Belfast
Just as Tolstoy observed that “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, so it is with dysfunctional governments. Each is dysfunctional in its own way, though there are certain family resemblances between them — a certain shared …
Keir Starmer’s squandered chance
It was supposed to be Keir Starmer’s big gambit: an opportunity to make the political weather, put forward an election-winning economic policy, and slap down “big beast” internal critics. Instead, his long-awaited plan for dealing with the cost-of-living crisis is …
The Tories don’t care about politics
Sometimes, when overwhelmed by morbid curiosity, I find myself reading the Wikipedia pages of plane crashes. Thanks to the data recovered from black boxes, especially of cockpit voice recordings, the last moments of a flight can be recreated with vivid …
How populist is Liz Truss?
The contest to decide who enters Downing Street and then goes on to win the next election will be decided by a candidate who can reach both populist and fiscal conservatives. This is because the Conservative Party’s voter base is …
Why Labour should fear Liz Truss
The Labour Party are enjoying the Tory Party leadership campaign. First, 52 Conservative MPs resigned and defenestrated Boris Johnson, the party’s most charismatic and electorally successful leader since Margaret Thatcher. Then, the eight candidates to become the new leader attacked …
Who would be a young Tory?
Aspiration is a word forgotten by the Conservative Party. It’s certainly not a word that’s forgotten by me. In only one generation, my family went from being born in council housing and needing to muck out the pigs before heading …
Why the Tories love a clown show
It was the summer of 1995. The Tory leadership struggle was in full swing, and after days of intense excitement Britain’s next Prime Minister — or so he hoped — was poised to emerge into the national spotlight.
The challenger …
The Tories need to get over Thatcher
Like so many political rivals, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are divided by a common ambition. Both want to cast themselves as the heir to Margaret Thatcher. To do that, they are erecting radically different accounts of Thatcher’s time in …
Is this the end of levelling up?
Remember levelling up? Before Patterson, Partygate, and Pinchergate, it was supposed to be the main focus of this government. Along with getting Brexit done and keeping Corbyn out of Number 10, it helped win the Tories their largest majority in …
The leadership contest the Tories deserve
Of the 15 British Prime Ministers since the end of the Second World War, only two — Attlee and Heath — both initially entered and finally exited Downing Street at a general election. The coronation of Sunak or Truss will …
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 to lose a leadership election
With MPs reassembling after their February break, the great Boris Johnson Leadership Melodrama will soon be back in the headlines. For the time being, at least, the Prime Minister survives, bloodied but not yet fatally wounded by that tumultuous encounter …
The tragedy of Boris Johnson
It is surely not too early to write Boris Johnson’s political obituary; the wonder is that this has gone on so long, the great blond beast stumbling to his doom mortally wounded, like a mammoth studded with the spears of …
Boris Johnson’s squandered chance
It is surely not too early to write Boris Johnson’s political obituary; the wonder is that this has gone on so long, the great blond beast stumbling to his doom mortally wounded, like a mammoth studded with the spears of …
How Britain became Putin’s playground
On Monday, Liz Truss warned Russia’s oligarchs that there will be “nowhere to hide” their dirty money in London. Which is pretty weird when you think about it, since the statement includes the implicit admission that the money is already …