Amid the tension surrounding the Government’s Rwanda policy, one striking cause has been largely ignored. Read through yesterday’s coverage and you could almost miss it — the recognition, in a joint resignation letter fired off by former Conservative Deputy Chairmen …
The Tory shires are turning Green
A quiet revolution is underway in the dales and downs of rural England. What the conservative philosopher Edmund Burke called the “little platoons” — local churches, families, charities, and civic associations — are in open revolt against the party they …
Why is Britain so depressed?
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 …
Can the Tories stop mass migration?
During a recent holiday in the East of England, I followed a sign through a farm gate offering raspberries for sale. It turned out to be a table in an empty farm outbuilding, with punnets of raspberries, a weighing scale, …
Can Liverpool be liberated from Labour?
Before Liverpool can bask in the joy of hosting next week’s Eurovision Song Contest, it must first contend with tomorrow’s local elections — and the rounds of mudslinging that have come with it. Take one of Labour’s election pamphlets, pushed …
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 …
Starmer isn’t working for women
He can’t say he wasn’t warned. Sir Keir Starmer’s embrace of gender ideology was always unwise, and made worse by his refusal to listen to dissenting voices. He has ignored pleas from feminists in the Labour Party, refused to show …
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 …
Westminster isn’t that corrupt
Britain hates its MPs and loves a moral crusade; outrage at their behaviour is a feature of political life. Yet while the hue and cry is often well-directed, popular ire tends to obscure the reality: that few of our politicians …
The slow death of the NHS
Every day, we’re told that the NHS is collapsing. It’s failing the sick and wounded at their hour of greatest need, leaving frail old people lying for hours without an ambulance, farming out patients to care homes, and forcing the …
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 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 …
Voters deserve better than Chris Pincher
The Subscription Rooms in the centre of Stroud have long played host to small historic moments. In March 1962, the Georgian building hosted one of the first Beatles concerts. The band were paid £32 between them. It was one of …
Did Boris kill conservatism?
As Boris Johnson reels from last night’s leadership vote, attention has naturally focused on his personal failings. But what if the problem runs deeper? Of the eight Conservative leaders between 1970 and 2019, six were broken on the wheel of …
Why old-fashioned Tories turn to porn
A great deal of discussion following the resignation of porn-watching Conservative MP Neil Parish has concerned sexism in Parliament, where the working culture is apparently a hotbed of pervy remarks, “noisy sex” in offices, “sex pest MPs” and vomit-spattered champagne …