The difficulty is that if Party unity is made the great imperative above everything else then the Government loses any sense of direction. The status quo is continued by default.
With breathtaking audacity she quoted Shelley, long a poet the Labour Party assumed was on their side.
He cannot be blamed for his political colleagues’ personal affairs. But making this speech revealed serious political naivete, and the effect was catastrophic on Conservative credibility.
The task of reaching small-c conservatives rests firmly with the Prime Minister.
He could look again at short sentences. I wanted to scrap them – they are counter-productive in reducing reoffending and cause a great deal of disruption to prisons.
There may be a greater role for community sentences, but not as an alternative because the state cannot deliver, or will not pay for, a proper prison system.
The two leaders preached to the converted by trading exaggerated insults.
The report shows Caversham Primary School is a good school, and well led and managed. The use of discretion would probably have fixed the issue of an administrative oversight.
Gordon Brown entered the Treasury with low inflation, falling unemployment, steady growth, and shrinking taxes and spending. Rachel Reeves would not be so lucky – nor will the Chancellor, if we win the election.
The friendliness and expertise of the IfG’s staff, and worthiness of its aims, should not obscure its desire to place the fate of ministers in the hands of mandarins.
Rishi Sunak’s path to a second term rests many factors beyond his control. This gives added significance to determining what he can do, such as defining his own agenda and that of his opponents.
To avoid a 1997-style wipe-out, the aim is to imitate the strategy of John Major’s remarkable victory from five years earlier.
But there are truths in life – for example, that a stich in time saves nine, beggars can’t be choosers…and that you can’t spend more than your earn. His premiership ends with record spending and taxes.
As Blair realised, but his successor apparently does not, hysterical denunciations of political leaders are liable to prove counter-productive.
Both the referendum and our eventual departure from the EU were delivered only with decades of legislative trench warfare in the House of Commons.