James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
This week, school starts again, but not in anything like the normal way. Were it not for Covid-19, millions of children would wake tomorrow to the familiar routine: a hurried breakfast, perhaps a panicked search for missing shoes or a stray jumper, then a dash to avoid being late. Instead, what awaits young minds that
Matt Hancock’s badge for carers is a perfectly good idea. The mockery of it is in many cases shallow, ill-informed, revealing and hypocritical. You don’t need me to describe the badge or the mockery. Anyone with an internet connection and a glancing familiarity with what passes for ‘news’ these days is aware that the Health
‘Boris is a very tough, very resilient person. … I’m sure he’ll come through this.’ That was David Cameron on the Prime Minister. ‘I’m confident that he’ll pull through because if theres one thing I know, he’s a fighter.’ That was Dominic Raab. I’m quoting those two simply because they’re the most prominent examples, but
Coronavirus commentary often takes a familiar form, which can easily be parodied thus: ‘Why the Coronavirus crisis justifies the thing I was arguing for before the crisis.’ I mention this because this article could, I suppose, be written off in that way. It is a column of praise for technocratic, wonkish politician-managers written by someone
It’s almost reassuring to learn that even amid the coronavirus horror, some things don’t change. Even though the country is at a standstill, the Labour party’s civil war over sex and transgender issues goes on. Earlier this week, the Labour party – you remember, the party of fairness and kindness and compassion and equality –
In some ways, it’s easy and even important to keep Rishi Sunak’s performance in announcing his coronavirus job retention scheme in perspective. It should, after all, be pretty easy to be popular in politics when you are offering to spend literally limitless amounts of money protecting people from economic hardship. A cynic would also say
Be honest: when you first heard about self isolation, did you think, just for a second: ‘that sounds good’? Many of us made the same mordant jokes about how we’d watch TV, catch up on reading books, generally enjoy some quiet and peace away from the constant noise of normal life. I certainly made those
There is an old Westminster joke that says if you want to keep something secret, say it on the floor of the House of Commons. Day-to-day parliamentary business doesn’t often get the attention of national media outlets and thus the wider country. This is understandable but also a pity because we often end up missing
Even if the Covid-19 coronavirus does not become a mass killer on the scale of, say, the Spanish Flu in 1918, the mere possibility of such severity still carries huge weight. Just the potential for a disastrous pandemic demands a response whose seriousness and nature will have political and social implications. Even in this first
There is chatter in the Westminster village about Boris Johnson’s low-profile. Why isn’t he visiting flooded towns? Why isn’t he fronting efforts to reassure a country worried about pandemic coronavirus? Here, I think it is worth quoting at length a speech given before becoming prime minister: ‘If we win the election we will get our
OK there are bigger stories in the reshuffle, but the tale of Jake Berry is an important one. He quit to spend more time with his family – and really meant that. Berry was minister for the northern powerhouse. He is also one of Boris Johnson’s oldest allies in the Commons. These days (almost) everyone
This is an article about the power of language in the transgender debate, about how the trans agenda has been advanced by the skilful capture of language, and about a government minister who has rejected that capture in favour of facts. It’s a bit complicated, so bear with me while I try to explain a
Oh, Laura Pidcock. The former Labour MP for North West Durham, former shadow cabinet member, and former leadership hope of the Corbynite left may be gone from parliament but she has not left the political stage. Pidcock, it seems to fair to say, is on the left of politics. A proud socialist who said she
The first chapter of Britain’s Brexit story ends tonight. For some, that’s something to celebrate. For others it means sadness. For most of us, I suspect, emotions are mixed: a bit of relief at the sense of clarity that underpins politics; a bit of optimism that we might all learn from the psychodrama/culture war of
I write a lot about transgenderism. I do so for several reasons. Among them: because politicians still aren’t doing their job and assessing policies and representing concerns properly. Because politics fails if groups of people are silenced and ignored. Because the way some women are abused, threatened and silenced on this topic makes me angry.
I have been trying with considerable success not to give two hoots about this Harry and Meghan thing. But a detail of their departure from the royal orbit bothers me. It arises from Harry’s surrender of his royal patronages, part of his move to cease being an HRH and become a plain old duke. That
Boris Johnson is to ‘take personal charge’ of a new crackdown on crime and gangs. So reports Steve Swinford of the Times, one of the Lobby’s best reporters. While this is a good and new story, for a jaded and ageing ex-hack like me it crystallises a vague feeling that’s been nagging at me for
Greggs’ sausage rolls are part of the national conversation. The smart shift to offer a vegan variant caught the mood and bragging about your love of Greggs is an easy way for politicos to signal their down-with-the-proles ordinariness. In fact, political types should be paying more attention to the company behind the sausage rolls, because
Government by headline is always tempting, and always a mistake. Some of the worst such mistakes concern the machinery and cost of politics, where it’s all too easy to announce stuff that sounds good for a day or two yet inflicts long-term harm on the quality of politics and government. Scrapping and merging Whitehall departments
One of the (many) frustrations of writing a lot about sex and gender is knowing that there are a lot of people who are concerned about these issues but who do not, for various reasons, say so. I’ve written quite a lot about the politicians, of all parties, who have private worries and criticisms about
