Author Archives: tpbale

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 →

Brits seem less and less enamoured with Brexit, encouraging some to begin to wonder whether – whisper it softly – there might soon be majority support for rejoining the European Union. A look at the polling suggests, however, that anyone … Continue reading →

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 →