November 2nd 2017
Chinese Radiation
In European philosophies of kingship, legitimacy is usually premised on some combination of blood, faith and a nod to parliamentary acceptability. The Chinese see things differently. For Emperors of China, legitimacy comes from another source...
October 5th 2017
Isn’t It A Pity
The leadership of the Conservative Party hoped that their conference in Manchester this year would press pause. Pause on the deflation of Theresa May's authority as Prime Minister. Pause on Jeremy Corbyn's love affair...
September 29th 2017
O Come, All Ye Faithful
What to make of Labour Conference? And what does it mean for the Tories as they gather, next week, for their own? The first thing to understand about the delegates who gathered in Brighton is...
September 8th 2017
The Only Way is Up
For most politicians, the rough and tumble of the day-to-day means that tactics come first and strategy has to wait. Our MPs and ministers live in a state of perpetual motion when the House is...
July 21st 2017
I Should've Known We'd Never Get Far
Summer is here and, for Theresa May, it couldn’t have come soon enough. The Prime Minister needs a holiday (three weeks walking in the Alps, since you ask) and so does her party. This...
June 9th 2017
Waterloo
How do you feel that they won the war? Most of the commentariat remains in shell shock. At Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender. It was as much a surprise to him as it was to his...
June 2nd 2017
No Expectations
There's just under a week until Britain votes and it is fair to say that the campaign has not gone as Theresa May hoped. When she called a snap election, the Prime Minister was congratulated...
May 30th 2017
Don’t Look Back In Anger
Campaigning has been suspended for much of this week, in honour of those innocents who were massacred in Manchester. As Britain sought to understand what had happened - an impossible task - our politicians reached...
May 19th 2017
What You Want, Baby I Got It
This week, manifesto week, we benefited from a rare public glimpse into the psyches of the two main candidates for Prime Minister and their closest advisers. The manifestos themselves tell you a bit about what...
May 12th 2017
Tangled up in Blue
Politicians often tell their media interrogators that 'the only poll that counts is the one on the day' in order to deflect hypotheticals about likely outcomes. Given the recent track record of polling accuracy, this...
May 5th 2017
Homeward Bound
Theresa May is often described as a ‘cautious’ politician. She weighs her options, we are told, engaging forensically with the evidence before arriving at a decision. That is true up to a point. But, as...
April 28th 2017
What's New Pussy Cat?
The first week of the election campaign closes today, with Parliament prorogued and candidates hastily selected in almost all seats for the main parties. Theresa May used her final PMQs of the season to hammer...
April 18th 2017
The night has reached its end, we can’t pretend
We have written a fair bit, in these notes, about the idea of ‘political gravity’. Of course individuals, leaders, can make the weather now and again. They are not irrelevant. But they are also not...
March 29th 2017
Can’t Buy Me Love
Triggering Article 50 - as the Prime Minister has done today - is a necessary precondition to negotiating anything about Britain's future relationship with the EU. Since the Brexit vote, all the central pillars...
