Anyone with experience of depression will recognise the approaching symptoms: a numbed blankness of feeling, or pangs of melancholy nostalgia for a lost contentment now impossible to imagine. A black cloud of affectless lethargy drains life of purpose, making any …
How to make Britain cool again
“Britpop’s Back. But What Happened to Cool Britannia?” asks a recent headline in the New York Times. Quite a lot, it seems. Pessimistic about our prospects, and uninspired by our King’s agenda, Britain is in search of a new story. …
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 …
Sunak’s enemies lie in wait
After the drama and dethronement of 2022, the Conservative Party has now entered its Phoney War. No one, it seems, has the strength or intention to move against Rishi Sunak, but they are jostling to be best positioned — ideologically …
Liz Truss still haunts the Tories
If you are Conservative-curious, or simply have a taste for the absurd, there is a good chance that your Christmas stocking included the recent Liz Truss biography, Out of the Blue. Announced in late September, the book was meant to …
What’s wrong with our prime ministers?
At Balliol, Boris Johnson’s old Oxford college, there was a society, now dormant, called the Hysteron Proteron Club. Members were required to live an entire day backwards at least once a term, and discharged the duty conscientiously. The 12-hour ordeal …
A boomer Budget from Jeremy Hunt
After nearly two decades of stagnant wages, lethargic economic growth and public service atrophy, Britain has been prescribed more of the same. After yesterday’s Autumn Statement, we are set to have the punitively high taxes of southern Europe, the leaden …
What Hunt can learn from Truss
Jeremy Hunt is a Chancellor with lots of choices, but few options. As he prepares for Thursday’s statement, a Budget in all but name, he is hemmed in by political and economic realities that have been taking shape for a …
The Tories will never be united
If I were Rishi Sunak, I would resign immediately. I say this not only because I disapprove of his politics, but out of a selfless devotion to his well-being. Here is a man with billions in the bank who is …
The Tories should embrace chaos
Politicians act with good intentions. But they rarely seem to grasp that intentions are not the same as outcomes. The social and economic worlds are both complex and change rapidly. This places inherent limits on our ability to understand them. …
Why the Left shouldn’t be celebrating
In the days following her resignation, the British media appeared to be united in its verdict on Liz Truss: the 44-day premiership was the shortest and most catastrophic in British history. Support for the Conservative Party has plummeted to its …
The Tories were destined for civil war
Even in the most tense, fractious relationship there can be enormous capacity for calm: for letting things go, for tolerating each infraction for the greater good, for simply getting on with things. Eventually, though, the dam breaks into a cathartic …
Why Liz Truss lost control
One of the most important talents in politics is the ability to count. The Scottish Labour Party had a legendary organiser, Jimmy Allison, who could walk into any party meeting and tell you exactly how the votes were going to …
Exit… Stage Left / Liz Truss Resigns / Hugo Talks
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Why Truss’s gamble failed
Shortly before the Government’s ill-fated budget, I had coffee with a Conservative MP who was keen to stress that the Tory party was heading towards disaster. It isn’t going to work, the MP told me, likening Truss’s breakneck dash for …
