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Indeed - the Johnson purge destroyed the backbenches. Badenoch and/or Braverman are going to both want a top job - neither could be Chancellor, Foreign Sec isn't as important as it used to be and only one can be Home Sec. An awkward circle to square. When you have only 95 people who have been...

Meaning one of the new group? That would be an insane risk. mid 30s, early 40s at the youngest. Badenoch/Braverman are 44, Victoria Atkins (who would be terrible) is 48.

If they're any good or the best people at running them, and don't have to listen to people wanting money, I'm not too bothered if it's the same people. What needs to be put into place is much ticket price simplification and not ever increasing costs (get rid of the concept of protected and...

They've got the same problem as when changing leaders during the last Parliament. MPs get to reduce it to 2, but the members didn't choose a leader based on winning an election. If they can't match those two aspects, it doesn't matter much. They'd be better off making sure that there is only 1...

Someone already posted a bylinetimes piece - it seems some do exist but live huge distances away, one's in Gibraltar! Farage will just claim the same "hired a vetting company", and suck up any meaningless fine. He's got the vote count, he's spent nothing, he knows a bit more about whether they...

I think Cameron has something to offer, if he puts his mind to it. I will be surprised if Labour don't consult him for at least the first year, as he's been the Foreign Secretary. I am equally intrigued to see how many times he shows up for anything else.

About 27-28 committees to be filled, the chairs are divided according to the Commons divisions. By rule, Public Accounts and Standards Committees will be 2 of those the Conservatives get as Opposition. They only get 3 or 4 more, I think - exact numbers and selection to be confirmed after the...

I suspect nobody knows. Presumably none were required to swear fealty to Johnson this time! 42 MPs were first elected before 2015, so almost none have experienced being in opposition. 26 are first timers. Leaving 53 from 2015-2019.

Suggestion last night was that Sunak will do the first PMQ, and then there's the summer break. After that, someone else will take over on an interim basis - Hunt maybe as he has ruled himself out of being leader permanently. He can cover most things ably enough, including responding to the...

He's reportedly quite a good local MP. Possibly his relative silence in the last months and detachment from the govt helped him. Reform took 12k votes (didn't stand there in 2019).

Chief Secretary to the Treasury has just stated that announcements will be made to the Commons first where they're meant to be. Now to see if they stick to that, I hope they do.

It wouldn't but I think it extremely unlikely that he'll do the same thing. He'll be there for every opportunity to be seen and interviewed. He could get away with being a tool as an MEP because it wasn't anywhere near as important to British people.

To back that up, my constituency had a fall in turnout from nearly 69 to 60. Curiously, this seems to have been only 3000 votes total drop. Labour vote was down by 9500 ish. Greens got a lot of votes - over 9000 total - and came second, but still an 18k majority for Labour. I think an...

I said somewhere yesterday that I thought that the UKIP/Brexit/Reform entity had already taken the majority of votes from Labour at previous elections, and had relatively little purchase on more. Farage spent a lot of the election campaign targetting the Conservatives, so it doesn't seem a...

One of the better commentators on Downing St

Have you been reading Larry the Cat's Twitter?!

Vallance and Timpson aren't cabinet posts, they're junior ministers, and the Lords almost always has some of the junior ministers as the govt need spokespeople there as well. Hermer is 'attends Cabinet' - I don't know the reasoning behind his appointment, it seems a bit of a surprise. However...

The second point - hopefully the ministers will largely stay in place for at least 2 years. Plenty of opportunities to bring in the next group as junior ministers so there isn't a Shapps of all the jobs situation. It would be pretty criminal to let that happen. Starmer will have to make sure...

Absolutely. I imagine the civil service will be delighted to have a solid expert who knows how to run teams (Vallance). People outside the Westminster bubble seem like a decent idea to try!

Sir Patrick Vallance given a peerage and appointed Minister of State for Science. I don't think he has a party affiliation, so presumably they want him to give even-handed advice.