05/11/2011

Available for over a year

Fraser Nelson of The Spectator looks behind the scenes at Westminster. After last week's big rebellion on Europe, what's the mood now on the Conservative benches? The MP, Douglas Carswell, the peer and former top Tory insider Michael Dobbs, and historian, Robin Harris, fear further splits are looming. The veteran Labour Eurosceptic, Kate Hoey, detects shifts in her party too. The mood is changing, she says. Proposals to allow firms to sack workers more easily are being blocked by the Lib Dems. Here, the director general of the Institute of Directors, Simon Walker, clashes with Nick Clegg's chief adviser, the Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb. Finally, Tribune, the newspaper of the left, has survived a financial crisis and will become a workers' co-operative. But does its plight suggest the intellectual vigour of the left is waning ? No, says Mark Seddon, the paper's long-serving former editor. The editor was Peter Mulligan.