Amid the uncertainty of a hung parliament, what can hardly be overstated about the 2017 general election result is just how much of a disaster it represents for Theresa May. Having called an unnecessary election believing herself in a position of barely-precedented strength – despite repeatedly vowing no snap election, with her spokesman reiterating the point less than a month before…
Entitled ‘Forward, Together: Our Plan for a Stronger Britain and a Prosperous Future’, less of a wish than a command, and superficially attempting to shift the focus away from domestic policy and back towards Brexit, much of the Conservative Party manifesto released last Thursday seemed brazenly wrong or patently false. There was the scrapping of free school lunches for infants; another…
Blithe or rabid comparisons to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party are never hard to come by in any walk of life, but when they’re not confined to internet forums and Twitter, recently in British politics they have been as much a preserve of the right. Take for instance the New Labour fanatic and prominent party donor Michael Foster, who after…
As the Conservatives under Theresa May – despite fervently supporting six years of austerity – seek to present themselves as in touch with the working class, one of the easiest methods as always is to go on the attack. And in the lead up to the Conservative conference the right-wing press pushed a line which seems set to become a mainstay of…
If Atlanticist politicians in the United Kingdom opted to borrow the inaugural ball or correspondents’ dinner from the United States, perhaps on the coronation of Theresa May somebody could have co-opted a Don Rickles joke, witheringly complimenting the departing David Cameron by telling the gathered hangers-on ‘He’s a wonderful guy. You talk to him, it’s like being alone’. The ‘wonderful’ would be…
It’s the rule rather than the exception when it comes to British politics, but the case of grammar schools offers an especially egregious example of wealthy, typically ageing and privately educated Conservatives telling the working class to forego their principles and do as they say if they wish to be better off. The sole argument in favour of the grammar…
When it was confirmed to Oliver Letwin, the longtime Conservative policy wonk, that he is indeed to be handed one of the highest awards afforded by David Cameron’s resignation honours list, he said ‘One love! One heart!’, and tugging at his surreptitiously braided hair, called on his former boss to offer, ‘Let’s get together and feel alright’. And Oliver Letwin said…
As Theresa May sets about the arduous task of replacing all the paintings in her new Downing Street home – she reportedly intends to swap artworks from the Government Art Collection for framed quotations drawn from the speech she made upon becoming Prime Minister less than two weeks ago – one minor problem has emerged, but nobody seems willing to tell her…
Crispin Blunt, the Conservative MP for Reigate and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, believes that even in today’s increasingly hostile geopolitical climate he can make a paradisiacal island for himself on reasoned argument’s milk and honey. What folly Mr. Blunt! For Mr. Blunt was the only Conservative MP to vote yesterday against the renewal of the United Kingdom’s Trident nuclear…
When Andrea Leadsom became Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change last year, serving under Secretary of State Amber Rudd, she recalled asking her new department two crucial questions. In her own words: ‘When I first came to this job one of my two questions was ‘Is climate change real?’ and the other was ‘Is hydraulic fracturing safe?’ And…
