Author Archives: tpbale

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 →

Boris Johnson was sooner or later bound to crash and burn. He was the salesman suddenly promoted to CEO by a firm desperate to avoid loss of market share to a disruptive rival – in the Conservatives’ case Nigel Farage’s … Continue reading →

Especially after the chaos of the last few days – and even, some would argue, the chaos of the last few years – it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Boris Johnson is somehow sui generis among Conservative leaders. That might … Continue reading →

No army trying to defend territory wants to fight on two fronts. But the by-elections in Tiverton and Honiton and Wakefield suggest that’s exactly the challenge the Conservatives are facing. Boris Johnson won in 2019 precisely because, by promising to … Continue reading →