Andrew Willshire is founder of the strategic analytics consultancy Diametrical Ltd
Boris Johnson’s resignation has fired the starting gun on yet another Conservative leadership election. The race to succeed Boris is the fifth to have been fought under the rules introduced by William Hague in 1998. But there’s a problem with the way the contest is run: it forces MPs to second-guess the Tory membership –
There are many reasons to oppose Boris Johnson’s government’s policy of removing migrants to Rwanda. There’s certainly a moral case against this asylum policy, one which the Church of England’s bishops have presented with some force; and there could be a legal case which the Supreme Court will consider in July. But given the lack of achievements
As you may have gathered despite the understated media coverage, Boris Johnson became the first serving Prime Minister to be found to have broken the law when he was issued a fixed penalty notice (FPN) by the Metropolitan Police for breaching Covid-related laws on gathering for non-work purposes. There has been much written about this
Dorian Lynskey recently wrote a piece celebrating Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday entitled ‘Bob Dylan doesn’t like you‘. The article highlighted the disdain Dylan has for fans, critics, journalists, and even the Nobel Prize Committee. Feted as the voice of a generation, and often acting like it, he still has nothing but scorn for those who acclaim him
Dominic Cummings’s main concern as he appears in front of MPs is to identify the failures of government and ensure everyone knows they weren’t his failures, but those of the fools who refused to listen to him. It’s rather a tragic final act, for the truth is that Cummings did fail (and, to be fair, he
As the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow approaches, it is only to be expected that charities, lobbyists, special interest groups and an alphabet soup of international bodies will attempt to steer the conversation in their direction. The IEA (International Energy Agency, not to be confused with the Institute for Economic Affairs think tank) has published
The re-election of a pro-independence majority to the Scottish Parliament shows that the next five years will be dominated by the quest for a second independence referendum. Conventional wisdom is that the Scottish Parliament will pass a Bill legislating for that referendum, daring Westminster to strike it down, making the separatist position more powerful, like
A sure sign of paying too much attention to politics is when the arguments of your own side begin to grate as much as those of the opposition. Currently number one in my personal sources of ennui is the frequent damning of the SNP by comparing them to Brexiteers, with their claims of self-determination, demonisation
In the great debate around Scottish independence, one word is never far away: identity. ‘Who am I?’ is elevated from mere navel-gazing to expressive political allegiance. On one side are those who feel that one can be both Scottish and British without fear of contradiction, while on the other are those who feel that one
It’s not hard to see why politicians like Joe Biden and Boris Johnson want to talk about climate change. First of all, it looks good to the electorate. Caring about the planet (or at least being seen to care about the planet) is one of the things that marks you out as ‘a good person’.
Political parties like to think of themselves as being a ‘broad church’ when tackled about conflicting views among members. It makes it all the more ironic then that it was a visit to a church which exposed a challenging split in the Labour party. Keir Starmer’s trip to Jesus House last week resulted in him apologising
Boris Johnson announced his new ten-point plan for Britain’s transition to a net-zero carbon emissions economy this week. It is expected that other countries will follow. The EU has a stated aim of achieving a net-zero economy by 2050, with a 60 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2030. This presents an
The news over the last few days has been a tale of three trade negotiations. First came the threatened collapse of the trade talks with the EU over plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement. This was followed by a statement from Nancy Pelosi (the Speaker of the House of Representatives) that there could be no UK-USA
In recent years, governments have increasingly opted to legislate to ensure they do the things they say they are going to do. In the UK, for example, the commitment to allocate 0.7 per cent of GDP to the international aid budget is legally binding, and in 2019 the UK became the first major economy to
Hope Not Hate is an organisation with a fine campaigning record which has done a lot of good in tackling extremism. But this week, they tweeted that ‘the far-right and the climate crisis are linked. They spread disinformation, fear-monger about climate-driven immigration and engage in denialism to spark culture wars.’ I’m not entirely convinced by
Following the Prime Minister’s address last night, Twitter was ablaze with mockery of the equation the government will use to determine our route out of lockdown. In particular, people were keen to show their mastery of primary school-level maths, by observing that ‘if the number of infections is 183,000 and R is 0.7, our threat
Researchers at the university of Leeds have published a study claiming that rich people use more energy than poor people; or as the BBC have it, “Climate change: The rich are to blame”. That article contains the rather obvious point that: ‘The researchers found that the richer people became, the more energy they typically use.
The Brexit culture wars are back. On Saturday, the Guardian published an article entitled: ‘Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK.’ As usual with such pieces, the words ‘if’ and ‘could’ do more heavy lifting than Atlas. The gist of the article’s argument is that leaving the European Medicines Agency (EMA)
Back in 2009, proposals were published to switch off FM and AM radio completely by 2015. The assumption was that most people in Britain could be persuaded to upgrade to DAB radio within six years. However, in 2018 the BBC announced that it was shelving plans to move away from FM. The upgrade cost proved to
As in every election in recent memory, a debate has broken out over the point at which a person becomes ‘rich’ and is, therefore, able to cough up a bit more to fund public services. The magic number this time is £80k – the salary around which a person enters the top five per cent
