In a good mood, Boris Johnson likes to ramble, but his resignation speech as Prime Minister was just a few minutes long. On the surface, it made a creditable attempt to project dignity and generosity and good grace. He admitted …
Boris Johnson broke Britain
Pity the poor columnist attempting to write The Case for Boris: a blank screen sits before him, the cursor blinking helplessly. There simply is no case for Boris, no justification for any continued role in public life. None of the …
How Boris destroyed Boris
We are in the summer of 2032, and once again Boris Johnson is fighting for his life. Above Downing Street the carrion crows circle, as they have so often in the last 13 years. Once again a senior minister has …
Michael Gove won’t save the North
Recently, the Prime Minister found himself on Tyneside but thought he was on Teesside. So what’s the problem, other than straightforward stupidity? The problem is that the British road to power rarely leads north, and at a time of much …
The nightmare haunting the Tories
In a vast, bleak industrial hangar, endless coffins are laid out, as far as the eye can see. So begins a scene in Dennis Kelly’s conspiracy drama, Utopia, set amid the turmoil of the Winter of Discontent. In February 1979, …
The Tories deserve to lose Tiverton
“We love tractors,” says an old man by Tiverton market, sunning himself on a bench. He gives a filthy laugh and I hear pride in it: he sounds like Sid James. Tractors are why I am here, at least tangentially. …
Boris can’t keep a story straight
These days, with Partygate refusing to go quietly, there’s increasing attention paid to Boris Johnson’s incapacity to keep a story straight, not to mention his constant prevarication about what conservatism in practice should look like: lockdowns or wild parties? Or …
The man who broke Boris
Regardless of what he says, the Prime Minister’s time as a mover of events, rather than a prisoner of them, is up. That fate was inevitable from the moment a young Boris Johnson declared he would be “world king” one …
Did Boris kill conservatism?
As Boris Johnson reels from last night’s leadership vote, attention has naturally focused on his personal failings. But what if the problem runs deeper? Of the eight Conservative leaders between 1970 and 2019, six were broken on the wheel of …
Dominic Cummings: “I don’t like parties”
Recently I was arranging a charity auction for JK Rowling’s Lumos Foundation and I cheekily asked Dominic Cummings to contribute. I have never met him and did not expect an answer. But he said that I could auction an hour …
The Tories must capture forgotten England
It would be easy to conclude that Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party is on its way out. Shortly before yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, the incumbent party lost more than one-quarter of all local council seats it was defending. It is being chased …
The ghost of Blair haunts Sedgefield
To understand Blairism and its lessons for Keir Starmer, I go to Trimdon, a former pit village near Darlington where, on May 11, 1983, Tony Blair knocked on John Burton’s door. Burton was a teacher and the secretary of the …
Oxford University didn’t cause Brexit
It happens every Thursday during term time. To the side of St Michael’s street, arched neo-gothic buildings. A dingy bar, a library which never has enough plugs, and a crenelated debating hall. That’s the Oxford Union. It is, apparently, the …
Is Ukraine just a white man’s war?
Fourteen years ago, when Boris Johnson was a mere twinkle in the British electorate’s eye, I wound up shadowing the then MP for Henley-on-Thames as he campaigned to become Mayor of London. He won, of course, then bagged a second …
The only way Boris can survive Partygate
There’s nothing like a political crisis — especially if you’re in Number 10. But when the news broke yesterday that Boris Johnson, Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak had all been issued with Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs), one suspects the mood …
