Newest stories

1.
Mar 11th 2:52pm by Nicholas Watt, Charles Guthrie
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Quietly, and with little fanfare, the shadow defence secretary has killed off ministerial ambitions of retired army chiefWhen you achieve victory – of the complete, earth-scorching variety – it is always best to avoid crowing. "In war: resolution; in...
2.
Mar 11th 1:12pm by Michael White
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Comparative performance that can be measured – and good practice copied – is a valuable response to those who want to merge things to make them 'more efficient'If the levels of police stop and search activities against black and south Asian Britons...
3.
Mar 10th 2:50pm by Nicholas Watt
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Michael Gove shook hands with Simon Burns straight after John Bercow criticised himAn intriguing vignette from today's lively session of prime minister's questions in which David Cameron lost his cool when Labour MPs shouted that retired defence chiefs...
4.
Mar 10th 1:45pm by Andrew Sparrow
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Live coverage as the shadow foreign secretary makes a foreign policy speech at Royal United Services Institute11.44am: William Hague is giving a big speech today. It's on the "foreign policy framework of a new Conservative government" and Hague is...
5.
Mar 10th 1:28pm by Andrew Sparrow
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Minute-by-minute coverage of PMQs from midday11.24am: Gordon Brown has decided to make his character an issue in the election. He gave a major speech on the economy this morning. We've got a story about it on the website, and Downing Street have issued...
6.
Mar 10th 1:12pm by Patrick Wintour
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Justice secretary rails against Tory plan to cut number of MPs by 10%Jack Straw does not normally blow a gasket, but yesterday evening in the polite environs of the Hansard Society the justice secretary accused David Cameron of wanting to indulge in...
7.
Mar 10th 1:06pm by Michael White
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Openness and transparency exact a price in terms of public confidence in institutions, a price that may eventually lead to a reactionWhat caught my eye in today's papers was not ex-M15 head Eliza Manningham-Buller's admission that she was ignorant of the...
8.
Mar 10th 12:34pm by
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In a Vanity Fair piece, Ed Vaizey says Cameron is 'much more conservative by nature than he acts' while in the same article the Tory leader tries to avoid left/right labelsI've only just got round to reading the Michael Wolff piece about David Cameron in...
9.
Mar 10th 11:29am by Nicholas Watt
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William Hague tells Britain's diplomats they will be at the heart of government, and warns the Treasury: hands off my patchRoll out the Rolls Royce, open up the wine cellars and ensure that our men and women across the globe still command the smartest...
10.
Mar 9th 3:36pm by Andrew Sparrow
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The home secretary puts the boot into David Cameron's proposals to fight crime2.40pm: Q: Does Harman now know if Labour takes money from non-doms? (At the weekend she was unable to say whether various donors were non-doms)Harman says she pointed out that...
11.
Mar 9th 2:20pm by Dave Hill
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Boris Johnson has revised his arrangements for nominating the next chair of Arts Council England in London after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport made clear it wouldn't appoint any candidate he recommended for the post if the panel conducting...
12.
Mar 9th 1:20pm by Michael White
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New proposals to update the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act may do a modest amount of good but at a disproportionate costWhen I was a junior reporter on the London Evening Standard an alsatian badly mauled a small child in Islington. Over the next few weeks dogs...
13.
Mar 9th 12:46pm by Henry McDonald
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While the Ulster Unionists' decision to resist calls to back the transfer of policing and justice powers has been called 'a colossal mistake', it may actually appeal to many unionist votersThere is an Ulster Scots word that perfectly sums up the psyche of...
14.
Mar 9th 12:20pm by Nicholas Watt
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Intervention by the former US president in the Northern Ireland peace process receives a mixed receptionAre we missing him yet? That is the question posed this morning in the New York Times by Stanley Fish who reminds his readers of his prediction that...
15.
Mar 9th 10:00am by Patrick Wintour
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Any deeply residual hopes Lord Mandelson might have of returning to the Commons appear to have been dashed. The shadow justice secretary, Dominic Grieve, has announced that the business secretary must be a victim of the wash-up. In the Commons (and...