The tribe hasn’t had its catharsis yet. Boris Johnson, more than most, understands politics at the primal level. He knows that the people are angry about lockdown parties in Downing...
The key to the last election was that the Leave vote was more united than the Remain vote, so it matters that Brexiteers are at war with each other, while...
Prime ministers tend to last longer than you think. I haven’t placed a bet of more than 50p on politics since I lost an undisclosed sum on John Major to...
The most effective form of attack is courtesy. Many Labour supporters naturally want Keir Starmer to go over the top, with metaphorical bricks and bottles, to condemn the worst prime...
Even his enemies concede Tony Blair knows how to do two things. One is to win elections; the other is to generate headlines. “Blair calls for Labour to reject ‘wokeism’”...
I promise this is the last time I will mention the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown TV series until next week (Monday’s episode, the fourth of five of Blair &...
There have been sensational by-election victories in the past. The first Liberal win in a safe Conservative seat in Orpington in 1962; the Scottish National Party breakthrough in Hamilton in...
Nothing could better illustrate the Great Class Inversion in British politics than a book to be published next month by David Skelton, called The New Snobbery. Skelton is a Conservative...
One of the things for which Boris Johnson was wrongly mocked was writing two articles about Brexit, one in favour and one against. It was the sort of intellectually rigorous...
Dominic Cummings likes his metaphors of chaos and destruction. He used to take the pin out of an imaginary grenade before throwing it over his shoulder into a meeting room...
Chief Political Commentator, The Independent; visiting professor, King's College, London.