Patrick O’Flynn

Despite its leading lights having spent more than a decade spent promising us they will bring down immigration we can now say for sure that Conservative party is not going to do that. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are preparing to expand the number of economic sectors to be declared as suffering from labour shortages

In the Christian tradition, which allows for a protracted gap between death and burial, there is often time for initial feelings of shock and grief to give way to other emotions – fond recall, gratitude for the contribution of the departed. But a funeral always returns us to sorrow. And deep sorrow was the abiding

As republican protestors seek to disrupt the handing on of the title of head of state from one royal to another, we should appreciate that it is an obsolete system in the modern world. Not the monarchy, of course: it only takes one look at the mass outpouring of grief for the late Queen and the

The Queen’s fragile smile in the official photograph released as she waited to appoint Liz Truss as her 15th Prime Minister carries even more meaning now. Her Majesty clearly knew there would be no 16th and after a turbulent summer it must have come as a relief to know that the country was about to move

People used to understand that they were ageing when they noticed police officers in their neighbourhood looking unfeasibly young. Given that nobody ever sees a police officer on foot patrol these days, a new benchmark for startling youthfulness needs to be identified. After Liz Truss unveiled her top ministerial team yesterday perhaps ex-cabinet members could

Nobody knows what they think about Liz Truss. Not literally nobody – those of us with a wholly unusual level of interest in politics of course have our pet theories – but nobody in the sense of the broad sweep of the general public. As Tony Blair noted in his memoirs: ‘For most normal people,

The wholesale abuse of the United Kingdom’s asylum system has taken a novel, absurdist twist in the last few months. Recent years have seen thousands of young men predominantly from war-torn or extremely oppressive countries – such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria – chugged across the English Channel from the safe country of France

No senior politician has ever possessed a talent for upsetting prime ministers to match that of Michael Gove’s. David Cameron unfriended him after the EU referendum, having believed Gove had assured him he would campaign for Remain only to see him mastermind the triumphant Leave operation. While Boris Johnson was forgiven for his front-of-house Brexit

Liz Truss has been clear about her key selling point throughout her leadership campaign. At its launch she boasted: ‘I can lead, I can make tough decisions and get things done.’ And her whole campaign has amounted to variations upon that theme – ‘I do what I say I will do’, ‘I’m somebody who gets

The old English nursery rhyme The North Wind Doth Blow asks ‘what will poor robin do then, poor thing?’ about the impending onset of cold conditions. As he faces up to the prospect of a heavy defeat in the Tory leadership contest, we are similarly entitled to wonder what will poor Rishi do then, poor

We are in the depths of silly season. The perfect time, then, for the Conservative party to be choosing a new prime minister on our behalf. The latest especially silly twist to the plot is the idea that Rishi Sunak, the almost certain loser, should somehow ‘quit’ the Tory leadership contest right now to enable

Premier League footballers ‘taking a knee’ came in at the tail end of the 2019-20 season, when stadiums were empty because of the first Covid lockdown. Thus were the game’s moneyed elite spared having to initiate the fad in front of full houses. By the time supporters returned it was a fait accompli, normalised by

This week has seen a dramatic development that has taken the Westminster Village by surprise: Britain suddenly has an identifiable successor to Boris Johnson. Liz Truss is going to become our third female prime minister at the start of September. What was expected by many to be a tight race between her and Rishi Sunak,

Ed Balls, the intellectual powerhouse behind the economics of the New Labour era, was once described as having a brain the size of a planet. He was treated with reverence as a result. Yet when he ran for the leadership of his party he came a poor third, losing to goofy Ed Miliband, a guy

The prospect of Liz Truss becoming the United Kingdom’s third female prime minister is antagonising all the right people. Almost the entire Remainer establishment – including state-sponsored leftist comedians, professors of European studies, AC Grayling, senior figures at the Times newspaper, Irish government insiders – is recoiling at the thought. It is only partly as

There was an unmistakable whiff of an Addams Family portrait about the cabinet photocall that marked the final gathering of Boris Johnson’s top team. Surrounding the departing Prime Minister were many ministers who will have suspected that they are not going to be in the same ministerial positions, or perhaps any ministerial position, when 10

Enid Blyton made a lot of money out of the Famous Five. Maybe she could have invented a brand called the ‘Infamous Five’ that would have made her even more. But the Unfamous Five is a name that might have struggled to bear box office fruit. Yet the glories of the British constitution are about

Every loser wins, once the dream begins. So sang the EastEnders actor Nick Berry in a godawful mid-1980s pop song that attempted to cash in on his brief spell as a national heartthrob. In the first round of the Conservative leadership election, it would be more accurate to say that every winner loses, especially in

There are few positions so perilous as being the frontrunner in a party leadership contest. Just being the heir apparent when no contest is happening is dicey enough, with the incumbent leader usually highly susceptible to murmurings from courtiers about your alleged manoeuvrings against him. But once the race is actively underway things get even more