James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
Gavin Williamson was the worst education secretary in history, according to Sam Freedman, a former Tory education adviser. In the wake of Williamson’s departure from the Department for Education, many other commentators are being even less generous. No one has a good word to say about the man. No one except me, that is. I write here
Having written here at least once before that Boris Johnson is the heir to Blair, my first thought on the Prime Minister’s tax-to-spend announcement on the NHS and social care is a petty one: I told you so. The striking thing about making the Boris-Blair comparison is how resistant some people are to it. Among Bozza
Two stories on the Afghan evacuation today combine to leave me full of bewildered rage. The first, from the Times: ‘Britain may have to leave 1,000 Afghan support staff behindUp to 1,100 Afghan citizens entitled to come to the UK are likely to be left behind as British forces withdraw from Afghanistan in the next
This is an age of anger. Social media amplifies rage and exaggerates polarisation. Twitter isn’t Britain, but too many people in politics and journalism spend too much time on the site and – consciously or not – start to mistake its shallow extremes for real public opinion. The result is a public discourse more often
35 min listen
In this week’s podcast: First up, to deny the man-made climate crisis we now find ourselves in would be an act of wilful delusion. But what is the right way for the UK to try and minimise this looming disaster? In our cover story this week Ross Clark looks at the financial viability of the
Late in 2013, David Cameron snapped. ‘Get rid of all the green crap,’ the then prime minister told energy ministers. His demand came after a backbench revolt over the surcharges tacked on to household energy bills to support onshore wind power. Not for the last time, his decision was based on a spectacular failure to
$10million, or £7million. That’s what David Cameron is now reported to have made from Greensill Capital, the company he helped lead to ruin. The number, reported by the BBC, is news, not least because Cameron himself had refused to disclose it. Speaking to a Commons committee investigating his failed lobbying for the failed company, the
Today, the conversation about transgender rights and the interests of women turns to sport. At the Olympic Games, Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, will compete in the +87kg women’s weightlifting. Hubbard, as you surely know, was born male and grew up to become a competitive weightlifter. At the age of 33, the athlete then transitioned
In 1983, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a great American sociologist and politician, wrote: ‘Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.’ Then the internet happened. Anyone who has spent five minutes online, especially on a social media site, is aware that everyone now has their own facts, carefully chosen to support whatever
International football is good for many things other than the sport itself. Politics, culture and history are all in play in the best matches. I’m hardly a football fan but I’d watch, say, Spain vs Portugal just for the spectacle. And who could turn away from Serbia vs Croatia, or Finland vs Russia? Like a lot of
I am coming out of semi-retirement from writing about sex and gender to write this, because it’s about women in prison, a group that desperately need more attention from people interested in politics and policy. The High Court has been considering the question of transgender women (i.e. people who were born male) in the female
On days like this, I despair of the media-political village where I’ve spent most of my adult life. Because that village is going to get very, very excited about some things that the Prime Minister said about one of his ministers on WhatsApp – even though it doesn’t really matter. By now, you know that
A soccer contest is upon us. I know nothing of football as a sport, but even a dunce like me knows that these things are about more than 22 men chasing a ball for 90 minutes. Big sporting events such as Euro 2020 matter, especially for England and Englishness. Any big England game is a
While Westminster fixates on Dominic Cummings, what could well be a bigger political challenge for Boris Johnson is being somewhat overlooked. That challenge is called Steve Baker. Baker has now launched his long-whispered campaign over net zero and the policies it entails. He’s in the Sun today talking about issues including gas boilers and the
I used to write a lot about sex and gender here. I don’t do so quite as much these days for a few reasons, one of which is that the issues involved are now better recognised and better handled by people whose job it is to deal with the complexities of policies and conflicts of
I’m almost starting to admire David Cameron. Almost. There is something that borders on the impressive about the former prime minister’s dedication to the destruction of his own reputation. He may have been a casually idle premier, but he’s really rolled up his sleeves and got stuck into the job of trashing his own name.
Queen’s Speech day is one of the set-pieces when the government gets to decide that morning’s headlines. Barring disaster, the stuff you brief to the media the day before the speech will be what leads that morning’s bulletins, and has the best chance of being the thing that punters remember about the speech – if
Social class is dead. Education is the political dividing line that matters. This has been apparent since (at least) the 2016 EU referendum, although it has not been recognised by enough people who do and write about politics. The results of this week’s elections should drive the point home. According to early analysis of polling
Ah, Hartlepool. The by-election there brings back memories: I am old enough to have reported on the last one, back in 2004, when Peter Mandelson went off to Brussels and left behind what was then a fairly safe Labour seat. My slightly faded memory of that 2004 vote informs my view of what is apparently
I am not a football fan. Reactions to plans for a European super-league remind me why. According to the BBC ‘critics say the move is being driven purely by money.’ Whereas in the prelapsarian days of, say, last week, professional football was all about craft and community? Free marketeers should be relaxed about this. You
