Politics live blog - Monday 24 January

Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen

8.48am: Last night David Davis (pictured, left) said that there was now no one in David Cameron's inner circle with real experience of working class life. Davis, who was bought up on a council estate himself, made the comment as he spoke about the resignation of Andy Coulson. Davis said Coulson's loss was particularly regrettable because Coulson did have an ordinary background and as a result brought a "gritty" mindset to Tory thinking. We've quoted Davis in the paper today, but his quotes are worth reporting in full. This is what he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

One of the criticisms that is often levelled at [David Cameron and his senior team] is that they don't have a sense of what a large part of the country, the poorer part of the country, what their views and priorities are and Andy Coulson always brought that to the table. There he was, an Essex boy, council house lad, made his own way in the world and frankly never minced words. It is said, I don't know with what truth, that it was him that persuaded Cameron to put immigration into one of his earlier conference speeches. So, he was somebody who brought that gritty, slightly tough but necessary mindset to the Conservative leadership's thinking. There's no doubt in my mind that David and George [Osborne] both care about those issues - about the issues that matter to ordinary people. But they are who are they are - they come from their own background, they don't actually come from backgrounds where they had to scrape for the last penny at the end of the week.

Davis said that without Coulson in Downing Street there would be no-one from his sort of background in Cameron's inner circle and that it would be more difficult to make key policies - such as free schools - work in poorer parts of the country. "Those are the areas that you are going to need n! ot just intellectual insight but also emotional insight and need to know exactly what people suffer in that particular lifestyle and it's going to be reduced by the removal of Andy, which is why, for me, it's really one of the most regrettable outcomes of the government so far," Davis said.

8.23am: At the end of last week we had a good reason to thank the God of News. We had three huge political stories within 24 hours, and two of them - the resignations of Alan Johnson and Andy Coulson - came out of the blue. But today it looks as if the deity is being a lot less bountiful. Newswise, it's pretty thin. Here's what I can find on the agenda.

10.30am: The trial of Lord Taylor of Warwick continues. Taylor denies making false expense claims.

2.30pm: Theresa May, the home secretary, and Yvette Cooper, the new shadow home secretary, clash for the first time at Home Office questions.

3pm: Peers start the 12th day of committee stage debate on the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill.

Never mind. I'm sure it will pick up. I'll be looking at the top political stories in the papers in a moment. As usual, I'll also be covering all the breaking political news, and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and an afternoon one at about 4pm.


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