In 2010, a new generation of Tory MPs began to find their feet in Westminster. Though pleased to see the party in power for the first time in their adult lives, they were frustrated that it took them a coalition …
Conservatives need some Swedish love
Sweden has long presented a puzzle to foreign observers. The Left tends to extoll the perceived virtues of social solidarity, collectivist values, and the “cradle-to-grave” welfare state. The Right, on the other hand, while largely agreeing with the basic welfare …
The Tories don’t care about politics
Sometimes, when overwhelmed by morbid curiosity, I find myself reading the Wikipedia pages of plane crashes. Thanks to the data recovered from black boxes, especially of cockpit voice recordings, the last moments of a flight can be recreated with vivid …
Who would be a young Tory?
Aspiration is a word forgotten by the Conservative Party. It’s certainly not a word that’s forgotten by me. In only one generation, my family went from being born in council housing and needing to muck out the pigs before heading …
The Tories need to get over Thatcher
Like so many political rivals, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are divided by a common ambition. Both want to cast themselves as the heir to Margaret Thatcher. To do that, they are erecting radically different accounts of Thatcher’s time in …
Is this the end of levelling up?
Remember levelling up? Before Patterson, Partygate, and Pinchergate, it was supposed to be the main focus of this government. Along with getting Brexit done and keeping Corbyn out of Number 10, it helped win the Tories their largest majority in …
Britain needs Macmillan, not Thatcher
It is easy — and just — to mock Angela Merkel for her years of reckless misgovernance; thanks to her, Germany is now beginning to ration street lighting and heating, and rushing to install “warmth hubs” so her once-adoring voters …
Thatcher won’t save the Tories
Since the fall of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party, the aftershocks of dismay about his integrity continue to ripple, as his potential successors jostle for attention. But beneath these surface concerns, a more challenging struggle has been …
The boomers destroyed the Tories
Boris Johnson stands over your hospital bed, mask and medical gown on, forceps at hand, shining a lamp brightly down on your face. There had better be a good reason you’re undergoing this surgery. Pain must have a purpose.
Think …
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 …
The nuclear family has failed
When people talk about the structure of the family, they often find themselves arguing for or against the “nuclear family”, which consists, on most tellings, of a father and mother, with perhaps two or three children in their care for …
How to lose a leadership election
With MPs reassembling after their February break, the great Boris Johnson Leadership Melodrama will soon be back in the headlines. For the time being, at least, the Prime Minister survives, bloodied but not yet fatally wounded by that tumultuous encounter …
Inside South Korea’s incel election
Conservatives in South Korea should be in a tricky position. The nation is currently led by a liberal — who is the most popular president in its democratic history. Moon Jae-in’s administration oversaw one of the world’s best responses to …
Trashy Tories should read Roger Scruton
“Love is a relationship between dying things,” said Roger Scruton just months before he was to succumb to lung cancer. We hold on to the ones we love, and hold them ever closer, precisely because they are mortal and will …