These recent polls are ones that ten years ago – or on say June 9th 2016 – nobody would have imagined possible, and they are polls whose outcomes were brought about by Boris Johnson and yet he has no framework for that.
But Starmer could exceed the very low expectations now held out for him.
The key to being selected as a Conservative candidate in the 1950s was to have “had a good war”, and many of the MPs in the Seventies time still approached politics in a fundamentally soldierly way
The ‘surrender’ narrative, like campaigning to ‘Rejoin’ is seen as an unwanted continuation of a time in our politics of continual rows while avoiding major issues like growing the economy, fixing the NHS and improving what much of the public see as a country that isn’t quite working.
Leaving has not been as disastrous as Remainers feared, nor as beneficial as Leavers hoped. It is an unfinished revolution, overtaken by events. A hard rain still needs to fall.
Project Phoenix, produced by a number of Conservative peers, is a helpful first step towards assessing the party’s problems. But alongside the question of party democracy sits a fundamental one of talent.
It was reasoning backwards from its prejudices, namely that Eurosceptics are dishonest people, and that there must be some technicality on which they can be tripped up.
It’s understandable that Tory members were sceptical when I first published allegations – but his dishonest denials exploited that trust.
On current trends, the next election poses the greatest threat to the Conservative Party’s continued existence in its history. Can we imagine politics with under 50 Tory MPs?
The sad truth is that if the Confederation of British Industry did not exist, we would have to invent it.
In the wake of him losing his libel case against her, we re-publish Mark Wallace’s 2017 article on these best of enemies.
There are real questions to ask about the fundamental problems of the Government’s pandemic response.
The question is why the UK is being so timid. is it Johnson, ministers or the Blob? Let’s consider the options.
But beware, Prime Minister: there is no divine right of parties any more than there was a divine right of kings.
In Parliament, there are now two political parties arguing against the Labour government and left-wing ideology. The number of right-wing political activists has more than doubled with Reform UK having more members than the Conservative Party. At local elections, there are double the number of right-wing candidates.