Patrick O’Flynn

When confronted with a list of problems and setbacks afflicting the Government, a minister recently told me: ‘The darkest hour is just before the dawn.’ I doubt she really believed it, which is just as well because, in a scientific sense at least, it turns out not to be true. But Tory ministers – aware

The very modest poll ‘bounce’ that Rishi Sunak delivered for the Tories after the farcical Liz Truss premiership has proved to be of the dead cat variety. The most recent YouGov poll showed the Conservatives at just 22 per cent – about half the vote share they achieved in the 2019 general election. This, you

If Rishi Sunak’s five key pledges already looked in terrible shape at the start of the week – which they did – then today’s events have placed one of them on its deathbed. The promise to ‘stop the boats’ was administered its last rites in the Court of Appeal this morning when Lord Chief Justice

These are heady times for Britain’s smaller political parties. Seldom has there been as much interest from voters in breaking away from the stale embrace of the entity known to many as the ‘LibLabCon’. On the left, the Greens keep growing – though their addiction to identity politics in general and the militant trans movement

Can a political leader keep getting exposed for conveying obvious untruths and yet be judged a fit person to occupy 10 Downing Street or even just a seat in the House of Commons? That’s been the theme of a week at Westminster which has seen Boris Johnson excoriated as someone not fit even to hold

The Commons privileges committee report into the conduct of Boris Johnson is completely damning. All the kerfuffle about whether the committee was justified in devising a new intermediate category of mendacity defined as ‘recklessly misleading parliament’ turns out to be irrelevant. The entire seven-strong committee, including the four Tory members on it, have found that

Such is Boris Johnson’s magnetic draw that his resignation gambit is still being discussed largely in terms of what it means for Boris Johnson: will he be back in the Commons next year? Could he lead his party again? But it is time to ponder what it means for Rishi Sunak, who after all is

Why do very smart people so often do very stupid things? Possibly it is because they cannot see how their actions look to those not similarly bestowed with such cerebral gifts. Yet when you are an elected politician, it is the average Joes who ultimately get to decide your fate. The latest case in point

These are testing times indeed for longstanding members of the ‘Boris Johnson is nothing like Donald Trump’ fraternity. Once again, the British blond bombshell is at the centre of a giant political controversy in lock step with the American one. And once again he seems perfectly happy to make politics all about himself. As a longtime

Being a Brexiteer these days is like being Kenneth Williams playing Julius Caesar in Carry On Cleo. Far too often we find ourselves crashing around the place bellowing: ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.’ Last month Nigel Farage made waves by declaring that Brexit had ‘failed’ thanks to wilful Tory treachery. Prior

When Rishi Sunak replaced Liz Truss in Downing Street last autumn, fundamentalism gave way to incrementalism. So far, the results have been suitably unspectacular: a nudging down of the inflation number more slowly than anyone envisaged; the bare avoidance of outright recession; debt at best stuck as a share of GDP; NHS waiting times that

Rishi Sunak’s pet theory that voters are relaxed about the level of legal immigration – so long as the government is in charge of it – and only really care about illegal immigration has just collapsed. New polling from YouGov shows that among 2019 Conservative voters, concern about immigration and asylum is now running nip

Tessa Jowell once ignited a furious political row by claiming that inner-city youths active in criminal gangs were exhibiting a misdirected spirit of enterprise. ‘These people have very formidable entrepreneurial skills which they have put to bad use,’ she claimed. I was put in mind of her observation when watching the teenage TikTok miscreant Mizzy

Net annual immigration – which successive Tory manifestos promised the electorate would be brought down below 100,000 – has just topped 600,000, an all-time record. During 2022 some 606,000 more people immigrated into the UK than emigrated out of it, according to official figures from the Office for National Statistics.  As a result, we must

Back in the early days of the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was reputed to have a rule for resignations: once a scandal had been in the news for ten consecutive days, a minister had to go. It was a stupid rule because it merely encouraged parliamentary lobby journalists to keep a story going until the

Despite the Conservatives having broken all their promises to bring down immigration volumes for 13 years in a row, conventional wisdom has it that migration is Labour’s Achilles’ heel. However high the Tories have allowed immigration to go, the public has generally suspected that Labour would push it still higher. Brits have long memories about the

Everyone knew that the Conservatives were going to take a pasting in the local elections. Aside from deserving a particular kicking for the horror show of 2022, with its runaway inflation and two prime ministerial defenestrations, this is just what happens to long-serving governments deep into parliaments. So the question foremost in the minds of Conservative

In British politics the first order effect of any report into a past furore is always about how it impacts current party leaders. So the various early inquiries related to the invasion of Iraq, for example, were not really about honestly learning from mistakes, but about the extent of the damage they would inflict upon

On any objective assessment, things are not going well for Rishi Sunak. Despite being praised for bringing a sense of calm back to the process of government, the criteria by which he asked to be judged tell us that he is a failure. His five key objectives for the year, chosen allegedly on grounds of

Something significant happened in Westminster yesterday. The Immigration Minister made a speech which showed a thorough understanding of the damage done to British society by unchecked illegal migration. Given that combating illegal, or ‘irregular’, migration is Robert Jenrick’s core task, you may feel that such an occurrence should be treated as commonplace. But here’s the