William Gladstone once complained that the Liberals were washed from office by a “torrent of gin and beer”. Tory MPs fear they face a similar – if smellier – fate if the Government doesn’t get tough on the water companies.
Character assassination displaces comprehension, and so damages those who engage in it.
But there is method in his madness.
Stewart versus Johnson is, like Gladstone versus Disraeli, a clash of opposites, and a wonderful sight for racegoers.
He reproached the advocates of no deal for telling a fairy tale.
In his new book he sets out to rescue those virtues from the mockery inflicted on them in the 20th century.
It is not that he dares to be dull, but that he cannot help being so. He has prudently turned it to his advantage.
An American scholar shows how British Conservatives welcomed universal suffrage, while German Conservatives were terrified of it.
He sees the referendum result as a “defining test” for Britain, and is charged with finding solutions to help meet the challenge.
It was the closeness of the family in Joe’s era that led critics to calling them ‘the clique’ – a toast that we still make today in their honour.
There may be a strange applicability for the future in the circumstances that led to the Liberals’ sweeping electoral triumph in 1906.
The first in a three-part ConHome mini-series on the Tory revival in the area since the Mayoral election of last May.