‘We’ve had enough of living in two-tier Britain,’ bellows Nigel Farage to cheers from an 800-strong crowd at Chester’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, where he is holding court. ‘There is not a single person on that Labour frontbench who’s ever worked in private business,’ the Reform leader declares. ‘So, is it any wonder they’re making such
Last Saturday I was making my way across the road from St Pancras to King’s Cross when I noticed a large bearded man blundering towards me, dodging the traffic, with a look of great urgency on his face. Assuming he was one of the 78 per cent of people in the capital who are mentally
What’s in a word? ‘Equality’. ‘Equity’. It’s the sort of thing that Channel 4 newsreaders find impossible to understand. Surely they’re the same thing, aren’t they? And even if they aren’t then what kind of pedant would keep trying to point it out? What difference does it make anyway? Well, quite a lot. Potentially the
It will probably only damn me further in the eyes of many, but when I was a government minister I often used to ask Labour predecessors for advice. Tony Blair especially. He may have felt it was a forlorn exercise ever offering me his wisdom, especially when I went on to back Brexit, support parliament’s
Have you been to a ‘divorce party’ yet this season? If you haven’t, not to worry, there’s still time. Divorce season lasts for the whole of January, I’m told, so there’s a couple of weeks left to celebrate. And if perhaps the details of your own nasty separation aren’t yet finalised, or if your lawyer
It is some time since I could claim any close acquaintance with the daily skirmishes of workaday Westminster. From risers and fallers on the stock exchange of parliamentary esteem I stand somewhat aside these days: no longer a war correspondent sending back dispatches from the battles between tribes in the febrile atmosphere and smelly carpets
In a recent interview, Hilary McGrady, the director-general of the National Trust, complains that ‘The culture wars we’re trying to grapple with are never something I supported’. I do believe her: she is not a political warrior. But what she does not acknowledge – or possibly does not understand – is that it was the
I long to write less about Rachel Reeves and more about world-beating British businesses – such as Brompton, the folding bicycle maker whose fortunes I have followed since I bought the product and interviewed the founder-designer, Andrew Ritchie, 20 years ago. The latest Brompton news was that profits collapsed from £11 million in 2023 to
