James Kirkup

The story of a council election decided by drawing straws isn’t the most remarkable thing to happen in Northumberland today, not by a long way. Pegswood. Cramlington. Morpeth.  These aren’t the names of places that normally figure much in national political reporting or debate. That’s because they’re in Northumberland, or more accurately, south Northumberland, where

I love election days.  Some of that is just the simple, wondrous glee that democracy deserves but doesn’t get enough of.  Really, whatever its flaws and frailties, a collectively-agreed and universally accepted set of essentially voluntary arrangements where we all get a say on hiring and firing our rulers is pretty damn glorious.   To

We all have different ways of realising we’re not as young as we were. I still remember the first time England named a cricket captain younger than me: Andrew Strauss (a man I still believe will one day serve as a Conservative parliamentarian incidentally).   Passing that milestone didn’t bother me much, but the relative

It’s easy to mock Nigel Farage over his decision to turn down an ‘easy win’ in Clacton or some other Westminster constituency in preference for the hard graft of the European Parliament and its excruciating regime of expenses and allowances. Easy, but quite likely wrong.  Whether or not he ever sets foot in Parliament, Farage

A Brexit election, then. Theresa May will win and claim that victory is all the mandate she needs for whatever comes from the negotiations in Brussels.  The working assumption must be that includes leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union, and, of course, an end to free movement when we leave. And we are

The French have their uses, don’t they? They offer us their food, their wine and their bankers, and they also offer some reassurance. No matter how demented our politics may seem, things are never quite as dramatic, as emotional, as they are over the Channel. The best Britain offers Nigel Farage is an embarrassed slap

What drove Theresa May to break off from a trade trip to the Middle East to chuck a half-brick at the National Trust over some Easter bunnies? Maybe Dame Helen Ghosh, the Trust’s Director General, knows. When the two worked together at the Home Office, they got along like a house on fire: there were

In an age when people pride themselves on their cynicism, it’s almost touching to remember that one of the most powerful forces in politics is still optimism. We may routinely dismiss politicians as self-serving vermin, but when the time comes, we generally choose the self-serving vermin who tell the best story of a brighter tomorrow.