The odds are that the Government will win tomorrow. But it’s not hard to see how it could lose by accident.
His Bill may be held up in the Lords as he continues to insists that his Government will stop the boats. The only means of squaring the two would be an election with illegal migration centre-stage.
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.
The Prime Minister will want to avoid the trap that Gordon Brown created for himself in the autumn of 2007.
if you look at the odds for the next Conservative leader, there are no white men among the front runners. The top five comprise Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, James Cleverly, Suella Braverman and Gillian Keegan.
As his options narrow, Sunak has little choice but to get back to first principles, which would be the right course anyway.
But many London Jews find it is too soon to speak of the horrific events in Israel, and are filled with sombre forebodings.
Voters clearly want it – and the recent past suggests he’s a more credible agent of it than Sir Keir.
The number of possibilities teaches us three lessons about politics today. Firstly, never to underestimate the role played by mere chance. Secondly, that this is not an age of great leaders who make their own luck. And, thirdly, that we need to choose more carefully in future.
Maybe the future isn’t Leavers v Remainers, or even Conservative v Labour. Perhaps its truth v post-truth – Rowling v Dorries. I’m with Rowling. You?
In the 2019 election, all four major party manifestos presented Net Zero as a fait accompli: none made clear the upheaval it demands, the opportunity costs involved or the dramatic impact on our quality of life.
Since the landmark loneliness strategy in 2018, the priority and funding associated with the strategy have waned. The next election is an opportunity to do something about that.
If a mainstream candidate is needed, when next the Conservative leadership is contested, in order to stop some more ideological figure such as Kemi Badenoch, it is just possible that Cleverly might fit the bill.
The intellectual heft of figures like him will be vital in ensuring that it moves forward, rather than languishing in the same ideological dead-ends that sunk it in the first place.
His life and works appears to have little influence at the top of the current Conservative Party, and among the wider membership and the British public. But it seems that in those countries where Scruton went behind the Iron Curtain, his work and life is not just remembered, he is still actively saving minds.