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    Suella Braverman told to explain if she rejected hotels for asylum seekers ‘in Tory areas’

    Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Suella Braverman is being urged to explain whether she refused to book hotel space for asylum seekers because “they were in Tory voting areas”. The under-fire home secretary is facing […] More

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    Investigation finds ‘no evidence’ of MPs being bullied during chaotic fracking vote

    Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email A parliamentary investigation has found “no evidence” that MPs were bullied during last month’s chaotic Commons vote on fracking, the Speaker has said. Government whips and other ministers were at […] More

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    Matt Hancock: The ambitious rising star who fell to earth

    There was something poignant about the BBC radio profile of Matt Hancock broadcast last year. It started with a university friend of his, Gina Coladangelo, explaining how his parents had separated when he was “very young”, but that they had both happily remarried.He grew up in Cheshire, and went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a first in the politicians’ degree – philosophy, politics and economics – followed by an MPhil in economics at Cambridge. He worked at the Bank of England, on the housing market, and then became an adviser to George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, in 2005. I first met him then: he was energetic, clever, and – as Osborne put it – a bit Tiggerish.It was presumably around this time that he first encountered Dominic Cummings, who had been chief of staff to Iain Duncan Smith during the latter’s brief tenure as Conservative leader. Whenever it was, Cummings seems to have formed an early and abiding dislike for someone who was very much a conventional politician. More

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    Women’s minister says protesters who harass women near abortion clinics may be attempting to ‘comfort’ them

    Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email The government’s minister for women has claimed protesters who harass women outside abortion clinics may be attempting to “comfort” them. Maria Caulfield, appointed to the role by the new PM Rishi Sunak, made […] More