Politics

If there’s an upside to spending tens of thousands of pounds – as Boris Johnson did – in doing up his Downing Street flat, it’s surely that such a costly renovation will stand the test of time. Unfortunately the £88,000 makeover at No.11, masterminded by A-list interior designer Lulu Lytle, appears to have already seen better days. No pictures have ever emerged of the new look, which reportedly includes Persian rugs, cream walls, chandeliers and even ‘gold’ wallpaper (at £840 a roll). But Jeremy Hunt, who picked up survivor of the year at last night’s Spectator Parliamentarian awards, revealed that the wallpaper is already peeling – and that Boris’s short-lived

Conventional wisdom has long held that the Conservatives win elections from the centre ground – including territory just to the right of centre – but lose them if they become ‘right wing’. John Major set out this theory explicitly in a press conference, and most of those in attendance nodded sagely along. For many years, election results appeared consistent with this assessment. Major won in 1992, turning round a Labour opinion poll lead by dumping the poll tax and tacking towards the centre. Margaret Thatcher’s earlier wins from the right could be put down to the opponents she faced – an exhausted James Callaghan regime in 1979 and unelectable leftists

It is only a month since Boris Johnson gave up his dramatic attempt to regain the Premiership he reluctantly surrendered in July. Already he is making headlines once more.  In an interview with CNN a slimmed down and bubbly Boris caused a diplomatic rumpus by accusing France and Italy of going wobbly and claiming that Germany wanted to see Ukraine quickly defeated by Putin’s invasion last February (thereby less than subtlety suggesting that only the firm resolution of one Boris Johnson kept a wavering Europe on Kyiv’s side).  For good measure, he dismissed claims that Brexit was a cause of our current economic woes as ‘nonsense’. When asked about the