
Peel increased the burden of taxation on the rich – perhaps Sunak and Johnson will too
Dale’s new volume of brief lives of all 55 Prime Ministers since 1721 brings only some of them to life.
Dale’s new volume of brief lives of all 55 Prime Ministers since 1721 brings only some of them to life.
If the Daily Telegraph catches a whiff of threatened tax rises, it will offer pretty robust coverage.
For my colleagues who’ve smashed through the Red Wall – pick those bricks up and build anew.
It’s a contest between Sunderland and Newcastle. But even if Labour does badly in early results, how much will that tell us?
Over the past few decades our constitution has been so corroded that the likes of Powell, Benn, Crossman, and Foot would struggle to recognise it.
The idea that self-government might matter to Johnson or Gove more than, say, party loyalty leaves him genuinely nonplussed.
Brainless tribalism led it to underestimate Johnson.
The present election will turn on whether MPs and activists put national popularity before ideological soundness.
Amidst verbal and actual violence, it is tempting to seek to shut down, say, Farage or Lammy altogether. But politics without anger would be impossible – and undesirable.
Bower writes him off as a loser, which is perhaps what he will end up being. But he did much better at the last general election than the commentariat expected.
That’s to say, those of 1950, 1961, 1967 and 1971. Sovereignty was always the key concern, despite arguments over its meaning.
Len McCluskey’s opposition to a second referendum is explicit, Seamus Milne’s Euroscepticism is unshakeable, and so on. The People’s Voters need Labour’s whipping power, but they won’t get it.
Looking back, 55 years of Liberal and Liberal Democrat by-election success looks less important than UKIP’s two-year surge.
His satire on the NUS is highly enjoyable, but as he himself recognises, the Conservatives are a long way from finding messages to reach younger voters.
His reforms will cripple his MPs and are a posthumous triumph for Tony Benn’s belief in extra-Parliamentary action.