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 …
Will anyone miss Rishi Sunak?
Rishi Sunak is creeping out of the Tory leadership like a mouse walking past a sleeping cat. This is a shame because his departure is significant, marking the end of a political era that began in the Eighties. Sunak’s hero …
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, …
Kemi Badenoch has saved the Tories
With Kemi Badenoch’s elimination from the race, the Conservative party lost its chance to win a future. After all, the simplest, if least inspiring case to make for Kemi Badenoch was always that of urging the wavering Tory party to …
How Right is Kemi Badenoch?
The deposal of King Boris was just the first act of the Tory leadership saga. Politicos and hacks are now dabbling in their amateur clairvoyance, trying to predict whether the new prime minister will move the party further to the …