There’s a poignant epigraph in Hilary Mantel’s final book, The Mirror & the Light. “Brother men,” it reads, “you who live after us, do not harden your hearts against us.”
Right now, it feels particularly difficult not to harden our …
Will Kemi Badenoch last the year?
Reading the newspaper coverage of Margaret Thatcher’s election as Conservative Party leader is a reminder that the figure of history we know today was far from certain to emerge. “New Tory chief just lucky, says Mr Enoch Powell,” ran one …
Could Elon Musk make Farage king?
Morgan McSweeney, Dominic Cummings and Tony Blair. They represent wildly different political traditions and instincts, but to spend any time with them is to be immediately struck by how closely their analyses can overlap. And right now, their Venn diagram …
What remains of Churchill’s England?
Twee tea towels; tubby Toby jugs; cigar-puffing cosplayers. Churchill’s apotheosis surely ranks among the most odd developments in British cultural life. He has grown so larger-than-life that one in five teens thinks he’s a fictional character. And for some, moist-eyed …
Kemi must turn Britain’s vice into virtue
In her first month as leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch has got off to an opportune start. Ignore all the headline-grabbing chatter about her unpopularity, the latest YouGov survey reveals that she has opened a viable route to …
How Osbornism failed
That American authority is shot. That an accord and relationship will have to be established with illiberal governments. That the dominance of the dollar is over. That the world will be defined from here on out by “multipolarity”, with Britain …
The Tory counter-revolution has begun
The Conservative Party has two instincts lodged deep in its soul, each battling for supremacy. The first is the desire for the reassuring comfort of what it sees as solid, sensible government. We might call this the conservative instinct. The …
Do the Tories want an Everyman or an Ideologue?
In his essay on Tolstoy, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin divides the world’s great thinkers into “foxes” and “hedgehogs”. Remember, according to the poet Archilochus, the fox knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one big thing. The hedgehog, that is, …
How the Tories can crush Farage
After they limped through four failed leaders in quick succession, only to be wiped out in the general election result, it is hard to believe a new leader will solve the Tory existential crisis. For one thing, whoever finds themselves …
The Conservative Party needs a hero
When the six MPs vying to be Conservative leader were recently asked some quick-fire questions by party HQ, their interrogation was mostly limited to the light-hearted: “What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?” But …
And so, farewell conservatism
Conservatism has died, not from an assassin’s bullet, or even from old age or because it was run over by a bus. It has died because there is no call for it anymore. This isn’t to say that nobody wants …
The last bastion of Tory Britain
The flag outside the Spalding Conservative Club is at half-mast. This is not because of the wider Tory calamity — though it should be — but, the barmaid says, because a member has died. This is South Holland and the …
The death of the Conservative Club
In 1993, the then British Prime Minister, John Major, gave a speech to the Conservative Group for Europe: “Fifty years on from now,” he predicted, “Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county [cricket] grounds, warm beer, …
You have been expelled from politics
In a short story published in 1955, Isaac Asimov imagined America’s Presidential election day in 2008. Amid intense excitement, the entire world watches on as an ordinary citizen is led forward to cast his vote — the only vote needed …
Why none of these charlatans gets my vote
“We won’t change anything, but we’ll be less corrupt, look after your money better and not rip you off so much — at least in our first term.”
This, essentially, is Labour’s message going into the election, and what passes …
