Patrick O’Flynn

Ten years ago the idea of a British prime minister announcing a cut in foreign aid to 0.3 per cent of GDP would have been unthinkable. David Cameron’s Tories had exempted the Department for International Development from austerity, repeatedly declaring that it would be wrong to balance the books on the backs of the world’s

Keir Starmer is just the latest in a long line of prime ministers who says that immigration has been far too high in the past and needs to be greatly reduced. He berates Tory leader Kemi Badenoch constantly on this point, pledging to get a grip on migration volumes and accusing the Conservatives of having

Who in Westminster is ‘right-wing’ on immigration? Which parties are actively propelling the Overton window to the right? If you listened to some mid-wit urban leftists you’d think all three parties jostling to be top of the polls – Reform, Labour and (least successfully) the Tories – are engaged in a mad political arms race

Voters simply haven’t taken to the party leader and that’s becoming impossible to ignore. Presenting the public at the next election with a figure they don’t like, rate or agree with would be madness. So at some stage a new leader will have to be installed. There are certainly some mutterings to this effect in Tory

Can we trust the Conservatives to deliver – or even to try to deliver – on whatever migration-sceptic policy pledges they unveil for the 2029 general election? It would be wrong to say that the party’s record on this issue is chequered or that it has been unreliable in the past. Because during the 21st century

British politics is in a new place: the combined polling score of Labour and the Conservatives is below 50 per cent for the first time in living memory. The latest polls have Labour averaging 26 per cent and the Tories 23 per cent. This is a nine point reduction on the terrible combined score of

This morning Keir Starmer implied but did not categorically say that Islamist ideology was not the motivation of the dreadful Axel Rudakubana. The Prime Minister referred several times to the 18-year-old’s heinous crimes as constituting an example of ‘a new threat’ from ‘loners and misfits’, and to Rudakubana having viewed ‘all kinds of material’ online.

Conventional wisdom says the Tory leadership of Kemi Badenoch is close to crisis. This is perhaps because the prevailing political mood is much more heavily influenced by hindsight than by foresight. The manufacture of almost every opinion that gains the status of conventional wisdom depends on a time lag to allow its repetition and dispersal

When the anti-corruption minister is accused of corruption by a foreign government and has no prospect of being able to shut the story down any time soon, it is perfectly obvious that her position is untenable. Yet Keir Starmer allowed the furore over Tulip Siddiq to run for several weeks before the obvious resolution –

Is Reform about to become the most popular political party in Britain, overtaking both Labour and the Tories in national opinion polls? The rise of the light blue peril in opinion surveys since the general election at the expense of both major parties has certainly caused jitters in Westminster. MPs from more established parties know

The refusal of western elites to admit the failings of multiculturalism, and their ongoing molly-coddling of minority vested interests, is giving birth to white identity politics. That’s the troubling big picture takeout from recent events across the West – the Trump landslide, England’s summer riots, the reluctant dribbling out of statistics showing some foreign national groups are

British politics can only be understood right now if one realises that Keir Starmer is presiding over a “landslide minority” government: two thirds of the seats on one third of the vote. On the parliamentary maths, things are about as rosy as can be for Labour. It has more than 400 MPs and the Tories just

It’s been a busy Christmas in the English Channel. The small boat arrivals have continued at a startling pace through the start of winter. Nigel Farage is nonetheless a credible champion for the wronged masses There were 451 arrivals on Christmas Day, 407 on Boxing Day, 305 on Friday and 322 on Saturday. Yesterday we

Throughout the last parliament, Labour leader Keir Starmer and Lib Dem leader Ed Davey did not have a bad word to say about each other. In fact, they hardly even acknowledged the existence of each other’s parties. Neither did they shake hands on a formal Lab-Lib electoral pact. They just both kept pounding away at

Everyone is talking about Reform: Rachel Reeves complains that Nigel Farage ‘doesn’t have a clue’ how to make the economy grow. Kemi Badenoch says Reform is offering ‘knee-jerk analysis’ rather than thought-through policies. The obvious rejoinder is that Reeves doesn’t have any growth and Badenoch doesn’t have any policies, so these criticisms are a bit

At the start of a roller-coaster ride, a motorised chain pulls the carriages up to the highest point of the circuit, emitting a clanking sound as a ratchet takes effect. When the clanking stops those in the cars know they are about to go over the top. The canniest politicians across the western world are

It would be an exaggeration to say that in politics conventional wisdom is always wrong – but equally it’s not a bad rule of thumb. The prime mid-wittery of the moment concerns housing policy. We’re told that we’ve been building far too few houses. The way to help frustrated young adults escape the repressive confines