Patel should haul in Dick for an interview without coffee. Meanwhile, Loughton intends to raise the case at the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Plus: Why the BBC must keep Neil. Why I’m leaving Lloyds. And: three hours with the LibDem leadership candidates.
We need to build long-term trust to hold seats like this one. We can win again – but we must deliver.
More important than the choice of new Leader, will be to decide what the Party stands for after Brexit.
Boris Johnson is already appealing to Blue Collar voters who are fed up with Labour’s betrayal of Brexit and the values of working people.
His focus on leftish politics and local campaigning built the party into a potent force, but left it badly exposed to the dangers of coalition with the Conservatives.
Plus: The mystery of the missing Kwasi Kwarteng. The presence of the ebullient Brandon Lewis. The absence and recovery of Nick de Bois. Plus: Capita’s failures.
In normal times Diane Abbott’s miscalculation on the cost of police, or Tim Farron’s “smell my spaniel” moment, might have won. But not this year.
No more foreign funding of extremism. No more self-appointed “community” intermediaries. No more pretence that it’s all about cyberspace.
During the 1980s, the electoral function of the SDP/Alliance was to help the Conservatives win. This does not necessarily hold true 30 or so years on.
The two parties have proven that they can work effectively together in normal circumstances. These are not normal circumstances.
The Government can help them keep going by revising its guidance – which, thankfully, it has promised to do.