Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
The Conservative Party was founded 185 years ago and may not survive the next five. YouGov and Opinium both put the Tories in third place and on less than 20 per cent of the vote. They managed just 8.8 per cent in the European election, coming fifth behind the Greens and losing all but four of their MEPs. The
Brexit may yet kill the Conservative party but it is exacting a cruel psychological torture on liberalism. Liberals are supposed to be the measured voice of reason – earnest, insufferable but reliably level-headed. Not anymore. Liberals – or at least some of them – have gone quite mad over Brexit. There is almost no intrigue they
‘I have always believed in miracles,’ Scott Morrison beamed. Australia’s first Pentecostal prime minister was addressing a victory rally after an upset in Saturday’s federal election. Throughout the campaign, pollsters and pundits had been as one: the Coalition (a centre-right alliance between Morrison’s Liberal Party and the agrarian National Party) was finished and Labor was headed
Rashida Tlaib is a victim, and not just any victim – she’s a righteous one. The freshman Democrat from Michigan’s 13th district was born in Detroit to parents from the West Bank, making her the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress. She was one of the set of radicals I warned about ahead of
In August 2007, three months after coming to power at Holyrood, the SNP launched its National Conversation on Scotland’s constitutional future. We have been talking about little else since. Among the many national conversations postponed is one on immigration. The CBI has tried to kick-start such a discussion by warning that, within 20 years, just
‘It is better to ride the tiger’s back than let it rip your throat out’ is reputedly how Tony Blair rationalised his close relationship with the Sun. The quote is thrown back at him by critics who imagine their preferred mode of politics untainted by tiger-riding. In fact, Blair is not alone: Bill Clinton rode
Joan McAlpine is an unlikely rebel against the Scottish political establishment. The SNP MSP is chair of Holyrood’s culture and external affairs committee, a former parliamentary aide to Alex Salmond and a past editor of the Sunday Times Scotland. She has a reputation as a firebrand Nationalist and, in the interests of full disclosure, I have
Jews are familiar with the malice, prejudice and stupidity that governs the Labour Party’s complaints process when it comes to anti-Semitism. They will find no comfort in the news that other allegations of racism get short shrift too, even when the complainant is a prominent Labour politician. The party has said there is no case
There’s an episode of Father Ted in which the simple but endearing Father Dougal gets stuck on a milk float booby-trapped with a bomb. The finest clerical minds in Craggy Island convene to devise a solution and as they discount each increasingly far-fetched fix, the well-meaning Father Beeching pipes up: ‘Is there anything to be
The Easter Sunday massacre in Sri Lanka, which targeted churches and hotels, has so far claimed 310 lives and left a further 500 people injured. National Thowheed Jamath, a local Islamist group, has been implicated but authorities believe it received support from an international terrorist organisation. Colombo has declared a state of emergency and rounded
It was once said that every Jewish holiday could be summed up with the same nine words: ‘They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat’. Now it only takes eight: ‘A Labour spokesperson apologised for any offence caused’. On Friday, the Labour party tweeted warm wishes to Jews celebrating Passover. At this stage, most
‘He’s a magician,’ the crowd chanted as Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage at Likud’s victory party. The man now on course to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister had, as has become customary, pulled off a seemingly impossible eleventh-hour win. Despite the centre-left coalescing to form Kahol Lavan, an anti-Bibi alliance, Netanyahu held onto the crown
Benjamin Netanyahu, facing defeat in today’s Israeli elections, has made a final pitch to his right-wing base. Over the weekend, the Likud leader said that, if re-elected, he would apply Israeli sovereignty to both the settlement blocs and isolated communities deeper inside Judea and Samaria. ‘From my perspective, each of those settlement points is Israeli,’
Like Mother Teresa on a message grid, Nicola Sturgeon loves nothing more than going among the poor and downtrodden with a hug, some hope, and an embargoed press release. EU nationals are the latest beneficiaries of the First Minister’s ministrations. The SNP leader has penned an open letter to EU citizens resident north of the border
The vote of no confidence in Dominic Grieve shows the Tories are, like Labour, vulnerable to bolshiness in their own local associations. In fact, the Conservatives might turn out to be more effective at purging MPs because, for all of the noise, the Corbynites have not done much. And if Jeremy Corbyn ends up in
There is a terrible Adam Sandler movie called 50 First Dates. There are many terrible Adam Sandler movies, but this one is a right honker. Sandler falls in love with Drew Barrymore, who suffers from anterograde amnesia — an inability to retain new memories. He tries to help her remember but she keeps forgetting. Eventually,
He may be infallible in matters apostolic but the Pope continues to err on matters temporal. Francis is both an extraordinarily humble pontiff and one given to superfluous, non-doctrinal pronouncements that elevate his personal worldview. His ‘Jerusalem proclamation’, signed on Sunday with Moroccan king Mohammed VI, is another example of the slender line between pontificating
The vote of no confidence in Dominic Grieve shows the Tories are, like Labour, vulnerable to bolshiness in their own local associations. In fact, the Conservatives might turn out to be more effective at purging MPs because, for all of the noise, the Corbynites have not done much. And if Jeremy Corbyn ends up in
‘Do you think LGBT rights should be taught in schools?’ Women’s Hour has got itself into a spot of bother by trailing a discussion on same-sex education with this tease. The objection is to the question mark, which hints sinisterly at a debate. We are at very real risk of a debate on relationships education
It’s seldom hard to distinguish between a liberal and a display of humility and the Mueller report isn’t going to change that. Former FBI director Robert Mueller was tasked with investigating allegations that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election. After 22 months, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants,
