Tag Archives: politics

‘Norman Tebbit carried a torch for a “true-blue” politics now embraced by Nigel Farage’, Independent, 8 July 2025

They say “never meet your heroes” – but meeting your antiheroes can be absolutely fascinating. At least, that was my experience when I met Norman Tebbit. How could it not have been? Already branded a “semi-house-trained polecat” as an opposition MP, once in … Continue reading

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‘Why we need to halt “hard right” in its tracks’, The Loop, 10 July 2025.

Whatever passes for the centre right these days is in serious danger of being displaced or even replaced by the far right – most often by politicians whose questionable commitment to the checks and balances that characterise liberal democracy and … Continue reading

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‘Why are Tories suddenly in favour of proportional representation?’, The Independent, 25 June 2025.

here’s an increasing disconnect between those who want to run the country and the rest of us who merely live in it – and it seems to be making us more likely to call for a change to the way we … Continue reading

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‘London isn’t a Labour city any more — the three key questions that new polling raises’, The Standard, 24 June 2025.

“London is a Labour city” was always something of an exaggeration but it’s even more misleading today than it has been for quite a while. Polling just released by the Mile End Institute (MEI) at Queen Mary University of London … Continue reading

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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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‘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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‘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

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‘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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‘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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‘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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