Patrick O’Flynn is a former MEP and political editor of the Daily Express
Kemi Badenoch has been accused of being an unpleasant bully who targeted civil servants for unconscionable treatment. The allegations – which Badenoch has strongly denied – centre around her time at the Department for Business and Trade and emerged in the Guardian. Pippa Crerar, who is exceptionally good at her job and is arguably now
The Conservative party is preparing the ground for its sixth leader since the Brexit referendum eight years ago. Were one of those actuaries who help insurers assess probabilities let loose on the Tory leadership race, it is hard to envisage any of the six candidates being rated as a likely future prime minister. Even removing
We shouldn’t be surprised by Tom Tugendhat saying he is willing to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and then his subsequent failure to back up that claim in a wishy-washy radio interview. There is, after all, a long tradition in the Conservative party of ambitious centrist politicians pretending to believe in right-wing
It comes as a relief to learn that Keir Starmer doesn’t really believe setting up a new security organisation to ‘smash the gangs’ will stop illegal immigration in small boats. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper goes around parroting the phrase as if saying it and doing it were the very same thing. It also got Labour
How do you solve a problem like Suella? Rishi Sunak is facing calls to expel Braverman from the Conservative party following her remarks about the LGBTQ+ flag, according to the BBC. The Beeb felt fit to run the story even though it was only able to find one failed parliamentary candidate and one failed council
At the 2019 general election, the Tories won eight seats out of eleven in Nottinghamshire, but now the political map of the county is dominated by red. Only two of those 2019 Conservatives survived last week’s brutal cull. Both did so by running against Rishi Sunak’s version of Toryism rather than for it. Lee Anderson,
Can it just be a coincidence that most of the leading figures of the Tory left lost their seats, while the coming women and men of the right largely held on? Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman all made it back to the Commons while whole phalanxes of would-be leadership contenders from the ‘One
If Tories find some comfort in getting into three figures in the exit poll, they are kidding themselves. Not only are the Tories on course to record a significantly lower number of seats than it won at its modern nadir of 1997, but it has lost its parliamentary monopoly over right-of-centre opinion too. Yes, it
Dry wit is a much under-appreciated quality in this age of high-impact sledgehammer communication. In an election full of sub-standard soundbites and slogans signifying almost nothing, there is an especially strong case to be grateful for the occasional appearance of wit. There was the moment when Nigel Farage mocked the Plaid Cymru chap who was opposing
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This week: Downfall. Our cover piece examines Nigel Farage’s role in the UK general election. Spectator editor Fraser Nelson argues that Farage has become the left’s greatest weapon, but why? How has becoming leader of Reform UK impacted the campaign and could this lead to a fundamental realignment of British politics? Fraser joined the podcast to talk
Today’s hot topic for the Rishi Sunak-is-terrible-at-politics club is the foolishness of suspending candidates mired in the election betting scandal a full week after Keir Starmer called for that to happen. It certainly makes Sunak look slow and weak and the Labour leader the safer bet, as it were, to be running the affairs of
Are you beach-body ready? Boris Johnson, who has always projected a joyously uninhibited confidence about his physical form, clearly thinks that he is. The blond bombshell has been basking in Sardinia and is now reported to have a second summer holiday already in the diary which will keep him away from these chilly shores until
Nigel Farage’s tail is up. The Reform party election campaign has gone better than he dared hope and its poll rating is up by several percentage points since he re-entered the fray. Today he went to South Wales to launch what he insisted was not a manifesto, but a ‘contract’ with the electorate over its
The great British public seems to have got over its feelings of anger and disillusionment towards the Conservative party. It is mainly just laughing at the Tories now. The descent into outright ridiculousness brought about by the centrist ‘sensibles’ who currently run the Tory show came across loud and clear in last night’s seven-way ITV
Keir Starmer and the Labour party today launched a manifesto that’s good enough to win this election and presented it in a commensurate manner. If that comes across as damning with faint praise then this is what your author intended. After all, there was – as Beth Rigby of Sky News noted in her question
Rishi Sunak today launched a manifesto that might suffice for a governing party polling at level pegging with the opposition in a country where things have been going well. You will no doubt have spotted the problems with this: he’s more than 20 points behind in the polls largely thanks to losing most of his
Everyone is finally noticing that Rishi Sunak is rubbish at politics. Given the scale of his faux pas in bailing out of D-Day commemorations early to get back on the campaign trail, it is hard not to. As a longstanding member of the ‘Rishi is Rubbish’ club, I find it difficult not to feel the
The one thing that had gone right for Rishi Sunak in the election campaign to date has now gone wrong. Nigel Farage has been so energised by the first ten days of the election that he has taken back the leadership of the Reform party and decided to stand for parliament in Clacton after all.
To turn Keir Starmer, of all people, into someone who can credibly promise to bring immigration down is an act of perverse genius by the Tory party that is unparalleled in the modern political era. Presented with an open goal, the Labour leader has today stuck the ball in the net by telling readers of
In the classic comedy Blackadder II the late, great Rik Mayall was responsible for one of the most memorable cameo appearances in television history. As the swashbuckling adventurer Lord Flasheart, he gatecrashed Blackadder’s wedding, declaring himself ‘flash by name and flash by nature’. Leaving female guests giddy and male ones open-mouthed in admiration, he then
