Tag Archives: Conservative Party

‘Forget culture wars, the election was about power, cash and opportunity’, Observer, 11 June 2017

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” wrote Wordsworth, “but to be young was very heaven!” OK, maybe that’s going a little too far, especially if you didn’t get a wink of sleep on Thursday night. But still. If … Continue reading

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‘The Conservatives have a leadership decision to make’, Financial Times, 9 June 2017

The Conservative party is, infamously, an autocracy tempered by assassination. If they win elections, or look like winning them, Tory leaders can do pretty much what they want. If they lose them, they are toast. If we were living in … Continue reading

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‘Forward Together: What the Tory manifesto says about Europe’, UK in a Changing Europe, 21 May 2017

Ah, Hear’Say! Not ‘hearsay’, as in stuff that you can’t really substantiate, but Hear’Say – the reality-TV band who went up like a rocket and down like a stick at the beginning of the noughties. Even if you can’t remember … Continue reading

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‘After an enormous victory in local elections, should the Tories fear voter complacency in the General? No’, CityAM, 8 May 2017

If your team is 3-0 up at half-time, then you can be fairly confident that you’re going to pull off an easy win. But even so, you need to guard against complacency. Remember the 2005 Champions League final, when the … Continue reading

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Theresa May’s offer on ‘workers’ rights’: how does it stack up against past Tory governments?

Most Conservative governments in the 20th century couldn’t really be said to have positively increased workers’ rights.  Indeed, some of them actually eroded them – most obviously the Thatcher government but also, one could argue, the Baldwin government (with its post- … Continue reading

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‘A Conservative secret weapon at the last election – the non-members who worked for victory’, ConservativeHome, 2 May 2017

With local elections only a few weeks away, the Conservatives, like the nation’s other political parties, will be relying on their activists to do the on-the-ground campaigning that can occasionally make a difference between winning a seat or even a … Continue reading

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‘The Conservatives who threatened to vote UKIP. All mouth and no trousers.’, ConservativeHome, 19 March 2017

So much has happened in politics since the summer that it takes a bit of effort to remember a time when Theresa May wasn’t the Conservative leader and Brexit wasn’t all we ever talked about. But cast your mind back, … Continue reading

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‘Truth to tell: populism and the immigration debate’, LSE Politics and Policy, 1 March 2017.

We are living in a world where it’s no longer ‘the economy, stupid’. That’s not to say real wages, the cost of living, and tax-and-spend don’t matter to people anymore. Clearly, they still do. But they no longer trump nearly … Continue reading

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‘Is the Labour Party in terminal decline?’, CityAM, 4 January 2017

Businesses and political parties both operate in markets where competition can be cut-throat, where mistakes can be costly, where leadership and branding matter, and where, ultimately, the customer is king. Yet there’s one big difference: businesses – even firms so … Continue reading

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‘The Conservative Party and Business have fallen in and out of love for decades’, The Conversation, 11 October 2016.

Given the potential impact of a so-called “hard Brexit” on bottom lines, as well as the less-than-friendly tone of recent ministerial and prime ministerial interventions, it’s hardly surprising that relations between the British government and business have been pretty strained … Continue reading

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