In Gremlins Two, the loveable creatures are electrocuted into putrified jelly. The film bears no report that eleven survived.
The Conservative Party has become far more dependent on older, blue-collar, non-London, non-graduate, pro-Brexit, anti-immigration, and culturally conservative voters to both hold and retain political power – and this remains true today.
Farage is 59 – a rubbery, ebullient 59, but 59 nonetheless. Does he really fancy a decade’s prospective work to recast the right, with no certainty of elected office at the end of it?
The Prime Minister looked pained, as well he might, by the many impossible questions put to him by the Liaison Committee.
Conservatism is not some doctrine deduced from some authoritative text by a great thinker or leader of the past. What comes first for Conservatives is not the theory, but the practice.
The key problem is stagnation. Margaret Thatcher’s reforms promoted mobility and opportunity. Now we are an economy which doesn’t change enough.
Those who claim the Conservatives would benefit from a spell in opposition to ‘rest and detox’ are misguided. My first nine years in Parliament were spent in opposition, and it was a frustrating experience.
Doing the minimum possible on legal migration would have the unwelcome effect for the Prime Minister of prolonging and intensifying debate about it.
Through their overreaction, they may have handed the UK something quite wondrous: a genuine economic benefit of Brexit.
Brexit is neither the source of nor the solution to Britain’s economic ills. Current rows over trade flows simply produce a lot of heat and very little light.
The rage, frustration and contempt of its terms are a foretaste of what’s to come if the Conservatives lose the next election.
Gove, Cummings and the Federation of Conservative Students are also denounced for destroying her hero.
The tough choices we are making, to lock up the worst offenders for longer and to rehabilitate the redeemable, are the right ones to protect the public in the long term.
That is the mission of ARC, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which is holding its inaugural meeting in London. The public want a better, more productive and dignified economy, and a politics and a public culture which honours their values.
The public is absolutely exhausted of politicians who are only prepared to offer half measures, and to see our country limp along in a stupor of inaction and failure.