Patrick O’Flynn

When the Rwanda migrant removals programme was torpedoed by a European judge at a hastily-convened hearing one evening last summer, the notion that Britain had ‘taken back control’ of its borders crawled away to die. The anonymous judge at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights issued a controversial ‘Rule 39’ instant order. This blocked

Few observers of politics can by now be in much doubt about the defective nature of Keir Starmer’s antennae when it comes to picking up the concerns of the British public. The number of U-turns the Labour leader has made once it has been explained to him what most voters actually think – the latest being

The spouse of one of Britain’s major party leaders would be forgiven for feeling both queasy and furious about Labour’s wave of attack ads against Rishi Sunak. Not Akshata Murty, aka Mrs Sunak, who has already been through some very rough stuff about her and her husband’s tax affairs – but Victoria Starmer, wife of

All politics is local, as the old saying goes. It is, of course, an exaggeration. But it contains easily enough truth to merit keeping in mind if you are, say, a government approaching the last year of its mandate and anxiously seeking a path to a new one. One lesson contained within the phrase is

A few weeks ago, Keir Starmer was told by his advisers that he would have to U-turn on his radical stance on trans rights or he would not win the next general election. One senior Labour source told the Times back then: ‘If Keir is still being asked by the time the election campaign begins

Frank Sinatra once sang about the seductive properties of bright and shiny ephemera. ‘Her heart will sing, singa-linga, wearing baubles, bangles and beads,’ crooned Ol’ Blue Eyes. There is a temptation for anyone cynical about politics – that’s nearly all of us by now – to view the Government’s announcement of planned new asylum-seeker accommodation

After the crushing majority won by Rishi Sunak for the ‘Stormont brake’ element of his new deal on the terms of trade in Northern Ireland, a single question is on the lips of many MPs: whither the ERG? For the once-mighty European Research Group – the Tory party’s formidably well organised Praetorian Guard which shielded

I don’t know about you, but it’s getting rather tiresome for me now. The Boris Johnson saga, that is. Did he knowingly mislead parliament about rule-breaking lockdown parties in Downing Street? Very probably. Though perhaps not certainly, if one places any credence in his argument that nobody in authority definitively told him boozy post-work gatherings

The BBC-based sitcom W1A centred on a running joke about how the spinelessness and ineptitude of senior management led them to dig themselves ever-deeper into holes. At one point in the series, the Corporation’s ‘Head of Values’ is wrong-footed by an ex-footballer who wants to be a television pundit. Another episode centres on him closing

I never expected staff at an entire department of the BBC to put their shoulders to the wheel of the campaign to bring about an early demise for the television licence fee. Yet that is what those working for BBC Sport have done with their rock-solid sympathy strike on behalf of Gary Lineker. Of course,

So long as the extensive pre-briefing of the Illegal Migration Bill turns out to be a reasonably accurate reflection of its contents, things are looking up for those of us who rank ‘stopping the boats’ as one of our top political priorities. Sunak and Braverman are about to launch legislation that appears sufficiently broad ranging

The blond bombshell has criticised Sunak’s new Windsor Framework as not passing the Brexit test of taking back control. He’s made clear that he believes abandoning the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is a terrible idea and says he will find it very hard to vote for his successor’s measure. In return, Sunak loyalists are muttering

Knowing when to accept victory is a key political skill. But it is not a universally held one among leadership cadres. The Palestinian people, for instance, have in the past been led by men who have turned down hugely advantageous deals offering major concessions. Once rejected on grounds of not amounting to absolutely everything desired,

At the heart of Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation statement there came a moment of self-awareness that one does not often encounter among those at the top of the political tree. While Sturgeon insisted that there was majority support in Scotland for independence, she acknowledged that it needed to grow further in order to prevail. ‘To achieve

The Tory Left wants Rishi Sunak to take a leaf out of Theresa May’s book by unilaterally giving up British leverage in a dispute with Brussels. Where May boxed in her country and her successor by accepting the UK must do nothing in pursuit of Brexit that would lead the EU to think it needed

Political leaders are like tribal chiefs and one way of assessing their fortunes is by counting up the number of heads they have accumulated from the toppled leaders of rival tribes. Tony Blair had the shrunken skulls of John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard threaded around his waist when he left

The whole point about making five key pledges, as Rishi Sunak did at the start of the year, is to give the average voter a consistent message. The idea is that such pledges, which should have been judiciously drawn-up based upon extensive opinion research, are hammered home again and again until the typical person far

The old socialist Ian Mikardo used to say that a political party was like a bird in that it needed a left wing and a right wing in order to fly. The guiding principle of Rishi Sunak’s mini-reshuffle seems to be that the Tory party needs a Blue Wall and a Red Wall in order