Once again, to the delight of our comment class, who will take any opportunity to ignore the country’s permanent state of crisis for the comfortable distractions of meaningless Westminster rigmarole, Boris Johnson has scuttled from his hiding-hole to bask in …
Boris Johnson’s theatre of the absurd
Early one spring morning during the pandemic, I was in the Queen’s private plane on the tarmac of Belfast International Airport watching Boris Johnson frantically searching for the No. 10 mask his team wanted him to wear. He was full …
Biden’s false border victory
One has to admire the chutzpah of Kamala Harris. Less than 24 hours after Title 42 expired, there she was, merrily clinking glasses at a Democratic Party soirée in a wealthy Atlanta suburb. When a journalist asked about the possible …
Do national conservatives trust the people?
It was inevitable that this week’s NatCon conference in London would be met with the usual mix of mockery and outrage. To some, the very concept of national conservatism is anachronistic and ludicrous; to others, it is all-too modern and …
The Blue Wall is crumbling
Driving through an affluent suburb of Düsseldorf in the Seventies, J.G. Ballard had a vision. Like Shepperton, Ballard’s hometown in Surrey, this 20th-century arrangement of wealth, leisure and family located on the fringes of a great city seemed eternal. A …
How Thatcher lost her culture war
Back in the Fifties, when he was still an Angry Young Man, novelist Kingsley Amis declared that he would always vote Labour. Come May 1979, however, and he was one of those feeling jubilant at the election victory of Margaret …
How Thatcherism outgrew its mistress
An American news network rang, on 8 April 2013, to tell me that Margaret Thatcher was dead. Yes, I was happy to be interviewed. There was the usual awkward silence, long enough that I wondered whether they had forgotten me, …
Boris and the world’s worst birthday party
“No cake was eaten, and no-one even sang happy birthday.” As parties go, it was a miserable one; as scandals go, however, it was more than enough. Amid all the political kerfuffle over his appearance at the Standards and Privileges …
How the Tories lost their way
“Is conservatism prepared to supply, in the new era we are entering, the main creative and moulding influence in the national life?” It is a question that the modern Conservative Party — abandoned by the young, flatlining in the polls, …
The Tories have betrayed the Caravan Dream
The anarchist commentator Michael Malice observed that conservatism is “progressivism driving the speed limit”. And perhaps he was right. When it comes to rounding savagely on your most loyal voters, the Labour Party is the undisputed trailblazer — but the …
In defence of Lee Anderson
There are moments in politics when the elite pull back the curtain and let you know what they really think. The astonishing reaction this week to Lee Anderson is one such moment. After being appointed by Rishi Sunak as the …
The Red Wall firebrand is a myth
Some roles in Westminster are not dished out by party leaders or formal elections, but pass by natural succession from generation to generation. One such position is the firebrand Tory “rent-a-quote” — the Honourable Member most relied upon to voice …
Is Liz Truss really the next Barry Goldwater?
When I last interviewed Liz Truss — in early 2022, when she was just Foreign Secretary — I spotted a copy of Rick Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge on her shelf. The book explores the links between the post-war administrations of …
Where are the Young England radicals?
Have things ever been so grim? Given the depressing reality of contemporary Britain — with the endless stories of sleaze and decay, decline and division — it is easy to draw that conclusion. Surely the NHS has never been this …
How Big Pharma feeds off the NHS
I used to think, perhaps naively, that even the current Conservative government valued the NHS’s “national treasure” status too much to let it go the way of the debt-fuelled US healthcare system. Now, I’m not so sure: NHS privatisation, by …