Politics

I think that I may be able to claim credit for being the first writer to question the once universal assumption that Rishi Sunak would be the next Prime Minister. Back in March, after the then-Chancellor’s disastrous Spring budget statement, in a piece for this site headlined ‘How Sunak Sunk Himself’ I pointed out the dents in the smooth billionaire’s shiny armour that have now become gaping rusty holes, and turned ‘Dishy Rishi’ into ‘Fishy Rishi’. Too rich during a cost of living firestorm, too out of touch with ordinary people struggling to make ends meet, and too prone to making basic political errors, Sunak’s flaws have been brutally exposed

Addressing the vexed question of who is winning the war in Ukraine, six months on, is a task to challenge military strategists, geopolitical analysts – and semanticists, because so much depends on what ‘winning’ means. On one level, after all, one could suggest everyone is losing. That said, we cannot escape the fact that both Moscow and the West had essentially written Ukraine off at the start of the war. The conventional wisdom was that it would take perhaps a fortnight for Vladimir Putin’s much-vaunted war machine, the product of two decades of heightened military spending, to defeat its Ukrainian counterpart.  Instead, the Ukrainians proved determined and disciplined in the

Like the winter of discontent, the summer of 2022 is a season that will burn itself into the national consciousness. Predictions of a dark (in all senses of the word) future are daily occurrences. All but the wealthy wonder how they will cope with the hard times that are almost on us. The sense we’re in a runaway crisis is everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except among the leaders of our self-indulgent government. It has shirked its duty to lead the country and preferred to take a long, lazy holiday instead. For Boris Johnson, a redundant prime minister serving out his notice period, his life consists of Mediterranean jaunts. For Liz