Patrick O’Flynn

When Labour lost Hartlepool to the Tories in a parliamentary by-election 18 months ago, Keir Starmer was reported to have asked aides: ‘Why does everybody hate us?’ After the heavy Tory defeat in last night’s City of Chester by-election, Rishi Sunak would do well to pose the same question to his own lieutenants. Because the

It must be great fun being Keir Starmer at the moment. Eighteen months ago he was asking aides ‘why does everybody hate us?’ in the wake of Labour’s disastrous defeat at the Hartlepool by-election. Now scoring points off the Tories is like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel. The Conservatives have ceded so much political

Conventional wisdom has long held that the Conservatives win elections from the centre ground – including territory just to the right of centre – but lose them if they become ‘right wing’. John Major set out this theory explicitly in a press conference, and most of those in attendance nodded sagely along. For many years,

Someone near the top of government – let us give him the random alias Heremy Junt – is stoking the idea that post-Brexit trading arrangements with the EU constitute a disastrous impediment to UK economic growth. Heremy himself, or perhaps an authorised senior aide, has just briefed the Sunday Times that the way ahead could

Back in February the New Statesman reported that Keir Starmer’s inner-circle had concluded that Rishi Sunak was no longer to be feared as a potential successor to Boris Johnson because he was ‘crap at politics’. At the time this appeared to be a pronouncement that fell under the ‘doth protest too much’ rule, coined by

One tries to find grounds for optimism about the resolve and capacity of Her Majesty’s Government in these testing times but there is none to be found in today’s deal with France on Channel migrants. In fact, the wearily familiar outline of the agreement – yet more UK taxpayers’ money going to the French in return

Most dads will have been on a beach holiday where they helped their children build a sandcastle near the water’s edge and then waited for the tide to overrun it.  Sometimes there are false alarms, when a rogue wave comes in a bit further than expected but then its successors return to the holding pattern

Amid all the frenetic changes of leadership in the Conservative party, something important has been overlooked about the Labour party: it also has a new leader. Outwardly nothing has changed. Keir Starmer – he of the slicked-back hair and strangulated vowels – still stands at the despatch box at PMQs each week. But he has

It’s not hard to see why migrants come here. For those who make it across the Channel illegally, there is only a small chance of deportation. About 72 per cent of the predominantly young males who leave the safety of France can expect to have their UK asylum claims granted. The success rate is more

When did the scale of illegal immigration into the UK via Channel dinghies become a first order political issue for you? Perhaps you were, like me, outraged by the phenomenon from the start. If so, you will have been reassured by Boris Johnson’s declaration at the outset of his premiership that those coming in this

There is a sweet spot for party leaders in which two key conditions are fulfilled. First, the leader’s party is ahead in the polls. Secondly, the leader is more popular than the party. At the end of his first week in office, Rishi Sunak can at least be content that the latter of these conditions

What do you do when you are a prime minister presiding over a desperately difficult economic outlook riddled with features that are all but intractable in the short-term? Well, in Rishi Sunak’s case, you find other issues that might persuade people to vote for your party and convincing message-carriers to hammer home the approach you

‘At least I’ve been prime minister’ – those were the reported words of Liz Truss on realising that she had presided over so much chaos that she’d have to step down after just six weeks in office. It is most unlikely that our next prime minister would react to catastrophic failure in such a manner.

There is generally a basic problem to be overcome whenever somebody suggests two competing political egos come together to campaign on a ‘joint ticket’ – one of them has to be the boss. There is only one vacancy being fought over by Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak and it cannot be subject to a job

Had Boris Johnson simply wished to use the current vacancy for prime minister to remind us all of his superstar status then it would be mission accomplished already. The mere confirmation that the great blond bombshell was mulling an instant comeback transformed a prospect I likened a fortnight ago to the preposterous Bobby Ewing shower scene

To call it a shambles is an insult to the many perfectly respectable shambles that take place each day up and down this fine land. Yesterday’s performance across Westminster and Whitehall by the Conservative and Unionist party will surely be remembered for many years as the textbook example of the nadir to which a dysfunctional,

The Reform party, under its leader Richard Tice, invented Trussonomics before Liz Truss – launching an economic recovery plan in June which claimed to explain ‘how to grow our way out of crisis’. The core policy idea will be familiar to anyone who has followed the disastrous aftermath of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget