Politics

Dominic Cummings always saw civil service reform as an essential prerequisite to reforming the country itself. A year and a half after his departure, the Prime Minister has a new chief of staff who agrees. While different in temperament and style, both Dominic Cummings and his de facto replacement Steve Barclay have one under-appreciated similarity: a commitment to reforming government itself. Last week, we saw the evidence of this commitment. With attention focused on plans to cut more than 90,000 civil servant jobs, Barclay quietly announced the most radical overhaul of civil service recruitment rules in over a decade. From now on, every single senior civil service vacancy will be advertised

In 1966, during the Republican primaries for the Californian gubernatorial race, the internecine fighting amongst the GOP candidates had grown so vicious – and particularly targeting a disruptive actor turned politician (whatever happened to those?) – that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, proposed an eleventh commandment: ‘Thou Shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.’ The actor, a certain Ronald Reagan, loved it, and adopted it as a personal maxim; sticking to it, he would go on to win that election. In time it came to be known as ‘Reagan’s eleventh commandment’ and its meaning more broadly paraphrased as ‘thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow conservative.’ I

Geography matters. Everyone knows that. It defines Britain’s current relationship with Europe and its battle over the Northern Ireland protocol and is visible every day that people cross the Channel in small boats. But while geography clearly drives a country’s history, it also important to remember how much technological and historical change can turn that geography on its head as well. This flux holds the key not only to Britain’s past but also to its future. Two geographical facts have dominated Britain’s story since 6000 BCE, when melting ice age glaciers lifted the sea to a level that physically separated it from the continent. First, the British Isles (obviously) became

It was known that the DUP would not agree to the power sharing executive in Northern Ireland until it felt that its concerns with the protocol had been addressed. What was not known was whether it would consent to the election of a speaker for the assembly. Today it said it would not and so no speaker has been elected. This means that the assembly cannot function. The DUP’s aim is to increase the pressure for compromise on the protocol. It is saying that it will not allow the devolved institutions to function until it gets the changes it wants. Boris Johnson will go to Northern Ireland on Monday. We

Rows in Parliament usually occur on the floor of the House of Commons, between opposing members of different sides. But a fresh storm is brewing elsewhere in the chamber, between the journalists who comprise the parliamentary press gallery and the man who occupies the Speakers’ Chair. After the grandstanding of the John Bercow era, Lindsay Hoyle was hailed by the lobby as a breath of fresh air when he was elected to the Speakership back in November 2019.  But now two-and-a-half years on, there are signs that all is not well between Hoyle and members of the Fourth Estate. First, there was last month’s row over Angela Rayner’s legs, which prompted the Speaker to