Tim Bale’s Blog- “End of the Brexit era? Burnham’s pivot back to Europe”, Anadolu Ajansı, 7 October 2026.
- “Burnham’s proposed electoral reform could have unpredictable effects”, LSE Blog, 6 October 2026.
- “The Keminaissance is a myth. The Tories are still like a weird uncle”, Bright Blue, 2 October.
- “Members of right‑leaning parties prefer leaders with ‘dark triad’ personality traits” (with Paul Webb and Stavroula Chrona), The Conversation, 18 September, 2026.
- “A fractured Union? Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland first ministers meeting”, Anadolu Ajansı, 17 September 2026.
- “Can’t you do it?”, Review of “Sunak at 10” by Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton, Literary Review, 2 September 2026.
- “Hands off the constitution, Andy”, Unherd, 18 August 2026
- ‘Why Nigel Farage is resigning as an MP, only to stand again – expert analysis: Self-pity and self-obsession’, The Conversation, 7 July 2026.
- ‘There’s one thing that could revive Farage’s fortunes’, Independent, 29 June 2026.
- ‘Migration, Brexit, and Starmer’s exit: Inside Britain’s political meltdown’, Anadolu Agency, 23 June 2026
Author Archives: tpbale
‘Starmer’s winter fuel allowance “U-turn” sets him on a tricky path with backbenchers and voters’, The Conversation, 22 May 2025.
The U-turn is a long and, depending on your point of view, honourable or dishonourable tradition in British politics. Now Keir Starmer has been accused of following this tradition after heavily hinting the UK government is reconsidering last year’s decision to deny the winter … Continue reading
‘Nigel Farage has the crowd, but not the plan – and the clock is ticking’, LBC, 3 May 2025.
Nigel Farage doesn’t have a reputation for doing policy. He’s more of a ‘vibes’ politician – all about the headlines rather than the small print. And when it looks like the small print might get him into trouble he simply denies … Continue reading
‘Under “Brexit Badenoch”, what is the future of the Conservative Party?’, The Independent, 26 April 2025.
ow many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, runs the old joke, but the lightbulb really has to want to change. The same goes for political parties. For all the talk about Sir Keir Starmer somehow fooling his … Continue reading
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Tagged Conservatives, kemi-bandenoch, populist-radical-right, Tories, uk-politics
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‘Brexit and the Conservative Party’, UK in a Changing Europe, 25 April 2025.
The impact of Brexit on the Conservative Party provides a textbook example of the remedy being worse than the disease. Cameron had always been a soft or small-e Eurosceptic, as much concerned with the symbolism as the substance of UK’s … Continue reading
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Tagged Brexit, Conservatives, leave, remain, Tories, uk-politics
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‘Rachel Reeves needs to change the record’, Linkedin Pulse, 27 March 2025.
“Politics,” according to the economist J.K. Galbraith, “is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable” – and that’s precisely what Rachel Reeves can argue she’s done in her Spring Statement. No-one … Continue reading
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Tagged Labour Party, politics, preference-shaping, rachel-reeves, Welfare
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‘Cutting welfare goes against Labour’s core values – that’s the point’, The Conversation, 19 March 2025
“It’s one thing to say the economy is not doing well and we’ve got a fiscal challenge … but cutting the benefits of the most vulnerable in our society who can’t work, to pay for that, is not going to … Continue reading
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Tagged cuts, Labour Party, politics, symbolic-politics, Welfare
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‘Who are Reform members?’, House Magazine/PoliticsHome 4 January, 2025.
Nigel Farage has been banging on about ‘the People’s Army’ for over a decade. Turns out he’s finally recruited one. Reform UK says it now has a membership of well over 100,000, overtaking that of the Conservatives. So, who are those members, … Continue reading
‘2024 proved two-party politics is in its death throes. It could be Nigel Farage’s opportunity’, Big Issue, 1 January 2025.
If the 2024 election proved anything – aside from the fact that the majority of people who bothered to vote rid of a government that had run things for 14 long years – it reminded us that the UK is no longer a country … Continue reading
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Tagged electoral-reform, fragmentation, Nigel Farage, politics, pr, reform-uk, uk-party-system
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‘What do Britons Want in a Political Leader?’ (with Paul Webb and Stavroula Chrona), Political Insight, 2 December 2024.
In 1964, US Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, famously gave his opinion in a case that revolved in part around what did and did not constitute hard core pornography. ‘I shall not’, he wrote, ‘today attempt further to define the … Continue reading
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Tagged Conservative Party, dark-triad, Labour Party, leadership, party members, politics
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‘What does Trump’s victory mean for UK politics?’, LSE Blog, 12 November 2024.
Elections can sometimes make us crazy, even when they’re going on elsewhere – especially, perhaps, when they take place in the USA, where the results inevitably have more implications for the rest of us than do contests taking in smaller, … Continue reading
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Tagged badenoch, Conservatives, culture-war, Farage, Labour Party, politics, trump, woke
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