Conservative party

As the skies darken over Rishi Sunak’s embattled government, with ministers being fired or placed under investigation, opinion polls dire and few signs of better times ahead, Tory optimists are (somewhat desperately) searching for signs that all may not yet be irretrievably lost for their party. The hopeful precedent that they have come up with is the 1992 general election. That year, things did not look good for John Major, the man who had replaced Margaret Thatcher under controversial circumstances just two years before. The opinion polls predicted a narrow but clear victory for Labour leader Neil Kinnock until Major, then a much-mocked figure, got on a soapbox – literally – and

The political world splits in two whenever fresh evidence emerges that Boris Johnson does not think that life’s rules and norms apply to him. One faction, the majority, humourlessly harrumphs about standards and brands him unfit for high office. Another tries to excuse the latest infraction. It’s a grey area. It’s not a serious matter. There’s a vendetta against him. Today we saw the latest case of Johnson finding it churlish to expect him to stick to the ‘network of obligation that binds everyone’ (a phrase that should be copyright of his Eton classics teacher, Martin Hammond). According to the Sunday Times, the BBC chairman and former Goldman Sachs banker Richard Sharp

Rishi Sunak has a rebel problem: we already know that. He’s got factions of Tory MPs prepared to vote against the government on a range of issues, and the Prime Minister knows that on each issue, there are different rebels, rather than just one easy-to-identify awkward squad. Even when he is, as Katy explains in the magazine this week, focusing on issues that unite the party rather than reforms that will provoke some rebels such as planning reform, he still has trouble on his hands.  The current trouble comes in the form of the Online Safety Bill, which has a phalanx of Conservatives prepared to vote against their party whip

Speaking in Belfast this morning, Keir Starmer offered ‘political cover’ to the Prime Minister over any change to the Northern Ireland Protocol. A new deal with the EU is thought to be imminent – and Labour sees the chance for mischief. Starmer said it is ‘time to put Northern Ireland above a Brexit purity cult’ and that ‘we can find ways to remove the majority of checks’ through new solutions, adding that ‘there are legitimate problems with the Protocol and these must be recognised in any negotiations’. Starmer’s speech is well-timed His comments are a recognition of the Protocol’s relevance over the next few months. Both the EU and the

After his five key pledges speech this week, one can only conclude that Rishi Sunak must have been shown the chart.  The chart in question crops up in a regular update that polling firm YouGov puts out on the key political issues, as seen by various segments of the electorate. It measures the priorities of those who voted Conservative in 2019 and therefore have it within their collective power – and potential inclination – to grant the party yet another term in office. And it has told a consistent story for the past two years. The three biggest issues for voters – miles ahead of anything else – are the

Is it supposed to be enough for those of us of a culturally and socially conservative persuasion to know that some Tory MPs share our outlook? Are we meant to look back over the radical left’s march through the public realm during these past 12 years of Tory-led governments and think: ‘Well, at least some Conservative MPs tried to make a bit of a fuss about it, so we’d better vote Tory again?’ It should not take a genius in Conservative Campaign HQ to realise that no, it isn’t enough. Not when one of the Tory prime ministers from this long phase of nominally conservative government has just come out to say

How does this end? That’s the question being asked by Tory MPs as Liz Truss’s government finds itself in turmoil once again. The Prime Minister’s decision to axe her chancellor and U-turn on a plan to ditch the corporation tax has only added to nerves in the Conservative party as to how sustainable the current situation is in. It’s clear that different wings of the party are incredibly unhappy with the current leadership. Yet Truss is technically safe from challenge for another year. What’s more, it’s not clear who exactly the party could agree on. Earlier this month, I wrote for the magazine on the scenarios being war-gamed by ministers,

As I was saying, way back in July, it is hard to love the Conservative party. Every time it tries to navigate another bend in the road it ends up causing a disaster even its most ardent critics could not have foreseen. ‘Things can’t get any worse,’ said rebels in the party while Boris Johnson was still PM, before the summer. Then we were introduced to Liz Truss. Now, within weeks of her taking office, you can hear members of the parliamentary party saying with vigour: ‘She has to go.’ At which point I feel the country wanting to place our collective heads in our hands, yell and walk away.

Tory conference has long been more stage-managed than other party meetings, but this year the official speeches from ministers have also been condensed into a very strange late afternoon slot lasting just two hours. The rest of the time is free for fringe meetings and plotting. Ministers and their aides have been told they have to keep their addresses to the hall announcement-lite, which makes those two hours feel largely pointless. Kwasi Kwarteng didn’t announce very much at all, even though his two U-turns have dominated the day’s agenda. This morning, the Chancellor dropped the plan to abolish the 45p rate of tax, and this evening it has emerged that

In a tetchy performance on The Andrew Neil Show, Tory party chair Jake Berry repeatedly insisted that everyone would have to wait until the Chancellor’s unveiling of his fiscal plan on 23 November to find out whether or not there would be spending cuts and when the government believes it will hit its 2.5 per cent growth target. Berry’s performance, which involved repeatedly trying to answer a different question to the one he was asked, made it even harder to believe that this line can hold. If every minister interviewed for the next six weeks sounded like Berry did just now, then it would be a disaster for the government. The sensible

For a politician who only a few days ago was bravely mocking Vladimir Putin as a ‘sabre-rattling’ loudmouth ‘desperately trying to justify his catastrophic failures,’ Liz Truss has turned out to be the greatest coward ever to be prime minister. At least Putin feels the need to justify the catastrophe he has inflicted. Truss and her Chancellor believe they can hide away like children putting pillows over their heads to escape a bad dream, and say nothing at all. The public may not understand the full ramifications of the crisis the Conservatives have unleashed in a moment of ideological delirium. The technical reasons why the Bank of England had to promise