One of the most dangerous sequences in politics goes like this. “Something must be done. Here’s something. Let’s do it.”
The implications of the crisis are such that Johnson and Sunak need not so much to think outside the box as to trample it to tatters altogether.
It may be necessary, given the Coronavirus, and could even work. But Britain has a long, long record of state spending failing to turbo-charge growth.
Eustice should start by creating an ‘Office for Natural Statistics’, to sit within DEFRA and co-ordinate data collection in a way never done before.
How the Conservatives are winning and Labour losing the working class – a pattern that the latter’s leadership candidates are set to repeat.
It is a reversion to the old tribal idea: this people good, that people bad. It challenges the notion that we are all individuals, responsible for our own behaviour.
If Britain joined in a moment of self-doubt, it voted out as a confident, self-assured, optimistic, outward-looking and independent nation state.
The second piece in our mini-series on the road to Brexit explores the challenges which the anti-EU movement overcame to survive and then thrive.
The principle behind any settlement for the Sussexes should be simple: one can’t be half in and half out.
This new government seems to want to concentrate its energies on giving Britain a cutting edge. Will it succeed where others have failed?
If Boris Johnson now gives real political substance to what has become an overused catch-phrase, he will recreate the Tories in the image of “ Honest Stan” Baldwin.
One has to pinch oneself to remember that as recently as last July May was Prime Minister, Hammond Chancellor of the Exchequer and Gauke Lord Chancellor.
His big win marks the end of the EU Ascendancy and the beginning of a new era: that of Britain as a sovereign nation.
Johnson is a self-described “Brexity Hezza” and now has the chance to mould a Party and country in his own romantic image.
There were plenty of Yes Minister routines and scripts to live through then as now. Much of the system did not like the privatisation programme.