In a day or two, Tory MPs will vote against their own Queen's Speech in order to attach a symbolic statement reiterating what their leader has already promised them. It's all very baffling. What exactly are they trying to achieve and how much damage will it cause David Cameron?

What are Tory backbenchers doing?

Leading Conservative eurosceptics have tabled an amendment to the motion welcoming the Queen's Speech. At the end of line five, they want to add the statement: "But respectfully regret that an EU referendum bill was not included in the Gracious Speech".

The effort is led by one of parliament's most die-hard eurosceptics, John Baron, with able assistance by fellow right-wing troublemaker Peter Bone. Most of the other signatories are the usual suspects: bad tempered Tory backbenchers who are now quite used to rocking the boat. In fact, it's almost second nature. They include: Philip Hollobone, Philip Davies, Douglas Carswell, David Davis, Nick de Bois, Adam Afriyie, Zac Goldsmith,

By Amy Aeron-Thomas

Chris Huhne is currently serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for perverting the course of justice and not for the numerous penalties he received for bad driving. Professional footballers have grossly exceeded the speed limit with impunity, only to be given a fine/community service on the rare occasion they are caught. Gary McCourt was sentenced to a five-year ban and community service last week for killing his second cyclist – his driving had already killed in 1986.

These stories should be contrasted with those of the families who are suddenly and traumatically bereaved as a result of negligent and dangerous driving, which all-too-often is left unchecked by the state and results in life-long disabilities or death.

Today the government's consultation on its new 'victims code', the product of a promise to put victims of crime at the heart of justice policy, comes to an end. The proposed code does not include all victims of criminal drivers and in fact leaves out

What do you do with a public service which is enjoying considerable success and just won the British Quality Foundation Gold Award for Excellence? The answer is very simple: you scrap it and open it up to private competition.

Justice secretary Chris Grayling is implementing the wholesale privatisation of the probation service.

Quite why is anyone's guess. The probation service has managed to get reoffending rates down to 34.2% after a decade of steady year-on-year decline. It is a minor success story in a difficult area of public policy.

Grayling has blamed the service for the persistently high reoffending rates of those in jail less than a year. The only trouble with this argument is that the probation service has no responsibility for this area and hasn't done for nearly three decades. The part of the system which isn't working is precisely the bit which the probation service does not control.

To his credit, Grayling has been fairly explicit about his plans. The probation service

A weird, thoroughly unpleasant image keeps popping up in my brain when I think about this year's Queen's Speech. It's of David Cameron and Nick Clegg, squashed together in a slowly shrinking red telephone booth, but trying their hardest to look attractive to a gaggle of onlooking backbenchers and voters.

The troubled daydreams of a poor lobby journalist should, perhaps, be referred to psychiatric help. But colleagues have helped me interpret them. A ticking clock and the pressing need to implement rather than legislate makes this Queen's Speech a tricky proposition for the coalition's leaders. But with the limited wriggle room available to them, the coalition's leaders are trying their damndest to posture every way they can to please just about everyone.

Think back 12 months. The coalition's first midterm Queen's Speech was dominated by the doomed Lords reform bill, setting up months of misery, sending government unity into freefall and laying the groundwork for the acrimony of

Keith Vaz isn't often right, but he's right today. "An in/out referendum before the next election would clear the air," he tweeted. "We could actually hold it on the day of the next general election."

His view is presumably less influenced by his desire to "clear the air" than it is by basic political strategy, but his basic political strategy is a very good one.

Labour's shadow Europe minister, Emma Reynolds, is in Vienna today outlining the party's policy on Europe. Miliband's in a bit of a bind. The Labour leader does actually believe he will be prime minister come 2015, and he doesn't intend to spend the entire time bickering over Europe. But nor does he want to end up on the wrong side of voters' opinions on the EU by opposing a referendum come election time. Tricky. Luckily for Miliband, Vaz has provided the least bad option: demand a vote in 2015.

Today's intervention by Nigel Lawson shows quite how damaging David Cameron's EU referendum pledge will prove to be. No matter what

In a Washington press conference this week, US President Barack Obama broke his long silence on the Guantánamo Bay (‘Gitmo’) complex - an American prison camp situated in Cuba.

It’s about time. Since February, detainees have been hunger striking, and according to military officials, 100 of the 166 prisoners are now refusing to eat in protest over their incarceration without trial. Many have been in custody for more than a decade, and for these individuals there is zero prospect of release.

Guantánamo Bay is a revolting remnant of former President George W. Bush’s counter-terrorism policies. Outside of US jurisdiction, the compound clings to America’s international reputation like a fetid stink, and is - in every conceivable way - immoral.

Now, Obama has gone on record to decry the institution. Indeed - he made its closure part of his 2008 election campaign, and yet it remains open. The reason? Congress - his initial attempt was blocked by the USA’s legislature, and the same thing may well

Ukip's performance in the local elections is extraordinary. Even at this early stage, the party has already beaten the (admittedly problematic) benchmark set by respected polling experts Rallings and Thrasher. It is doing very well indeed.

First, a caveat: they are still not winning anything. Their South Shields by-election result is impressive, but nowhere near enough to get them an MP. They are not taking control of councils. Ukip suffer from the traditional problem of small parties in British politics: the first-past-the-post system means groups with spread-out support have a hard time breaking through. Come in second place and it just doesn't matter how many votes you got.

But whichever way you look at it, Ukip's tally is undeniably impressive.


                                   [Live blog: All the latest from the remaining counts]

They continue to take votes from their natural home – irritated Tory voters. Three quarters of the party's gains so far have come at the cost of the

"Us politicians don't feel truly elected," Gbola, a Tory councillor, tells me sadly. "Deep down you wished you were there by the complete wishes of the people."

Gbola has been a councillor for nearly 13 years and has built up a decent majority, by "persuasion rather than imposing". He admits there is a problem with the way Britain does its politics, however, and it bothers him. "People in the third world want the vote," he adds, despite the fact they face wars and famine and corruption. "Not here!" Here, where the roads and street lighting are OK, no one seems to care.

There is something flaccid about local politics in this country. Something so thoroughly limp that the real veterans can see the biggest cliché of all coming a mile off. John, who's been doing this sort of thing for more decades than he cares to remember, spots it impeccably. Here is a scruffy looking house, with a white van parked outside. "He'll say it," John says, confidently predicting this was the sort of person who