Politics

The main problem with lefties is that they can’t decide in their own minds what exactly they want. And sometimes want two paradoxical things simultaneously. So, among the Twitter reactions from Corbynistas to my appearance on Question Time last Thursday was this: ‘I hope he dies a long and painful death TONIGHT.’ I mean come on mate, make your bleedin’ mind up. At least the injunctions that my wife and daughter should be raped and murdered had a certain internal consistency about them. They’re a lovely bunch, no? What was lacking in the responses, much as it was lacking in my co-panellist Ian Lavery’s response (he just shouted OOOTrageous OOOTrageous

There had been a general consensus among Conservative MPs that this year’s Tory conference would be an improvement on the last so long as Theresa May could get through her speech without coughing. However, it seems the forces that be may have other ideas. With the conference due to kick off tomorrow in Birmingham, CCHQ have found themselves in the news for all the wrong reasons over their conference app. A glitch in the app meant that for at least an hour anyone who used it could access private details of people attending the event. Several Twitter users boasted about getting hold of Boris Johnson’s personal mobile number – along with

Brexit dominates the headlines going into Tory conference. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the absence of a domestic agenda is an even bigger problem for them than their divisions over Brexit. Labour have over the last few days set out their vision for Britain. Unsurprisingly, I don’t agree with it and think the attitude to property rights revealed by its plan for ‘inclusive ownership funds’ is downright alarming. But give Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell this, their agenda is undoubtedly clear and bold. As one Cabinet Minister says, half admiringly, ‘they’re hungry’. The Tory party’s problem is that it isn’t giving the country a vision of

The worst of Britain’s post-war mistakes, ideas we thought long dead, are once more in the air. Yet again there are plans for ‘workers on boards’ (the govern-ment, of course decides who’s a worker), and for mandatory price caps, based on the delusion that government can make things cheaper by diktat. Intelligent people are once more agreed that British employers should pay the highest minimum wage in the developed world — a policy estimated to condemn tens of thousands to unemployment. The tax burden is at a 30-year high, yet many assume we should make that burden still heavier — as if the country can be taxed to prosperity. The

This article was originally published on Spectator USA. Did British prime minister Theresa May take a shot at Donald Trump in yesterday afternoon’s address to the UN General Assembly? Or was Trump a proxy target for a blond populist closer to home, Boris Johnson? On Tuesday, Trump rejected the ‘ideology of globalism’ and defended the nation state and its ‘doctrine of patriotism’. The next day, May mounted the same stage and implicitly rejected Trump’s stance: ‘We have seen what happens when the natural patriotism which is a cornerstone of a healthy society is warped into aggressive nationalism, exploiting fear and uncertainty to promote identity politics at home and belligerent confrontation

The comedy of Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, the two glum Russian ‘tourists’ who denied on television that they were involved in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, seems set to run and run. The Moscow press tells us that Russia’s ‘Golden Brand’ has offered them a brand name for a company specialising in tourism, women’s clothing, and chemicals for the scent industry. The two tried to persuade the world that they had come to Britain simply to admire Salisbury cathedral, its 123 metre-high steeple and its ancient clock. Alas, they lamented, luck was against them. First they were driven back by snow. (Really? Russians can cope with snow. Russian trains,