Politics

‘It is better to ride the tiger’s back than let it rip your throat out’ is reputedly how Tony Blair rationalised his close relationship with the Sun. The quote is thrown back at him by critics who imagine their preferred mode of politics untainted by tiger-riding. In fact, Blair is not alone: Bill Clinton rode the tiger of white male independents then spent much of his presidency pandering to them on crime, welfare and ‘values’.  For the Liberal Democrats, it was post-Iraq Labour discontents and students, who brought them two million votes across two elections and who turned on them when they teamed up with the Tories and put up

“I’ll say this for you love, you’ve picked a great time to go into politics!” The man on whose door I had knocked guffawed loudly before adding kindly, “but I admire you anyway, I shan’t be voting this time, can’t trust any of them, but good luck to you all the same.” At least it was a friendly encounter. Not all of them were. My timing was impeccable. With the Brexit mess obscuring everything and Parliament in meltdown, I decided to stand in a marginal seat for District Council election. As a Conservative candidate. Demonstrating the same great timing back in the summer of 2008, bang on the eve of

When John Glenn was asked what went through his mind as he became the first American in space, he said it was the nerve-wracking thought that ‘every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.’ It’s a revealing insight. Perhaps even more so than the ‘Blue Marble’ photograph of Earth taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, which inspired early environmentalists. Glenn was acknowledging that market economics made it possible for a government to achieve Herculean feats. True, the Soviets were in the race too, but then their system collapsed completely. Capitalism has staying power – and that’s what we need now in the fight against climate change. The UK’s

Until recently, the rules on political labelling were clear. If you voted Labour, supported Remain and expressed how much you cared about refugees on Facebook, you were left wing and therefore a good person. If you voted Tory, supported Leave or failed to signal your virtue on social media with the required frequency, you were right wing and therefore bad. Today, however, this system for dividing society into good and evil is crumbling under the weight of its own oversimplifications. It turns out that plenty of traditional Labour voters supported Leave, while many Tories went for Remain. The emergent Brexit Party has a broad range of candidates from both sides

The local election results showed that both main parties are paying a price for the Brexit impasse. This, as I say in The Sun this morning, means that the cross-party talks have a better chance of succeeding than they did. Those in the talks are more optimistic than they have been about getting some kind of agreement, if not a full-blown deal. But they know that things could change very quickly. I understand that the compromise being drawn up goes as follows. The UK would initially enter into a ‘comprehensive customs arrangement’ with the European Union. This would be very similar to a customs union. But the two parties would