Patrick O’Flynn

Conventional wisdom about politics isn’t quite always wrong: it is merely shown by the passage of events to have been in error in the vast majority of cases. Consider the unhappy relationship between Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman over immigration policy. The Westminster Village – media and political practitioners alike – generally accepted that Sunak

Whither Newsnight? Or do I mean wither, Newsnight – shortly to be reduced to a 30-minute debate show shorn of more than half its staff. As a teenage news and politics junkie, I grew up on this programme, watching it from its 1979 inception and through its 1980s heyday when that broadcasting giant Sir John

As they headed into the autumn, Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives needed a gamechanger. Their gradual recovery in the polls from the dog days of Liz Truss had stalled not very far from base camp and began sliding into reverse. Destroying what was left of the party’s reputation on the most important issue to its

The rise of Ukip and the highway to Brexit was greatly smoothed by the widespread perception that British governments had lost control of immigration. For many years, we purists in matters of nation-state independence struggled to articulate a stand-alone ‘sovereigntist’ argument that would catch fire with the wider public. But then Tony Blair threw open

Of all the essential tasks facing Rishi Sunak when he became Prime Minister, bringing down the level of legal immigration should have been by far the most straightforward. This is probably not what the electorate had in mind when voting for Brexit in order to ‘take back control’ of the borders All he had to

Can the people around Rishi Sunak really be dim enough not to have anticipated that his reshuffle would go down like a lead balloon among social conservatives? It seems unlikely to me that Sunak’s Downing Street could be peopled by such clowns. Sacking Suella Braverman and bringing back David Cameron into a great office of

There is no point in critics of our activist judiciary kicking off about today’s Supreme Court’s decision that the government’s Rwanda policy is unlawful. This isn’t a case of ‘lefty lawyers’ thwarting honest politicians, but of incompetent politicians seeking to wish away the United Kingdom’s international treaty obligations without having the bottle to withdraw from

So farewell then to the great realignment: Suella Braverman out of a great office of state and David Cameron back into one. As electoral signals go, this one hardly needs much decoding. The alliance of social conservatives that fell into the Tory lap without them really understanding why has been spurned. The boarding school boys

Can Rishi Sunak still catch a break or has the plughole spiral of British politics now dragged him firmly into its unsparing ambit? It is just possible that he will come up for a lungful of air on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court delivers its long-awaited verdict on whether the Rwanda scheme is legal. More

If prizes were dished out for saying what the unwashed and un-woke are thinking then Suella Braverman would be garlanded in medals and have a mantelpiece groaning with trophies. The Home Secretary scored bullseye of the year when she said that multiculturalism had failed. A couple of weeks later groups of people waving Palestinian flags

Margaret Thatcher was said to have once remarked that every prime minister needed a Willie. Given that humour was not her natural domain, perhaps she didn’t even intend it as a pun. The Willie she was referring to was, of course, the vastly experienced William Whitelaw who served as her effective deputy – and most famously

Why are the Conservatives doing quite so badly? Smashed in two by-elections, dropping further in the polls, last days of the Roman Empire on the backbenches, morale and purpose visibly ebbing away. Partly it must be because Rishi Sunak has been unveiled as a nerd rather than an authoritative national leader. Banging on about gobbledegook

Amid all the discussion in Tory circles about whether the next election will have more in common with the narrow victory of 1992 or the landslide defeat of 1997, nobody has ever made the case for 1993. But after the Conservatives’ shattering loss of two of their nominally ‘safest’ seats to Labour in by-elections in

Could our current record levels of immigration be a flash in the pan, a statistical spike brought about by the confluence of several exceptional factors? After the figure for the twelve months to June 2022 came in at 606,000 net and more than one million gross, that would be a comforting notion for those who

As a longstanding supporter of ancient over modern in the architecture stakes, it can only grieve me to see the front wall of King’s College, Cambridge defaced by the orange paint of Just Stop Oil. But that’s what happened to a ten-metre stretch of stone wall near the porters’ lodge yesterday. I left those very

Conference season 2023 is done and dusted, with punchy Wes Streeting having performed the final significant act yesterday via his speech depicting Labour as the great engine of NHS reform. How has it gone? Who has done best? Has it changed the political weather overall? Those who have attended all of it will have their

What is Labour’s offer for Nigel Farage? Yes, you read that right. Of course, Keir Starmer’s party detests almost everything the former Ukip leader stands for, including Brexit and immigration control. That almost goes without saying. But we are well into the phase of the political cycle when grubbing for votes is far more crucial

After Suella Braverman announced her candidacy for the Tory leadership on ITV’s Peston show in the summer of 2022 the liberal left laughed at the very idea. Someone even asked Robert Peston online: ‘How did you keep a straight face when Suella B said she’d stand for Prime Minister?’ Well, as Bob Monkhouse once observed