James Kirkup

James Kirkup

James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.

Is it now a crime to like a poem about transgenderism?

This is a story about Harry Miller, a man who has lived a life that might be described as blameless and even admirable. He’s the director of a company that employs 70-odd people in one of the poorer bits of England, invests in its staff and community, and uses its financial and technical expertise to

Brexiteers are destroying their own dream

Are some Brexiteers addicted to disappointment and frustration? Do they so crave the righteous indignation that flows from being thwarted that they are actively trying to sabotage their own project? How else to explain the extraordinary strategic incompetence of Tory MPs who say they want Britain to leave the EU yet behave in a way

The question that Leavers and Remainers still can’t answer

Why did Britain vote for Brexit? As Parliament gazes into the abyss, the question seems worth asking, even if I don’t pretend to be able to offer a simple answer. And that’s the point, really. Britain is teetering on the brink of a grand failure of policy and politics because, insofar as anyone involved has

Five reasons Brexiteers should learn to love the backstop

Westminster conversation about Brexit often suffers a time lag. MPs frequently speak with surprise about things that actually happened months ago and which are regarded as old, established facts in Brussels and policy wonk-world. The backstop is the best example: outlined in the December 2017 Joint Report of the UK and EU negotiators, its meaning and

2018: the year that exposed the Brexit fantasies on all sides

When the tide goes out, you see who’s swimming naked. So says Warren Buffett, the folksy billionaire investor, explaining that tough times expose which firms have poor management. The same is true of politics, and especially Brexit. 2018 was the year the tide went out on Brexit, and we saw too many of our politicians’

Tory MPs need to face reality, and back Theresa May

Tory MPs should vote for Theresa May in tonight’s confidence vote. Keeping her in place will be painful, difficult and lead to any number of awful problems. But it is far, far better than the horrors that will follow if they remove her. Even if you can, like Owen Paterson, blithely gloss over the fact

The lies and liars of Brexit

I started my first job at Westminster in 1994, more than half a lifetime ago. Almost all of my career has been spent watching politicians, talking to politicians, writing about politicians. I covered the case for war in Iraq and the war’s dismal descent into failure. I was part of the Telegraph team writing about

The question May’s Brexit deal critics must ask themselves

Brexit is an accident born of misunderstanding. One of the biggest miscalculations is about the EU and how it works. Troublingly, that misjudgement, embraced by both unwise Leavers and imprudent Remainers, could just lead Britain off a cliff, for the second time in three years. I attended my first EU summit in 2001 and stopped

A Brexit deal between Tories and Labour is just common sense

Despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that I’ve spent most of my adult life writing and talking about politics and politicians, there are still things about politics that I just cannot, on a fundamental level, understand. Top of the list is tribalism, the “my party right or wrong” stuff that reduces public

Why MPs should back Theresa May’s Brexit deal

Many things about the politics of Brexit are mystifying. Some are minor puzzles: Why don’t people read the documents they say they’re angry about, for instance? And some are major enigmas: Why don’t politicians talk about the economic and social problems that drove the Leave vote instead of fixating on misunderstood abstractions like sovereignty? Yet

Why MPs should back Theresa May’s Brexit deal | 13 November 2018

Many things about the politics of Brexit are mystifying. Some are minor puzzles: Why don’t people read the documents they say they’re angry about, for instance? And some are major enigmas: Why don’t politicians talk about the economic and social problems that drove the Leave vote instead of fixating on misunderstood abstractions like sovereignty? Yet

Tracey Crouch’s resignation is a big blow to the Tories

Tracey Crouch has resigned as a minister at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, over the Government’s handling of reforms to the rules around fixed-odds betting terminals. I don’t know much about the policy or the events that preceded this, but I know enough about Tracey Crouch to be confident that this is exactly what

James Kirkup

How Cameron’s misreading of Merkel led to Brexit

It is impossible to overstate Angela Merkel’s significance, to Germany, to the EU, and to Britain. Others are better qualified than me to talk about the first two of those, but as she announces her (slow, deliberate) departure from office, I offer a thought about Merkel and Britain, which is that the modern history of