The Victorian moralising of the Home Office’s migrant rape advice
The legacy of the Victorians is everywhere; we depend on them for our sewage disposal, our railway networks, much of…
What Clacton taught us about Nigel Farage’s path to power
The Clacton by-election was finally over. Even by the standards of August news stories, it had grown pretty stale pretty…
Why is the C of E still devoted to woke?
The Church of England can always be relied upon to walk into a room just as everybody else is leaving.…
Kehinde Andrews is the Hiroo Onoda of the Jason Arday saga
Summer is a time for fleeting joys. Be it friendships, romances or hilarious stories about charlatan academics at the University…
It’s the ideology, stupid
What do Nigel Farage, gender-critical feminism, masculinity, generalised homophobia and GB News have in common? All have been blamed in…
It’s amazing how far Burnham has got by not being Keir Starmer
It’s amazing how far a prime minister can get just by not being Keir Starmer. There’s considerable political success to…
I’m so glad that Big Ange is back
Big Ange is back. From a sketchwriter’s point of view I have to say that this is marvellous news. Rayner…
Put on a suit and tie, Prime Minister
A brass fanfare; a wide establishing shot of five men in three-piece suits, seated in a library of leather-bound tomes…
What is the point of the Lib Dems?
The Liberal Democrat party of Russia and the Liberal Democrat party of the United Kingdom are not, on the face…
Burnham’s coronation speech was sub-Disney schmaltz
As coronations go, this was a particularly flat one. Instead of Zadok the Priest we were treated to New Order.…
Keir Starmer’s biggest problem was always right behind him at PMQs
‘You’ll miss him when he’s gone!’ Lots of people have said this to me. It’s true I have had the…
The terminally mediocre were on full display at DPMQs
Sir Keir Starmer was away this week. Nothing new there of course; indeed, it seems the thing which will change…
Farage versus the world
He probably won’t want to hear this but there is an air of General De Gaulle about Nigel Farage. De…
Did anyone vet Big Ange’s LBC love-in?
‘What’s Big Ange up to?’ was a question Sir Keir Starmer had to ask himself basically every day of his…
Starmer’s Wile E Coyote defence spin
The Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by wishing a ‘happy 78th birthday’ to the NHS. This is the sort of…
Will Starmer’s last defender please turn out the lights
There are still people out there – with access to the full gamut of unblunted cutlery – who maintain that…
Andy Burnham’s tragic Blairite tribute act
‘What a fitting venue to be sat in – The People’s History Museum’. So began the introduction to Andy Burnham’s…
Parliament has become dangerously mawkish
Parliament always has an otherworldly feel; it’s a world of gothic crenelations, of specialised language, of deliberate artifice. But something…
Labour MPs couldn’t handle the truth from Kemi Badenoch at PMQs
The end of Sir Keir’s premiership, and especially his last few PMQs, was always going to be less of a…
The truth about Keir Starmer’s legacy
It was when Keir Starmer claimed never to have had a dream that I knew we were dealing with potentially…
Labour’s heading for a catastrophic collision with reality
In the giddy rush to announce yet another ‘New Chapter’ in British politics – whose chapters these days seem to…
The perfect two words to describe this zombie parliament
With Sir Keir in Evian busy taking what must surely be his last opportunity to stuff Lady Victoria’s hand luggage…
Keir Starmer can’t keep deluding himself about two-tier policing
The House of Commons these days is hardly an inspiring place. There can be little denying that it is a shadow…
The desperate sycophancy of Mandy’s campaign for the Oxford chancellorship
After months of back and forth, today the government finally released the latest tranche of the Mandy documents, which have…
Is Nicola Sturgeon the least curious woman on the planet?
Peter Murrell is a strangely shiny man. He has the air of an undertaker who’s been siphoning off the corpse…
