Patrick O’Flynn

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

At the very top end of politics there is a vital distinction that is underappreciated whenever the case for change is being assessed. It is the difference between plausible and compelling. Tony Blair in his pomp was the latter, Gordon Brown never more than the former. Margaret Thatcher had only to be plausible to win

Just after 6 p.m. yesterday it seemed like the Boris Johnson regime was in total, house of cards style collapse. Sajid Javid resigned as Health Secretary during a televised act of contrition by the PM over his handling – if that’s not too indelicate a word – of the Chris Pincher affair. Five minutes later

Keir Starmer has set down Labour’s Brexit red lines: if his party wins power, he will not take the UK back into the EU’s single market or customs union, nor will he restore freedom of movement with the bloc. Instead, in a speech today, he will pledge to ‘break down’ the ‘fatberg of red tape’ that Boris

There are not very many good things to say about the Conservative party in Parliament these days. Barely a month seems to pass without one of their number being exposed as some kind of pervert. Others among them seem far more interested in plotting their own ascents than in delivering sound public administration or working out

If only they had waited until today. Had Tory MPs cleared the threshold for a confidence vote in Boris Johnson this morning – amid the smouldering embers of two blazing by-election defeats – rather than earlier in the month, then he would surely be toast. As it is, all that the Prime Minister’s many critics

In politics, a leader sometimes needs to be ruthless and mean, patiently soak up the public opprobrium directed his way and wait until most people see that his stance was correct and necessary. When it comes to the state of the economy, and the pressures of inflation in particular, this is where we have got to. 

Priti Patel’s first go at deporting migrants to Rwanda is turning before our eyes into one of those answers from the TV quiz show Pointless – when you see the on-screen counter drop remorselessly towards zero. At the time of writing, the counter for the number of migrants to be flown out to Rwanda is

A very big week is in store for the government’s strategy to tackle illegal immigration with all eyes on the planned first air transfer of irregular migrants to Rwanda, due to take place on Tuesday. Whether the flight takes off at all and how many migrants will be on board is yet to be seen.

Boris Johnson’s relaunch speech this week contained something for everyone: a clear-sighted policy on Ukraine, the bizarre idea that stoking up housing demand is the way to overcome a shortage of housing supply and a take on the economy that one might charitably describe as a Keynesian-Thatcherite synthesis. But the most telling line came in

Today’s no-confidence vote in Boris Johnson is best seen as the next stage of a determined long-term plot to bring him down rather than as a stand-alone event. That is to say, Johnson will not be safe or restored to anything like full political health simply by winning it. Unless he triumphs by a crushing

A funny thing happened on the way to the cathedral for the service of thanksgiving to the Queen on Friday. It wasn’t just that Boris Johnson got booed, it was also that Sadiq Khan got cheered. GB News solemnly reported that the Mayor of London ‘received extensive cheers from members of the public who were

The surest way to put people off an opinion they might otherwise agree with is to get somebody they actively despise to articulate it. Yet this is what the anti-Boris Johnson political class proposes to do repeatedly in the House of Commons on Sue Gray Day, perhaps as early as tomorrow. One does not have

For those of us who were reporting on politics way back in the 1990s, ‘Tory sleaze’ is a phrase that echoes down the ages. Though there had been plenty of run-of-the-mill scandals involving Tory MPs in the first couple of years of John Major’s premiership, things really took off after his ‘back to basics’ conference speech

Labour spin doctors this morning whisked Keir Starmer to the scene of his party’s biggest gain in the north in order to provide the TV networks with pictures of him celebrating victory. They took him to Barnet. That’s Barnet, North London. For that’s how far the red tide ran last night. It couldn’t even sweep

Awarding themselves the unearned prize for moral superiority and assuming that the electorate will do so too is a crippling fault of the modern Labour party. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has just outed himself as a severe sufferer of the syndrome via the wounded tone he has taken over being questioned about the events

For a week and a half no migrants at all crossed the Channel in dinghies. A theory began to take hold that the mere prospect of migrants being transferred on to Rwanda – a plan unveiled by Home Secretary Priti Patel in mid-April – was already acting as an overwhelming deterrent to people in camps