Author Archives: tpbale

If Jeremy Hunt’s first Autumn Statement doesn’t run into problems over the next few days — not least with his Conservative colleagues — he will be exceptionally lucky. Every Tory chancellor who has delivered a Budget since 2010 has had … Continue reading →

Liz Truss made much of her connection with Leeds during her bid for the Tory leadership.  But, somewhat ironically, that connection’s even stronger than ever now that she’s resigned as Prime Minister. Not only did Truss live and go to … Continue reading →

The age of austerity: 2010 and beyond Up until the financial crash of 2007/8, chancellor George Osborne and PM David Cameron were ‘compassionate Conservatives’, keen to ‘share the proceeds of growth’. But when the shit hit the fan, they were all about … Continue reading →

It’s not often that things get so desperate in UK politics that one is forced to take solace in poetry. But WB Yeats’s lines capture the truly parlous state in which the British Conservative party finds itself right now. Things … Continue reading →

“I have”, Benjamin Disraeli is reputed to have said when he became Tory prime minister for the first time in 1868, “climbed to the top of the greasy pole” – a deliciously apt metaphor given the alarming rate at which … Continue reading →

For aficionados of irony, the spectacle of a free-market-fundamentalist finance minister being forced from office by the markets themselves is nothing short of delicious. But for Prime Minister Liz Truss, who at the end of last week decided to throw her … Continue reading →

Anyone who’s being paying attention to the disastrous start of Liz Truss’s premiership may have seen it blamed on ‘Tufton Street’ —shorthand for a network of free-market think tanks five minutes’ walk from the Palace of Westminster. It’s rumoured that … Continue reading →

It’s hardly surprising that, in a country where both women and people from ethnic minorities were so underrepresented in politics for so long, a huge amount of attention is being paid to the fact that, for the first time ever, … Continue reading →

Contrary to what you might have read, Boris Johnson has not been entirely idle over the summer.  As well as taking his latest wife and children on a couple of foreign holidays and doing what he can to ensure that … Continue reading →

With Liz Truss apparently so far ahead in the Tory leadership contest, talk is inevitably turning to who she will appoint to her first cabinet. Kwasi Kwarteng, an ideological soulmate since he and Truss helped write the state-shrinkers’ bible, Britannia Unchained, is routinely … Continue reading →