I was deeply saddened to learn of the death this morning of Alan Keen MP. I knew Alan principally from his eight-year stint as Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Football Group, having served as his Vice Chairman for the past three years. He was absolutely dedicated to the world of football and was an avid supporter of his beloved Middlesbrough, having worked as a talent scout for the club before entering politics....

I do not regard myself as a natural rebel, nor would I describe my politics as especially Eurosceptic (I favour the UK remaining in the EU, albeit exploiting the current economic crisis as the opportunity to refashion our relationship within that institution). Nevertheless I was one of the original signatories to the backbench motion for today’s debate. Somewhat disingenuously leading figures in all three main political parties have accused those MPs promoting today’s debate of ‘an unnecessary and self-indulgent diversion’ at ‘the wrong time’...

Almost eighteen months ago the Labour Party plunged to electoral defeat. At 29.8 per cent its share of the British vote was its second lowest since the war and smaller still than the Conservatives had achieved in our 1997 and 2001 debacles. Normally such a drubbing represents a seismic shift profoundly shaking up the direction of British politics. Strangely this has not happened.....

I write these words two hours or so before parliament has an emergency debate on the News International phone hacking scandal. It is always a little unwise to predict how political theatre will turn out, but experience suggests this three hour debate will see a stream of MPs grandstanding in the most nauseous, hypocritical manner. Like every fair-minded person around I am shocked (although not especially surprised) to learn that the industrial scale phone hacking extended to the relatives of Milly Dowler, the Soham schoolgirls, 7/7 victims etc...

It remains a sensible working assumption that the coalition will sustain for the full five year term of this parliament. Incumbents are notoriously difficult to prise out of Downing Street. Against all odds (or so it seemed) John Major survived for virtually a full term after the collapse of his economic policy in September 1992; similarly even Gordon Brown could not be ousted from the Premiership in spite of apparently perennial terminal crises in the quarter-decade from October 2007...