Tag Archives: Conservative Party

‘The Tory temperament means a U-turn on Europe is always possible’, Financial Times, 27 September 2017.

The prime minister’s speech in Florence may well help, in the short term, to clear some of the obstacles that currently stand in the way of the UK’s departure from the EU in 2019. But here is a heretical thought: … Continue reading

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‘Will Boris Johnson be the next Prime Minister – No’, City AM, 19 September 2017

Boris Johnson is a classicist. So was Machiavelli. And I’d say it was the Renaissance special adviser, rather than some ancient Greek or Roman, who provides the better clue to the foreign secretary’s behaviour in the last few days. Rather … Continue reading

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‘Pro-EU Tories flirting with rebellion need to put their votes where their mouths are’, Times Red Box, 6 September 2017.

How much more of this can we be expected to take? With each and every passing day, we seem to read more and more about the looming threat posed to the government’s supposedly precarious commons majority on Brexit by rebellious … Continue reading

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‘Blue on blue: the 10 greatest Tory feuds’, New Statesman, 14 August 2017.

The Conservatives have descended into infighting over Europe, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone – they have been at each other’s throats many times before. The Tory expert Tim Bale provides a guide to the most acrimonious feuds, starting in 1945… … Continue reading

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‘A new centrist pro-EU party can be a catalyst even if it flops’, Financial Times, 12 August 2017.

Journalists bemoaning the loss of yet another colleague to PR or the civil service sometimes talk about that hack-to-flak transformation as “going over to the dark side”. James Chapman, who in 2015 was persuaded by George Osborne to give up … Continue reading

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‘Think you know who will be the next PM? Think again . . . and again’, Times, 11 July 2017

A year ago this week, Theresa May became prime minister. She may not last much longer. Her authority is not so much seeping away as haemorrhaging. Her credibility (and some say her confidence) is shot. Potential successors are being touted … Continue reading

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‘The Tories’ deal with the DUP papers over the cracks, but it can’t work miracles’, Telegraph, 26 June 2017.

The ten parliamentary votes provided to Theresa May by the Democratic Unionist Party come at a pretty high price. Not only do they work out at a hundred million pounds apiece in extra spending; there’s also the reputational cost to the … Continue reading

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‘EU referendum: one year on – political parties’, UK in a Changing Europe, 26 June 2017.

As far as the UK’s political parties were concerned, last summer’s EU referendum was a bit like one of those tag-team wrestling matches you see on TV. Although the bout began with everyone thinking they knew who was on which … Continue reading

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‘The Tory party is more useless than nasty’, Prospect, 20 June 2017.

A recently published review seems to sum the Conservative Party’s general election pretty well, no? In fact, the portrait of the … campaign that emerges from these pages is that of a Titanic-like disaster: an epic fail made up of … Continue reading

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‘DEBATE: Does Theresa May’s failure to win a majority lay the path for another election before the end of the year? YES’, CityAM, 12 June 2017

Unless Theresa May surprises us all and makes the DUP “a big, open, and comprehensive offer” (copyright D. Cameron, 2010) of a full-blown coalition, then we’re going to see the Conservatives try to run a minority government dependent on Ulster Unionist support … Continue reading

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