DMGT, publisher of the Daily Mail and several other newspapers, has been busy making painful cuts of late (dozens of positions are reported to have been axed across the Metro and Mail on Sunday).  But it’s not all bad news for staff in Kensington. The group today announced the internal promotion of a “smart and engaging executive” named Vere Harmsworth, who happens to be the son of DMGT’s proprietor, Lord Rothermere. The news was broken to staff in an email on Wednesday afternoon sent by Mail Newspapers' editor-in-chief, Ted Verity, and the Mail Online publisher Danny Groom. “Over the past few years, many of you will have worked with Vere and seen first-hand what a smart and engaging executive he is – ...

We all want a high-wage, high-skill economy. But what does that look like? For Suella Braverman, speaking at the National Conservatism conference earlier this week, it’s one in which British workers are “trained up” to pick fruit, slaughter pigs and drive HGVs, so we are “less dependent on low-skilled foreign labour”. Meanwhile, we can only assume that we will continue to rely on immigrants to staff the NHS, work in care homes, and take high-paid jobs in the IT and finance sectors – all sectors in which the post-Brexit immigration system has led to significant increases in the number of people coming to work here. It's easy to mock the Home Secretary’s words, but they highlight some difficult challenges for any government seeking ...

Michael Gove said at the National Conservativism Conference yesterday (16 May) that he was “absolutely committed” to more houses being built. So why can’t the Housing Secretary build more houses? Surely he’s the man to do it? There are two key reasons: the party is divided, and it’s running out of time. Rishi Sunak had to back down in the face of a rebellion over housing targets back in December. Alongside planning reform, the decision is predicted to result in 77,000 fewer houses being built every year. Gove will introduce the Renters Reform Bill to parliament today, which should end no-fault evictions and stop landlords increasing rents more than once a year. But it’s doubtful whether renters will feel the ...

As a government minister, Humza Yousaf had a reputation among civil servants as one of those politicians who did not always closely read and absorb his briefings. When he was the Scottish health secretary, during the winter NHS crisis, it was widely known that Nicola Sturgeon would intervene with senior mandarins, often without telling him. This should not fill us with confidence that the First Minister has the necessary intellectual quality to think his way through the many challenges facing modern Scotland. Yousaf is, I think it’s pretty clear, a bit of a chancer, driven by ambition and impermeable self-confidence. It is a type you find in politics across the world – indeed, a blonde-mopped version recently spent three years in ...

Rupert Murdoch and his family have been roundly ridiculed and lambasted in the US media since Fox News agreed to settle a libel case filed by Dominion Voting Systems for $787m last month. But the latest criticism, from the wife of a former ally, will likely hurt more than most. The widow of Roger Ailes, Fox News’ former chairman who stood down in 2016 amid sexual harassment allegations, has attacked the Murdoch family in the wake of the Dominion settlement and the sacking of Tucker Carlson.  In an interview with the Daily Beast in New York, Elizabeth Ailes said that her husband, who died in 2017, would refer to Murdoch's sons, James and Lachlan Murdoch, as “Tweedle Dumb” and “Tweedle Dumber”, respectively. ...

Around 600 metres from parliament, a room of Conservatives are midway through three days of group therapy. Attendees at this year’s National Conservative conference – which puts the nation-state and sovereignty at the centre of their conservatism – include Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella Braverman, Michael Gove and the former Brexit negotiator David Frost. The project – as it relates to the Conservative Party – is riddled with incoherence. There’s a fundamental disagreement between those who want to unleash the free market and those who want a more interventionist state. Rees-Mogg, for instance, wants deregulation and lower taxes, whereas Danny Kruger, another attendee and a former top aide to Boris Johnson, would restrict the market to promote the community. But this is the least ...

It’s day two of the National Conservatism conference, the event that Melanie Phillips in the Times has helpfully reassured the world is “not a fascist plot”! Yesterday’s proceedings opened with Christopher DeMuth, the chairman, announcing that he had been “communing” with the late Margaret Thatcher and found she was “totally on board”, which is nice. Other highlights included a speech from the MP Danny Kruger, a man who supported Boris Johnson and whose parents’ relationship began with a 13-year affair, explaining to us that “mothers and fathers sticking together for the sake of the children... is the only possible basis for a safe and functioning society”; “Britain’s strictest headteacher”, Katharine Birbalsingh, declaiming that she would be putting attendees in detention, ...

It’s been over a week since many parts of England voted in the local elections on 4 May. Though the celebrations and bank holiday joy of the King’s coronation shielded Rishi Sunak from the initial fallout, the Conservative Party is now embarking upon a campaign of finger-pointing as it attempts to reconvene and bolster its electoral chances. On Saturday 13 May, Tory colleagues gathered at the first conference of the Conservative Democratic Organisation – a group within the Conservative Party that claims to speak for its grassroots members and is broadly aligned with Boris Johnson. At the event in Bournemouth, the former home secretary Priti Patel declared that the current Tory leadership was “overseeing the managed decline” of the Conservative ...