Monthly Archives: June 2023

George Orwell’s memorable take on Dickens, “rotten architecture, but wonderful gargoyles”, didn’t really fit the Conservatives – until recently, that is. For most of its history, the party – run by relatively pragmatic leaders unconstrained by rank-and-file members and fuelled by no-questions-asked donations … Continue reading →

Ever since Boris Johnson announced he would be resigning his seat in the House of Commons, national newspapers have been full of stories about a ‘Tory civil war’. Indeed, that phrase has cropped up nearly as often in the week … Continue reading →

Judging by the polls and by May’s local elections, things aren’t looking too clever for the Conservatives. No surprise, then, that talk is already turning to what will happen to them should they go down to nationwide defeat in 2024, with … Continue reading →

The Conservative party is clearly in trouble. Admittedly, opinion polls are snapshots, not predictions, but few pundits would argue Rishi Sunak will find it easy to overturn Labour’s double digit lead in the next election, especially after the Tories’ poor … Continue reading →

The landlady of a pub in Essex has been expressing bemusement about the complaints of “snowflakes” after her display of golliwog dolls attracted the attention of the county’s police – only for them to be told, reportedly by the home secretary Suella Braverman, that … Continue reading →

Ginger Rogers may be better known as a movie star than as a political strategist, but since Liz Truss trashed its already badly-tarnished brand last autumn, the Conservative Party has had little choice but to follow her advice. “Nothing’s impossible … Continue reading →

Rishi Sunak is on a roll. If you believe Conservative spin-doctors, the prime minister is stopping small boats crossing the channel, he’s saved a bank and its customers from going under, and he’s helped shape a relatively well-received Budget — … Continue reading →

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind. So wrote Marx and Engels … Continue reading →

Credit where credit’s due. The fact that the SNP has about 100,000 members in a nation of four million or so voters is little short of phenomenal if one compares that total with, say, the Conservatives’ 170,000 in the whole … Continue reading →

It was always going to be debatable whether Rishi Sunak’s decision to appoint Lee Anderson as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party was truly inspired or else utterly insane. But it’s become all the more debatable now that the notoriously … Continue reading →