April 26th 2024
COULDN’T ESCAPE IF I WANTED TO
Schadenfreude might not be an attractive sentiment but it is an inescapably human one. There is something delicious about watching one’s opponents experience extreme discomfort. We may wish that we didn’t feel that way, but...
April 19th 2024
Caught In A Trap
Who would you ring if, at half past three in the morning, you found yourself locked in a flat by ‘bad people’ who were demanding five thousand pounds for your release? Your mum, maybe? Or...
March 28th 2024
I Gotta Have Faith
It would be easy to make a joke about how desperately Rishi Sunak needs an Easter miracle. Our Prime Minister certainly has the appearance of a man who believes he is being unfairly crucified -...
March 18th 2024
I’m Starting With the Man in the Mirror
Who should decide what counts as ‘extremism’? Is it the Party that was until recently deputy-chaired by a man who believes Sadiq Khan is an Islamist? Or the Party whose biggest ever donor says...
March 8th 2024
It that all there is?
Did you know that Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak have a ‘long-term plan for growth’? It’s all very exciting. Over the long-term they are going to cut your national insurance back to zero! Yes obviously...
March 8th 2024
Take Your Performative All-Women’s Panel Elsewhere
This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating a win for women, achieved by an all-women team. Following a recent change in regulation raising the income threshold for angel investors from £100,000 per year to £170,000, Lodestone...
March 6th 2024
SPRING BUDGET ROUND-UP
This afternoon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt detailed his Spring Budget - only three and a half months since his Autumn Statement - and the latest in a dwindling list of set-piece milestones...
March 1st 2024
This Charming Man
“This is for Gaza” said George Galloway, as he took to the stage having won yesterday’s chaotic Rochdale by-election. A Labour loss, like this, at this point (with those polls) is remarkable. And so, whatever...
February 16th 2024
Country Roads
Today we are going to ask you to put yourself in another person’s shoes. This person is a Conservative MP. Their seat would - under normal circumstances - be considered safe(ish). On the basis of...
January 25th 2024
DREAMED A DREAM
100 years ago this week, Ramsay MacDonald became Labour’s first Prime Minister. It was a historic moment but an inauspicious start to Labour’s journey as a party of power. For a start, MacDonald’s Labour didn’t...
December 8th 2023
We’re all born naked and the rest is drag
It takes charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent to become Prime Minister, normally. It also takes ambition. You have to really, really want it in order to get it. The hoops through which you will have...
November 13th 2023
Ghosts of Christmas Past
Back in October, Rishi Sunak claimed - to a slightly baffled Conservative Party Conference audience - that his government was a change government. Politics had been broken for thirty years. Rishi and his band of...
November 3rd 2023
Broken State
In shocking news to us all, it was revealed, this week that our government was almost comically badly run during the pandemic. We say ‘almost comically’ because when one sets aside the mutual loathing, the...
October 20th 2023
The Only Thing They Fear Is You
Today’s by-election results are un-spinnably terrible for the Conservative Party. Yes, Greg Hands might be bouncing around TV studios putting a brave (courageous, Sir Humphrey might say) face on it. But make no mistake, Tamworth...
