. They have substantial influence over how their bosses are perceived – and the best are adept at pouring oil on troubled waters. What matters, though, is who gets the plum roles as consiglieri when a party gets into government.