Stephen Daisley

The BBC is our other national religion and like the NHS it inspires a devotional intensity that can be a little creepy. The disclosure of star salaries over £150,000 certainly brought out the worst in the Corporation’s self-styled defenders. Their argument could have been designed to annoy: market dogmatists wanted to destroy the BBC because it’s

Demagogues have had a good run of late but the tide may be turning. Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen failed to pull off widely predicted electoral coups, while the Austrian far-right fell short in presidential elections. The SNP can no longer rouse a rabble like it once did and Ukip, out-Kipped by Labour and

Gay lefties have hated gay Tories ever since learning of their existence. The concept baffles them, like pro-life women or alcohol-free wine. Those with long memories are aware of the Conservative Party’s ugly record on gay equality. This is the party of Section 28, of differential consent laws, of fretting about children ‘being taught that

Step One: Businessman criticises independence. In this case, Les Montgomery, chief executive of the Highland Spring mineral water brand. On Sunday, he told PA: ‘Businesses are fed up. The Scottish Government should be getting on with the job they are there to do. Focusing on employment, investment, those kinds of things. Independence isn’t the job

As you approach the Scottish Parliament from the Royal Mile, a modest curve juts out from the obnoxious angles. This camber, the Canongate Wall, is studded with 26 slates of Scottish stone each bearing a quotation from the Bible and scriveners of more questionable repute. Among them is the instruction to ‘work as if you

A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution. On Saturday, thousands of earnest millennials – and better-humoured Gen-Xers pretending to be millennials – gathered in a field in Somerset for a concert. The headliner was an ancient rocker of an even older tune but the crowd cherished every word as their own –

I have an awkward relationship with the House of Lords. On the one hand, it regularly proves a doughty guardian of liberties against a rash, headline-chasing executive. On the other hand, it’s the House of Lords. Hereditary peers, bishops, Liberal Democrats — the clientele are a rum lot. We don’t have our constitutional troubles to

‘There is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens,’ wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ‘which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58’. Unite the Union’s rules appear to operate on much the same basis as the Soviet provision against ‘counter-revolutionary action’. Gerard Coyne, Unite’s West Midlands secretary, has been

‘Get back to the day job.’ The six magic words that delivered the Scottish Tories their best election night in decades. Ruth Davidson recited this incantation endlessly during the campaign and Labour and the Liberal Democrats quickly joined in. As messages go, it was blunt but effective, capturing the public mood that Nicola Sturgeon has

Nick Timothy has penned an honest and reflective piece about the Tory election boorach. It can’t have been easy to write less than a week on from defeat and his departure from Downing Street. The most important point he makes is substantive. Theresa May abandoned the One Nation vision she sketched out on the doorstep of

When I heard the Tories were cutting a deal with a party of bigots and terrorist-sympathisers, I thought, ‘would a national unity government really work?’ It turns out Theresa May is tapping up the DUP rather than the Labour Party. PMQs is accused of ‘yah-boo politics’ as it is; wait till the questions are asked

When Alex Salmond lost the Scottish independence referendum, he sought to console himself and the ranks of the vanquished by declaring ‘the dream shall never die’. It was the salve that soothed the disappointment of a nationalist movement. But today that dream appears to lie in ruins. Two years ago, the SNP swept all before

For Labour moderates agonising over whether they can vote for the party led by Jeremy Corbyn, an answer to their dilemma comes from a surprising quarter.  The quandary of party or principles comes down to whether you agree with Margaret Thatcher or Enoch Powell. Early in her premiership, Mrs T paid a visit to the Conservative

Campaigning starts again tomorrow, but in his speech in Carlisle today Jeremy Corbyn made what is – for any Labour leader – a fairly obvious point: ‘You cannot protect the public on the cheap. The police and security services must get the resources they need not 20,000 police cuts. Theresa May was warned by the Police

Paul Nuttall doesn’t want to be a hangman after all. There was some doubt over the weekend when the Ukip leader said he’d bring back the death penalty and would even pull the lever himself.   This left Andrew Neil somewhat curious and so he used his election interview to enquire if Nuttall had been signalling a

We learned something important from Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with Andrew Neil: The Labour leader wants to be Prime Minister and will do whatever it takes. His soppier critics often announce their sympathy for a man who would be much happier on the backbenches. Do not believe a word of it. Listen instead to what he told the BBC

The security services are a rum lot. All that intrigue gets to you eventually, and that’s not counting those who sign up with less than laudable intentions. Harold Wilson was paranoid but not necessarily wrong.  So when Jeremy Corbyn’s MI5 file finds its way onto the front page of the Daily Telegraph, even those not

The Conservatives are going to win the election — that much we know. The question is what kind of opposition Britain is going to be left with. If a slew of moderate Labour MPs are swept out, the Corbynite grip on the party will strengthen. The leader will not go and Labour will take a great