September 16th 2015
Put Your Left Leg In
17th August 2015 As ballot papers land on Labour members' doormats this morning, the Party's elite is struggling to work out a strategy - any strategy - for effectively countering the Corbyn surge. The truth...
September 16th 2015
Let's Stick Together
14th September 2015 No-one can accuse the Labour Party of 'playing it safe' with their choice of Leader this weekend. Jeremy Corbyn breaks every rule of modern political gravity. He is older (66) than any...
July 15th 2015
Zombie Dance
15th July 2015 There has been, these past five years, much mockery of Ed Miliband's notion that he was on a mission to 'reshape the centre ground of British politics'. Anyone who continues to...
July 9th 2015
Budget 2015
George Osborne today resisted the temptation to unleash a wave of hard-right, super-charged austerity in the first Tory budget in nearly 20 years. Instead, he delivered a mellow and long-termist budget. Rather than make...
June 2nd 2015
You do it to yourself
Between the pomp, the ceremony and the occasional moment of comic farce (google ‘Michael Gove + Prince Philip + Wig + Bag’) it’s sometimes possible to forget that the Queen’s Speech is more than...
May 18th 2015
Dreaming of a revolution
As he spends the day reshuffling his Cabinet, David Cameron stands unchallenged at the top of English politics, with Miliband and Clegg forever vanquished and Farage’s future uncertain. Sturgeon did well, of course, but...
May 8th 2015
Normal service is resumed
David Cameron will now remain Prime Minister and the current Government will carry on, but without the Lib Dems. This result is decisive if still very tight in historical terms. The only person confirmed in...
April 27th 2015
I can't get no.... Satisfaction!
Two weeks left to go until we find out the result – or, at least, the raw ingredients in terms of seats from which a result must be cooked up. It’s fair to say...
April 20th 2015
When shall we three meet again?
Last night’s ‘challengers debate’ was a peculiar creature. Five party leaders lined up to rail against a Government that wasn’t even represented. Of course, this was what Cameron and co. had hoped for –...
April 13th 2015
You take the low road
Last week’s hodge-podge, melee of a debate left most people none the wiser about who was up and who was down – with only Nicola Sturgeon emerging unequivocally improved in her standing and popularity...
April 7th 2015
Too many cooks
In the midst of what has been a very flat, uninspiring short campaign there were high hopes of last night’s debate injecting some kind of momentum into the election countdown. In reality, it fell...
March 30th 2015
The end of the affair
After what feels like months of premature electioneering, this week the House rose for the final time this Parliament. For the Coalition it is the end of the affair. Members from marginal constituencies nervously...
March 23rd 2015
Budget for the base
George Osborne delivered his final budget of this Parliament surfing a wave of backbench and grassroots expectation. This was the moment they had been waiting for - the breakthrough that would deliver, finally, decisive space...
March 16th 2015
The Second Coming
With just over fifty days left till Britain votes, the peripheries of politics are moving menacingly to the centre of the action. The polls stubbornly refuse to budge – predicting a stalemate outcome which not...
December 15th 2014
In the Bleak Midwinter
George Osborne’s Autumn Statement was his – and the Conservative Party’s – last chance to inject ‘big bang’ economic arguments into the forthcoming General Election. There will be a final Budget of this Parliament early...