November 4th 2021
The Man in the Mirror
This morning the Prime Minister is, apparently, asking his aides how they could have put him in the terrible position in which he finds himself. Having twisted dozens of arms in order to spare Owen...
September 17th 2021
The House Always Wins
It is easy to mock a Cabinet reshuffle that results in Dominic Raab being appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Nadine Dorries taking the reins at Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. To the interested outsider Boris...
May 12th 2021
Face Off
In our note last week - centred on the result of the Hartlepool by-election and emerging English local results - we highlighted the structural shift occurring in Labour’s vote and drew a comparison with post-Indyref...
May 8th 2021
Shape Shifter
There’s no way of dressing up these results - as they continue to trickle in - as anything other than a disaster for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Yes, the vaccine programme has given the Government...
April 16th 2021
Bad Blood
There is a war being fought at the heart of Downing Street and it is being fought on multiple fronts. In some ways the sheer level of mess involved helps the Prime Minister. When a...
March 3rd 2021
Waiting for my man
In our pre-budget note, we said that Rishi Sunak’s ideological and political interests were pulling in different directions and that - therefore - relative stasis was the likely result. And to a certain extent, the...
February 23rd 2021
Meet me at the crossroads
On Monday, the Prime Minister laid out his plan for unlocking the country. It was not - obviously - the first time that he had made such an announcement. We had one in Spring last...
January 22nd 2021
The Angel & The Gambler
A lot has been written about the character of Boris Johnson - both the one that he plays and the one that he is. Our Prime Minister possesses personality, an attribute not immediately obvious in...
November 27th 2020
And it hurts with every heartbeat
Some people are very good in a crisis. They keep their heads, leap into action, work effectively despite finding themselves at the centre of chaos. Think of those members of the ordinary public who...
November 13th 2020
My heart will go on
As the Titanic slipped below the waves, its in-house string quartet famously carried on playing regardless. History doesn’t tell us the tune but it’s a safe enough bet that they didn’t learn a new one...
October 30th 2020
Windmills of Your Mind
Anyone who has ever been responsible for the well-being of a toddler will recognise the dynamic all too well. “If you carry on refusing to eat your lunch you will have to go on to...
October 16th 2020
Boulevard of broken dreams
Nature abhors a vacuum, politics even more so. The net effect of our Government’s efforts to tackle coronavirus is just that: a vacuum. The track and trace infrastructure that doesn’t exist; the tiered lockdowns that...
September 14th 2020
Do you wanna be in my gang?
It is human instinct to desire and to imagine that problems be both surmountable and finite. Whilst we may enjoy the thrilling quasi-pornography of apocalyptic fiction - and whilst we might generally accept, deep down...
August 7th 2020
Exit Wounds
The thing about sticking plasters is that they give a wound the chance to heal whilst keeping out contagion. But if the wound is too deep, too big or already infected then... all a sticking...
July 24th 2020
School's Out
As our politicians head off on their summer holidays and Boris Johnson celebrates his one year anniversary as PM, now feels like a good time to reflect on what has happened this past year. It...