Patrick O’Flynn

Patrick O’Flynn

Patrick O’Flynn is a former MEP and political editor of the Daily Express

Whisper it, but Rishi Sunak has had a good week

If you have been doing as badly as Rishi Sunak has as prime minister, then it doesn’t take much to register a notable improvement. Yet there is no point in his detractors denying that over the past week he has done just that. First, he got stuck into the issue of Britain’s burgeoning ‘sick note

Sunak’s bungled Rwanda scheme won’t save him

Like a cowboy builder sucking his teeth about unanticipated complications on the job, Rishi Sunak has just pushed back another deadline. The Prime Minister was meant to get flights off to Rwanda this spring but has now given himself until July. And this isn’t even the main job. The actual grand design he is supposed

Why a Labour super-majority is unlikely

In economics, there is a phenomenon known as ‘automatic stabilisers’, which kick in at the onset of a recession. Without politicians having to do anything, state spending on out-of-work benefits increases while the amount of money taken off private citizens in taxes decreases, thereby preventing the economy from going into freefall. Hence wild fluctuations in

Never forget the politicians who pushed gender politics

The great trans hoax is coming to an end. The idea of thousands of people being ‘trapped’ in the wrong body is an interpretation of gender dysphoria that is increasingly being seen as damaging nonsense. The invasive treatment regimes, particularly for teenagers, carried out by the NHS, are unravelling too. And so is the claim

The Tories are resigned to an almighty defeat

The herd of Conservative MPs is on the move again, this time obediently setting off towards the abattoir in which the careers of most will meet a grisly end. When historians come to write their accounts of the Conservative administrations of 2015-24, they will have a bewildering variety of ‘worst weeks’ to choose from, but

Rishi Sunak’s empty human rights threat

Is there anyone in Britain who believes that Rishi Sunak will take us out of the European Convention on Human Rights? If there is then that person may also still think they got an absolute bargain when they paid a man in a pub £10,000 in cash to take ownership of Tower Bridge. For the

Farage at 60: there’s more to come

Were I to tell you that the most significant political figure of his age celebrates a landmark birthday this week, you’d probably work out that I could not be referring to Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. There would be an argument for suspecting I might be talking about Boris Johnson, given that he was born

Keir Starmer is right to ignore Doreen Lawrence

Is Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer right to have limited the access to and sway held over him by Baroness Lawrence, the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence? Lady Lawrence, a Labour peer who was made the party’s race relations adviser by Starmer after he became leader early in 2020, is in no doubt

Why Labour secretly fears the Rwanda scheme

When Boris Johnson and Priti Patel first launched the Rwanda scheme, in the Spring of 2022, there seemed every chance that it could win the Tories the next election. Despite the ‘Partygate’ furore taking chunks out of the Conservative poll rating and ushering in a febrile atmosphere, Labour was struggling to create a large and

What should Labour do about the Rwanda bill?

14 min listen

All ten of the amendments to the Rwanda bill, put in by the House of Lords, were rejected by the House of Commons last night. The bill will head back to the Lords tomorrow, where they will decide whether to continue the process of ‘ping pong’ (putting more amendments in and sending the bill back

Penny Mordaunt isn’t the answer

During her last Tory conference speech, Penny Mordaunt told her audience: ‘If you remember nothing else from what I have said today remember this – stand up and fight.’ This serial Conservative leadership candidate got her way on that at least, for it was the only point from her address that stuck in anyone’s mind.

Penny Mordaunt

Boris Johnson won’t help Sunak win back the Red Wall

What are we to make of today’s rather breathless story in the the Times suggesting that Boris Johnson will make a ‘comeback’ at the general election? The nature of the return being touted is hard to pin down. An unnamed source ‘familiar with Johnson’s thinking’ tells the newspaper he is primed to campaign in marginal

Only Nigel Farage can save us now

When the Prime Minister cannot be bothered to listen to the Budget it sends out a pretty big signal to the country that there’s nothing much in it. Rishi Sunak spent long chunks of Jeremy Hunt’s latest financial statement on Wednesday chatting away to Treasury Chief Secretary Laura Trott. It was a wholesome scene reminiscent

Hunt’s Budget is doomed

Anyone expecting Jeremy Hunt to unleash the animal spirits of wealth creators in his Budget today cannot have been paying much attention to the Treasury’s pre-briefing. Two per cent off National Insurance is likely to be as good as it gets, we are told. Perhaps a white rabbit will be pulled from a hat during

Can the Tories avoid oblivion?

Another day, another terrible poll for the Tories – the latest YouGov survey records support for the parties at Labour 46 per cent, Conservative 20 per cent, Reform 14 per cent, Lib Dem 7 per cent, Green 7 per cent. So far, so normal for our beleaguered governing party – even if Reform has nudged

Keir Starmer must stand up to George Galloway

George Galloway has done it again. As an expert in riding waves of fury among Muslim voters about happenings in the Middle East, from the Iraq War to the Gaza conflict, Galloway has turned into a skilled tormentor of successive Labour leaders.  The biggest short-term risk by far that Galloway’s win in Rochdale poses to