There are few things worse than being considered 'out of touch' - other than rampant infighting and disagreement within your own party, that is. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is all too aware of this. She was hauled in early Sunday morning to appear on Andrew Marr's weekly BBC politics show,… read more…

A few people have criticised the National Security Strategy for being in too large a font and having wide margins, implying that El Gordo is attempting to pad out his homework. Judge for yourself:… read more…

William Hague doesn't have a blog, but John Redwood does. So it's interesting that Redwood hasn't seen fit to comment on a recent revolts.co.uk paper which points out that both he and Hague voted against a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. Redwood's posted recently in praise of the… read more…

The blue-bloods are up in arms! Tim Montgomerie's blue-and-blue army at ConservativeHome are enraged by the failure to kick Derek Conway out of the Commons and remove the whip, and their fury is only going to be enriched by the revelation that Conway may have given another 32 grand to… read more…

ID cards. The policy that no-one seems to want but which keeps coming back. Today, it's the news that internal Home Office papers show the full scheme has been put back at least two years. There's no way of knowing yet if this is an official leak, buttering us up… read more…

The Brown trip to China has been a rum old thing - it certainly isn't operatic material. One thing that's notable is the absence of the usual umm-ing and ah-ing over China's human rights record, or rather lack of it. Nick Robinson has a bit of a whinge about how… read more…

Mr Justice himself has been typing away for Comment is Free, on the thorny issue of civil liberties. He points out a few happy developments, such as the extension of the Human Rights Act to "public authorities" (his quotation marks, his lack of real explanation); the gift of the Freedom… read more…