It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon in North Yorkshire, and Rishi Sunak is trying to reassure the North Yorkshire Conservative Association gathered on his front lawn that all is not lost. Sheltered under a marquee, he’s like a cruise-ship crooner entertaining …
Starmer should beware a Left-wing insurgency
Have Labour’s strategists achieved the impossible? Not only is the party 20 points ahead and in with a shot of winning four by-elections, but, perhaps even more impressively, its leader finally appears to be shrugging off his custardy sheen of …
Wes Streeting is a man for all factions
Well, comrades, nearly a quarter of the way into the century, how’s it going for socialism? Oh dear. Our humourless, uncharismatic party leader has decided to launch a purge, apparently. Anyone defying the official line will be expelled. Voices of …
Who should Starmer sack?
Henry Kissinger memorably observed that the reason academic fights were so vicious was that the prizes were so small. So it has been in the Labour Party for most of the last 13 years, when the chances of overturning the …
Why I’ve given up on the Conservatives
Victory should feel more satisfying than it does. Just a few years ago, arguing that globalisation had been a great policy error by the West’s political class was still viewed as a heretical position, its adherents fighting in vain against …
The countryside revolt against the Tories
When George Orwell tried to define Englishness in his 1941 essay “England Your England”, written under the sound of Nazi bombers, he resorted to a list of images: “The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of …
The Tories have lost their millennial converts
“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” This iron law of conservatism, falsely attributed to Winston Churchill and countless others, has …
Keir Starmer the Conservative
Labour Party leaders don’t usually win elections. Since 1945, only three have done so: Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. In contrast, eight Conservative leaders have won majorities and a ninth — Theresa May — did just about well …
Alastair Campbell won’t stop spinning
A gentleman, runs the old joke, is someone who can play the bagpipes, but doesn’t. Alastair Campbell, podcaster, novelist and sometime press secretary to Tony Blair, plays the bagpipes. Indeed, one of his earliest published pieces — in the pornographic …
The music-hall depravity of British politics
What do John Major, Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone have in common? Obviously, they’re politicians who are now some way past their vote-by date, but more than that, they all have music-hall blood running through their veins. Major’s parents, Blair’s …
Who are the strikers fooling?
The tide of industrial action rolls steadily on. Even physiotherapists are threatening to bring the country to its knees, rather than performing their usual task of setting it on its feet. Next, surely, it will be vicars, who will abandon …
Starmer will regret purging Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn has described Keir Starmer’s decision to stop him standing as a Labour candidate in Islington North as a “flagrant attack” on democracy. Such pique is understandable, perhaps, since Starmer claimed to be “100% behind Jeremy Corbyn” when the …
We need to ask the West Lancashire Question
West Lancashire has always been defined by its relationship with other places. The rural constituency, which elects a new MP this week, covers the geographical area west of Wigan, north of St Helens, east of Southport, north-east of Liverpool and …
Labour’s lost love for Leave
Bregrets? I don’t have many. I still believe leaving the European Union was the right decision, however difficult and imperfect the process has thus far been. This belief, admittedly, puts me at odds with a growing majority of the British …
The Tories are about to strike out
With the Government’s anti-strike bill marching its way through Parliament, many on the Right will be conjuring up warm memories of Margaret Thatcher’s war against the trade union movement. For many Conservatives, this was Maggie’s “finest hour”. For Keir Starmer, …
