Is Rishi Sunak doomed to lose the next election? Yesterday’s King’s Speech, the first of the new reign but almost certainly the last before voters go to the polls, was the Prime Minister’s big opportunity to set out a winning …
How Britain gave up smoking
When the Labour government of Tony Blair banned smoking in enclosed public spaces, it was completing an agenda that had been outlined 20 years earlier, in an episode of the sitcom Yes, Prime Minister: “A complete ban on all cigarette …
Britain is facing a second 2008
In selecting the date of the next election, Conservative Party strategists have a choice between catastrophe and oblivion. Following the Labour Party’s micro-landslides in Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire, and with Rishi Sunak’s conference reset leaving opinion polls unmoved, it seems increasingly …
Rishi Sunak’s annus horribilis
When Rishi Sunak took over as Prime Minister, he bore a degree of goodwill. The mess he inherited a year ago today was hardly his fault; surely he couldn’t make matters worse. Besides, Sunak represented competence.
He had, after …
Keir Starmer should have no hope
Optimism is crucial to success in democratic politics. There is plenty of evidence to back up this platitude. Bill Clinton came from the town of Hope in Arkansas, and never let voters forget it. An advertisement for Ronald Reagan in …
Rishi Sunak’s pointless revolution
“I was not really in Manchester at all,” wrote J.B. Priestley after spending a few days in the city for the opening of a play in the early Thirties. “I was living in a private nightmare city, bounded in space …
Did Dominic Cummings derail HS2?
“I’m a long way from Manchester so I might be missing something,” tweeted one Westminster pundit, “but it surely takes a special kind of spin-doctor genius to decide to axe the Manchester leg of HS2 during your annual conference in, …
Rishi Sunak’s war on the young
What does a fair distribution of economic resources look like? It is a question that will dog the Conservative Party Conference this week as questions over inheritance tax, VAT on school fees and the triple-lock on state pensions return to …
The Left is losing the climate class war
Britain’s cosy climate consensus has been broken. No longer is “net zero” some airy target that can waft freely in the intellectual blue sky of speeches and policy papers — it is an ambition that has finally drifted onto the …
Will Dominic Cummings destroy Westminster?
Can a dissident operate openly within the system he wishes to destroy? For revolutionary-turned-Substacker Dominic Cummings, wrestling with whether or not The Startup Party he has floated on his Substack blog is a mission worth pursuing, the auguries are surely …
Will Dominic Cummings destroy Westminster?
Can a dissident operate openly within the system he wishes to destroy? For revolutionary-turned-Substacker Dominic Cummings, wrestling with whether or not The Startup Party he has floated on his Substack blog is a mission worth pursuing, the auguries are surely …
The Centrist Dads won’t save Britain
The Centrists are back, baby, and this time they are bringing with them the solution for our polarised times. Such seems to be the theme of the past week, what with former MP and would-be Prime Minister Rory Stewart talking …
How conservative is Net Zero?
In 2019, the Conservative manifesto promised to “lead the global fight against climate change, by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero”. In the wake of the Uxbridge by-election, that ambition looks much more precarious. As the Prime Minister …
The case for leaving the ECHR
Was it Theresa May who broke the taboo? In April 2016, in her only public speech during the Brexit referendum campaign, the then Home Secretary reluctantly concluded that the UK should remain in the EU, but leave the European Convention …
Can the Tories stop mass migration?
During a recent holiday in the East of England, I followed a sign through a farm gate offering raspberries for sale. It turned out to be a table in an empty farm outbuilding, with punnets of raspberries, a weighing scale, …
