I write this as I leave the Tory conference in Birmingham. I have covered most of these events (and many Labour ones too) since the beginning of the 1980s. They do not lift the heart, but it is always interesting to watch the activity of the tribe. I attended the 1997 conference at Blackpool after
Sir Keir Starmer offered a sausage to fortune when he let Lord Alli bankroll half the cabinet. One’s heart does not bleed for those ministers assailed for taking his gifts in cash and kind. They have spent the last few years being mercilessly sanctimonious. But their plight does confirm that being a Member of Parliament
As someone who worked full time in the office for 24 years and has now worked full time from home for nearly 21 – always, in both periods, on the staff – I can see both sides of the argument. But I do think the sequence matters. I would have had no idea how to
Gordon Brown introduced the winter fuel payment shortly after becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997, following his party’s landslide victory. Rachel Reeves abolished the winter fuel payment shortly after becoming Chancellor in 2024, following her party’s landslide victory. Since others are shy of saying so, I want to point out that Mr Brown was
Sir Keir Starmer’s readiness to do ‘whatever it takes’ to support Ukraine seems to be qualified by his fear of offending the Biden administration. He wants to let Ukraine use British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia but dares not, for fear of the White House. Surely if the special relationship were really strong, its junior
No doubt Lord Alli should not have been given a 10 Downing Street pass, but that is true of most who work there. BB (Before Blair), roughly 100 people were in the building. Today, it is 300. The quality of government has deteriorated as the numbers have swelled. At least Lord Alli has been genuinely
When it was recently announced that 40,000 people, the great majority civilians, have been killed in the Gaza conflict, I checked the media coverage. Almost all – Sky, CNN, the Guardian etc – correctly reported that the figure came from the Hamas health ministry. All, however, implied acceptance of the figure’s accuracy by the prominence
As President Biden sank more deeply into the mire this month, kind friends kept urging me to write in his defence, because respect for the old must be maintained in our discourteous society. ‘And why does it matter,’ they added, ‘if he muddles up everyone’s name? We know who he means.’ ‘It’s like sacking the
There is a small section of the Labour party which I greatly admire – those on the party’s right, often from working-class backgrounds, who unrelentingly fight the party’s left without being crypto-Tories. They are more effective than the Conservative right, being more disciplined and less voluble. For decades, they have taken on the Bennite/Corbynite/Islamist/woke tendency
Sir Keir Starmer may be our first atheist prime minister, but his manner in parliament resembles that of what, in House of Lords terminology, is called a ‘Most Reverend prelate’. There is a lot of sonority about serving others, disagreeing well etc. These are good sentiments but, when trying to be good, ‘show, not tell’
I feel as if I first took part in a general election even before I was born. My father was the Liberal candidate in Tavistock in 1955 and 1959, and although I was alive only for the latter, featured reading Peter Rabbit in his election address, the two weaved into my infant consciousness. At that
Lots and lots and lots of fuss about betting on the general election. Less attention is paid to the biggest bet of all – Rishi Sunak’s frightening flutter in opting for 4 July. At Tuesday lunchtime, I was held up crossing the Mall by the procession for the state visit of the Emperor of Japan.
Odessa Our conference here is about Black Sea security, where I am the guest of UK Friends of Ukraine. Its subject reflects one of Ukraine’s greatest, yet least publicised successes. Almost a third of the Russian fleet has been destroyed, mostly by sea drones. The rest is trapped in ports much further east. As a
The Tory manifesto is ‘a clear plan’ promising ‘bold action’. Rishi Sunak uses the word ‘bold’ three times in two paragraphs. If it were bold, it would not need its 80 pages. Its detail is best seen as a resource for candidates trying to deploy specific promises with specific interest groups. This is a way of
I watched Tuesday night’s leaders’ election debate with fellow guests at a party to launch Conservative Revolution, a book to mark the 50th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies, the thinktank founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher to ‘think the unthinkable’ after Tory defeat. Rishi Sunak’s performance certainly achieved one of its intended
Now that Sir Keir Starmer has reaffirmed he is a socialist, interviewers are asking other leading Labour figures if they are too. The shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, explains he is a Christian socialist, which makes me want to go back to Sir Keir, an unbeliever, and ask him how he thinks his atheist socialism
Three years ago next month, the journalist Andy Webb put in a Freedom of Information request to the BBC. He asked for material which he believes would expose a new cover-up of the BBC’s behaviour over Martin Bashir’s notorious 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales. The cover-up in question (there was a much
On Monday, the House of Commons passed, by one vote, a motion to allow MPs to be suspended from parliament (a ‘risk-based exclusion’) if arrested for sexual or violent crime. The government had preferred that the trigger should be charge, not arrest, but there were enough Tory rebels, including Theresa May, for the lower threshold
The new hunting year formally began last week. Should I resubscribe? Politically, the outlook is bleak. In February, Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, announced that Labour would implement a ‘full ban on trail and drag hunting’, on the grounds that there were ‘loopholes’ in Labour’s hunting ban. This even though, when advocating the original
Pulling off the rhetorical trick that Brexit would undermine the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement, Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, said in 2018 that the agreement meant removing borders not only from maps, ‘but also in minds’. Even a single CCTV camera on the North-South roads was considered a threat to the peace process. Now
