Politics blog + Conservatives

Debbie Abrahams held Oldham East for Labour, increasing the party's majority to 3,558 and relegating the Conservatives to third place. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian.

Join Andrew Sparrow for rolling coverage of all the day's developments including reaction to the result of the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection

Vince Cable: silly. But Telegraph was wicked. Photograph: Getty Images

The Daily Telegraph's Vince Cable bugging affair has been an unexpected test for MPs wanting to reassert the independent authority of backbenchers. Alas, they have flunked it so far. But all is not lost, as I shall explain.

Tory MPs in particular have been both petty and short-sighted, reinforcing the suspicion that far too many are executive-minded time servers. They should have been roaring on the airwaves and in print about a breach of parliamentary privilege – as serious MPs would have done only a few years ago.

In demanding Cable's dismissal instead of defending him, Ed Miliband has been silly too, but he's only a lad. Outraged Lib Dem MPs have arguably been worse, but they are Lib Dems after all. It's Tories to whom we're supposed to look to to defend entrenched constitutional proprieties against the mob.

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Vince Cable arrives at 10 Downing Street for a cabinet meeting today. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters

Andrew Sparrow with all today's politics news – including David Cameron and Nick Clegg's joint press conference

David Cameron looking prime ministerial in Brussels days after shocking some Tories with his locker room banter. Photograph: Thierry Roge/Reuters

David Cameron has a sharp sense of humour and often peppers his conversation in private with words that would make his mother, a highly respectable retired JP, blush.

But is his locker room banter making our Dave a tad un-prime ministerial? Some Tory MPs were slightly surprised this week when the prime minister referred to the parliamentary expenses body as a "four letter word".

Eyebrows were raised when the prime minister joked about the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) at a meeting of the 1922 committee on Wednesday evening in an attempt to show he felt the pain of Tory MPs. I am told the prime minister said words to the effect of:

We all know what we think of IPSA. It is a four letter word.

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Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary: but for how long? Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer

Now here's a funny thing. There seems to be a plot under way in the Tory ranks to get Ken Clarke sacked in a new year reshuffle. His offence? Last week's provocative green paper proposal to give judges greater discretion over sentencing – and to cut the record prison population.

At the time it annoyed some (not all) rightwing MPs and their allies in the newspapers who find it hard to forgive the justice secretary for being pro-European, being indifferent to party factionalism and appearing to enjoy life. Even brainy Matthew d'Ancona has joined the pack, itself a shocking development.

But I doubt if most voters would be impressed either by factional feuds or by the targeting of Ken Bloke, one of the very few senior politicians who is regarded as a likeable and real human being, a grown-up in a cabinet of largely untried teenies.

Locked in perpetual adolescence, the Sun has since declared it a policy goal to have Clarke dismissed for being soft on crime. That challenge alone is a good enough reason for the rest of us to send Ken Christmas cards and for David Cameron to embrace him even more warmly.

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Nick Herbert, the policing minister, in his office. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Nick Herbert, in an interview with Andrew Sparrow, delivers warning after outbreaks of violence on previous protests

Sir Keith Joseph, seated next to Margaret Thatcher, may have provided inspiration for Howard Flight's remarks. Photograph: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Ima

Conservatives do not have a happy track record when they mix class and breeding.

Howard Flight's warning that removing child benefit from higher rate taxpayers will discourage the middle classes from breeding echoes a famous speech by Sir Keith Joseph in 1974.

The intellectual driving force behind Thatcherism killed off any ambitions he may have had to lead the Conservative party when he warned that "our human stock is threatened" because too many poor mothers have children.

Let's put the words of two Tories, uttered 36 years apart, side by side. This is what Flight told the London Evening Standard of George Osborne's plans to remove child benefit from higher rate taxpayers:

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Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street in 1990. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Did you notice that Labour has edged back ahead of the Tories in today's ICM poll for the Guardian? No, I thought not. It was tucked away on the bottom of page six. And quite right too.

The harsh fact is that voters aren't very interested in what defeated political parties say or – in Ed Miliband's case – don't say while they're on alleged paternity leave.

In any case Miliband seems to have been quite busy in his quiet way. Since yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of Margaret Thatcher, the resourceful Rachel Sylvester has penned a Times column – behind the paywall, alas – suggesting that Labour will suffer a poisonous hangover from the Brown-Blair feud, much as the Tories endured a 15-year War of Thatcher's Succession.

The loss of New Labour initiatives to Cameron and Clegg during the Brown interregnum, followed by David Miliband's heir-to-Blair defeat by his Brownite brother, are cited to support the thesis that the feud will fester on.

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The Guardian and ICM have been conducting monthly polls since 1984. Here is the full data going back to then. Plus, for the first time, we can bring you the trends in the big questions and how they've changed over time. Continue reading...

David Cameron and Lord Young. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

Lord Young of Graffham is just the kind of accident lying in wait to spoil a prime minister's weekend. So his cocky misjudgment of the recession yesterday forced David Cameron to slap down a man old enough to be his father. Young duly walked the plank.

Yet gaffes, silly or outrageous, are woven into the fabric of politics and cause particular offence when they contain an awkward kernel of truth that it would have been more tactful to have left unsaid.

Cherie Blair had a point when she said "that's a lie" on hearing Gordon Brown praise her husband. Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" promise in 1938 was fervently believed by millions, but only for six months. Harold Wilson was correct – strictly speaking – to tell voters after sterling's 1967 devaluation that "the pound in you pocket" would still be worth the same.

But, as with Chamberlain, it struck a false note – and was misleading. The slippery Wilson was not forgiven. When discussing another policy he later said: "This is not an idle promise, it is a pledge;" the distinction was noted with a national belly laugh.

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Downing Street has announced 54 new life peers. Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters

In the course of a busy morning I've not yet had time to go through the new list of peers announced by David Cameron. Best not to get personal anyway. The row over this list should primarily be about numbers – 54 more peers able to draw that daily allowance at a time of public expenditure cuts. And that's not even taking account of the constitutional proprieties or party donations.

The BBC has been saying it takes the upper house to nearly 750. But the formidable Meg Russell of UCL's Constitution Unit has been quick to point out the defective maths. When all but 92 hereditary peers were kicked out in 1999 there were 666 – isn't that the mark of the beast? – peers left.

As of 1 November there were 738, including 230 Labour peers – thanks to Tony Blair's mass ennoblements – 145 Tories, 74 Lib Dems and 149 of those very important crossbenchers who tend to be the swing vote.

Now their numbers seem to be heading north again pretty fast. Gordon Brown appointed lots, so that there have been 107 since polling day on 6 May. You can see why Cameron wants to tweak the balance – the Tories had a de facto built-in Lords majority when they were last in Downing Street, as they did for most of the 20th century. But this seems to be overdoing it.

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Rory Stewart walks to the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Kabul, Afghanistan, which he was instrumental in setting up. Photograph: Jason P Howe

Rory Stewart, a Conservative MP, has admitted that his career path might "give the appearance" that he worked for MI6, and confirmed that he had never actively voted Tory prior to this year's general election.

In a detailed article charting his high-achieving background in the latest issue New Yorker (paywall), Stewart also reveals that he doesn't think about becoming prime minister as he often as he once did.

"If I was going to be really, really pretentious and put it in the most fantastical idealistic terms, if you gave me a choice between being Edmund Burke or Lord North, I would much rather be Burke," Stewart said. "My greatest ambition would be to be somebody who made some kind of intelligent, lasting contribution to political thought, much more than working my way up through the system at the cost of being a mediocre prime minister. There is just no point in being Lord North."

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